By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin By — Teresa Cebrián Aranda Teresa Cebrián Aranda Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-and-u-k-strike-houthi-targets-in-yemen-for-attacks-on-ships-in-red-sea Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio The United States and Britain launched strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. The strikes are in response to numerous attacks against shipping vessels in the Red Sea in recent months. Nick Schifrin reports. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Geoff Bennett: Welcome to the NewsHour. The United States and Britain are launching strikes tonight against Houthi targets in Yemen. Amna Nawaz: The strikes are in response to numerous attacks against shipping vessels in the Red Sea in recent months. Nick Schifrin joins us now for the latest. Nick, so what do we know at this hour about these U.S. strikes? Nick Schifrin: Amna a U.S. official confirms that more than a dozen strikes have been hit inside Yemen with Tomahawk missiles fired by ships in the Red Sea, as well as jets that were flying off of those ships. The targets include logistical hubs, air defense systems and weapons storage site. And the weapons storage sites that we're talking about are the weapons that the Houthis have been using in order to attack U.S. ships and commercial ships in the Red Sea. That means drones, ballistic and cruise missiles. Uh, before this strike, I talked to former military officials who told me that the US does have intelligence that they believe that can degrade Houthi capabilities, degrade the ability for the Houthis to attack, uh, these ships, uh, both commercial and military, and even earlier, uh, a few months ago, try and attack Israel. Uh, but administration officials told me that they weren't sure that these strikes would actually deter the Houthis from continuing to launch strikes. And so what the U.S. tonight is expecting is a Houthi response and a couple of rounds of back and forth that was built into this strike tonight, according to US officials I talked to. And so the expectation again, is that the Houthis will strike back. And this is just the beginning. Amna earlier today, uh, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, one of the Houthi leaders, said that hey, look, if you strike us tonight, we're going to strike you harder than we already have. Amna Nawaz: Just the beginning of a new phase. But as you've noted before, this didn't happen overnight. This has been building for weeks. Remind us of the context in how we got here. Nick Schifrin: Yeah, there have been 27 attacks by the Houthis in Yemen on commercial shipping and U.S. shipping since the middle of November, since the last six weeks. Uh, it started with that brazen attack, photos of which you're seeing right there, Houthi militants landing with a helicopter on the deck of the Galaxy Leader. They actually kidnaped a dozen foreign officials that night, foreign sailors. The U.S. created a maritime coalition in order to defend shipping and ships going through this area, which is key to international shipping. Some 15% of all boats go through there. But clearly, those warships did not prevent the Houthis from continuing to launch this attack. Between December 16th and January 4th, the US Navy shot down 61 missiles and drones. And so that is what clearly has led to tonight's strike, the idea that many in the U.S. administration and also the British administration, which took part in this, wanted to try and restore that deterrence, wanted to strike back finally at the Houthis. And that's what's happened tonight. I'm gonna quickly, uh, the context for this, not only the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, but also the political advancement that the U.S. has really been pushing. The U.S. has been trying to end once and for all the civil war in Yemen between the Houthis and the coalition-backed government backed by Saudi Arabia. The progress that have been made in the last six months has actually been pretty good, and so what U.S. officials are wondering tonight is if a military strike actually takes away from that progress or, in fact, gives them leverage over the Houthis. Amna Nawaz: We'll see what happens next. Nick Schifrin, thank you so much for your reporting. Nick Schifrin: Thank you. Listen to this Segment Watch Watch the Full Episode PBS NewsHour from Jan 11, 2024 By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin is PBS NewsHour’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent. He leads NewsHour’s daily foreign coverage, including multiple trips to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, and has created weeklong series for the NewsHour from nearly a dozen countries. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2017 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In 2020 Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the NewsHour teams awarded a 2021 Peabody for coverage of COVID-19, and a 2023 duPont Columbia Award for coverage of Afghanistan and Ukraine. Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America's Middle East correspondent. He led the channel’s coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza; reported on the Syrian war from Syria's Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders; and covered the annexation of Crimea. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage. From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011 he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow award for its bin Laden coverage. Schifrin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Overseas Press Club Foundation. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). @nickschifrin By — Teresa Cebrián Aranda Teresa Cebrián Aranda Teresa is a Producer on the Foreign Affairs & Defense Unit at PBS NewsHour. She writes and produces daily segments for the millions of viewers in the U.S. and beyond who depend on PBS NewsHour for timely, relevant information on the world’s biggest issues. She’s reported on authoritarianism in Latin America, rising violence in Haiti, Egypt’s crackdown on human rights, Israel’s judicial reforms and China’s zero-covid policy, among other topics. Teresa also contributed to the PBS NewsHour’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, which was named recipient of a duPont-Columbia Award in 2023, and was part of a team awarded with a Peabody Award for the NewsHour’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.