Iran issued a warning Sunday to the US over potentially targeting two cargo ships in the Mideast long suspected of serving as forward operating bases for Iranian commandos. The warning came just after the US and the UK launched major airstrikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels. The statement from Iran on the Behshad and Saviz ships appeared to signal Tehran's growing unease over US strikes in recent days in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen targeting militias backed by the Islamic Republic. Attacks launched overnight Sunday struck across six provinces of Yemen held by the Houthis, including in Sanaa, the capital. The US said the strikes hit underground missile arsenals, launch sites, and helicopters.
"These attacks will not discourage Yemeni forces and the nation from maintaining their support for Palestinians in the face of the Zionist occupation and crimes," Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said. "The aggressors' airstrikes will not go unanswered." Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned the Houthis after the strikes that "they will continue to bear further consequences if they do not end their illegal attacks on international shipping and naval vessels." That message was echoed by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who said, "The Houthi attacks must stop." President Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, also warned the strikes may continue.
The Behshad and Saviz are registered as commercial cargo ships with a Tehran-based company that the US Treasury Department has sanctioned as a front for the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, per the AP. The Saviz, then later the Behshad, have loitered for years in the Red Sea off Yemen, suspected of serving as spy positions for Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. In the video statement Sunday by Iran's regular army, a narrator for the first time describes the vessels as "floating armories."
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