The United States began to carry out large-scale military strikes on Saturday against dozens of targets in Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, according to local news reports and two senior U.S. officials.
U.S. officials said the bombardment, the most significant military action of Mr. Trump’s second term, was also meant to send a warning signal to Iran.
Mr. Trump wants to broker a deal with Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but has left open the possibility of military action if the Iranians rebuff negotiations.
U.S. officials said that airstrikes against the Houthis’ arsenal, much of which is buried deep underground, could last for several days, intensifying in scope and scale depending on the militants’ reaction.
U.S. intelligence agencies have struggled in the past to identify and locate the Houthi weapons systems, which the rebels produce in subterranean factories and smuggle in from Iran.
Some national security aides want to pursue an even more aggressive campaign that would lead the Houthis to essentially lose control of large parts of the country’s north, U.S. officials said. But Mr. Trump has not yet authorized that strategy, wary of entangling the United States in a Middle East conflict he pledged to avoid during his campaign.
Shortly after the strikes, US President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that if Houthi attacks did not stop “hell will rain down upon you like nothing you have ever seen before.”
In the post, Trump also warned Iran, the Houthis main backer, that it needed to immediately stop supporting the group. He said if Iran threatened the United States “America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!”