The United States and five of its allies on Thursday carried out military strikes against more than a dozen targets in Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, in an expansion of the war in the Middle East that the Biden administration had sought to avoid for the past three months.
The American-led air and naval strikes came in response to more than two dozen Houthi drone and missile attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea since November, and after warnings to the Houthis in the past week from the Biden administration and several international allies of serious consequences if the salvos did not stop.
On Thursday night, President Biden called the strikes a “clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes.”
In a statement, he warned: “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”
Weird framing from the NYT on this. Like this particular response was inevitable and Biden was slow to respond (“finally”). Nothing about this was inevitable, nor were the prior attacks necessarily demanding response from the United States.