Iran is trying to bolster its “battered deterrence” after a general vowed to respond “decisively and destructively” to any threats in the wake of U.S. strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, an expert told Fox News Digital.
Gen. Hossein Salami, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said, “We warn our enemies that Iran will respond decisively and destructively if they carry out their threats” following U.S. military action over the weekend against the Tehran-backed terrorist group, according to Reuters. Salami also denied that Iran is involved with Houthi attacks on U.S. Navy ships and commercial vessels in the Red Sea, the Associated Press reported.
“Tehran’s bluster is aimed at bolstering its battered deterrence and getting President Trump to disconnect the dots between Iran and its proxies at a time when the regime is at its weakest,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Iran program, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
“Tellingly, as a measure of the regime’s weakness, Tehran is also trying to downplay its ties with the Houthis despite having built them up with state-level military capabilities for over a decade,” he added.
IRAN GENERAL RESPONDS TO TRUMP THREATS AGAINST HOUTHI REBELS
Trump said Monday that “every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”
“Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Any further attack or retaliation by the ‘Houthis’ will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there.
“Iran has played ‘the innocent victim’ of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control,” he continued. “They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, “Intelligence.'”
U.S. Central Command said Saturday it had “initiated a series of operations consisting of precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen to defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday that he “ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen.”
“It has been over a year since a U.S.-flagged commercial ship safely sailed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, or the Gulf of Aden,” Trump continued. “The last American Warship to go through the Red Sea, four months ago, was attacked by the Houthis over a dozen times.”
Fox News’ Taylor Penley, Andrea Margolis and Lucas Y. Tomlinson contributed to this report.
