(FLORIDA) — The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating after three people were killed in two separate vehicle-train collisions at the same high-speed rail crossing in Florida this week.
On Friday, two people were killed — the driver and passenger — after a Brightline train struck their Chevrolet Avalanche pickup truck, Melbourne police said.
Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey told reporters at the scene that the vehicle tried to outrun the train.
The deadly collision came two days after a Brightline train struck a Honda Element SUV at the same crossing. The driver was killed and three others injured, police said.
Both vehicles were traveling west on WH Jackson Street, police said. The crashes remain under investigation.
The NTSB said Saturday it is sending a team to conduct a safety investigation into Friday’s “fatal grade crossing crash.” The investigation will include looking at the crash history, including Wednesday’s incident, an NTSB spokesperson said.
“NTSB investigators arrived on site this morning to begin the on-scene portion of the investigation,” the agency said in a statement on Saturday. “They will be collecting perishable information and documenting the scene for several days.”
A preliminary report is expected to be released within 30 days and final findings in 12 to 24 months.
“Investigators will work to better understand the safety issues at this crossing and will examine opportunities to prevent or mitigate these crashes in the future,” the NTSB said.
Following Friday’s collision, Mayor Alfrey urged drivers to follow safety measures at train crossings, saying, “When the arm is down, don’t go around!”
“I have spoken to Brightline officials and we will be ramping up a public safety campaign,” he said in a Facebook post. “There is NO good outcome against a train!”
ABC News did not immediately receive a response from Brightline to an email seeking comment on this week’s crashes.
Brightline, Florida’s high-speed rail, began offering passenger service between Miami and Orlando in late September, passing through Melbourne.
Since the service launched, there have been two other deadly incidents involving Brightline trains in Melbourne.
On Oct. 19, a female pedestrian was struck and killed by a train at a rail crossing in the area of Aurora Road and Cypress Avenue, police said. On Dec. 24, a 36-year-old female pedestrian was struck and killed by a train in the same area, police said.
Brightline ran a public safety campaign ahead of launching the new service, which has increased train traffic in the city of Melbourne, located about 70 miles southeast of Orlando.
“Years ago we had five or six trains maybe a day, and now we’re getting five, six times that,” Alfrey told WPLG following Wednesday’s fatal collision. “You really have to focus on your safety, your passenger’s safety.”
Alfrey told reporters at the scene following Friday’s incident that they need to do another, “aggressive” public safety campaign on rail safety. He also touched on other safety measures, such as enhanced barriers.
“This area — it doesn’t require a quad gate at this location, maybe that’s something that needs to be brought in,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Almost every single U.S. state is under some form of weather alert ranging from flood watches in the east to blizzard warnings in Iowa to wind chill warnings for over a dozen states in the central U.S.
The Northeast has been getting drenched by rain for the past 24 hours, but it is expected to taper off as the day continues.
In the upper Midwest, heavy snow and gusty winds have caused whiteout conditions as a blizzard rages. Des Moines, Iowa, has been hit with nine inches of snow and Davenport — located on the eastern border with Illinois — was hit with 15 inches.
In addition to the snow totals, winds gusting over 45 miles per hour have led to rough travel conditions with blowing and drifting snow.
Hundreds more flights were canceled with 1,062 flights as of Saturday morning, according to FlightAware. It comes after more than 2,000 were canceled on Friday.
Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport continued to see impacts with 9% of its flights canceled and Detroit’s Metropolitan Wayne County with 13% of flights canceled on Saturday.
Although a smaller airport, Buffalo Niagara International Airport saw 56% of its flights canceled. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul had declared a state of emergency Friday afternoon for western New York due to whiteout condition causing travel to be difficult.
Hochul wrote Saturday afternoon on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, that the NFL wildcard playoff game between the Buffalo Bills and the Pittsburgh Steelers has been postponed to 4:30 p.m. ET on Monday. One to three feet of snow through Monday is expected to fall in Buffalo and the surrounding area
“I’ve been in communication with @NFL commissioner Roger Goodell regarding the dangerous conditions in Buffalo this weekend. In consultation with our emergency response teams, @BuffaloBills leadership, and the NFL, the Bills game will be postponed to 4:30 pm Monday,” she wrote.
In another playoff game taking place Saturday evening in Kansas City with the Kinase City Chiefs playing the Miami Dolphins, the game time temperature is expected to be minus 4 F. with wind chills expected to make it feel like minus 20 F to minus 25 F.
The snow and bitter cold temperatures have brought dangerous conditions and have even led to a few deaths.
In Franklin, Wisconsin — located 16 miles southeast of Milwaukee — the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office is investigating the death of a 69-year-old man who is believed to have died while snow blowing his drive, according to local reports. The death is not being viewed as suspicious.
In Schiller Park, a suburb of Chicago, a man was found dead due to cold exposure, becoming the first cold-related death of the season, according to o the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, the Associated Press reported.
As of Saturday, more than 442,000 customers are without power across nine states including, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin, according to PowerOutage.us.
Michigan is experiencing the highest number of customers with outages for more than 186,000 followed by Wisconsin with outages for more than 95,000 customers.
Some communities also experienced flooding including those in the northern part of New Jersey and saw rain overnight Friday into Saturday.
Gov. Phil Murphy will visit flood-damaged Paterson early Saturday afternoon, according to a schedule provided by his office.
ABC News’ Matt Foster, Jessica Gorman, Ahmad Hemingway, Alex Perez and Ileana Riveros continued to this report.
(SOMALIA) — Two U.S. Navy SEALs are missing off the coast of Somalia after having fallen into the water during a nighttime boarding mission on Thursday, according to two U.S. officials.
The officials said that the SEALs had fallen into the water one after the other during the boarding of a vessel by boat in the Gulf of Aden.
It was unclear what had prompted them to board the vessel.
Search operations for the missing SEALs are continuing, said a U.S. defense official.
The Gulf of Aden has become a hotspot of U.S. Naval activity as the Houthi militants in Yemen have carried our more than two dozen attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since mid-November.
U.S. Navy ships deployed to those bodies of water have responded to distress calls from some of those commercial ships or have shot down dozens of Houthi drones and missiles.
On Thursday and Friday, the U.S. carried out airstrikes against nearly 30 locations associated with the Houthi attacks.
“On the evening of January 11, two U.S. Navy Sailors were reported missing at sea while conducting operations off the coast of Somalia,” said a statement from U.S. Central Command issued Friday that disclosed that the sailors had gone missing.
“Search and rescue operations are currently ongoing to locate the two sailors,” said the statement. “For operational security purposes, we will not release additional information until the personnel recovery operation is complete.”
The statement did not disclose what type of operation the sailors were conducting at the time other than to say that they were “were forward-deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet (C5F) area of operations supporting a wide variety of missions.”
“Out of respect for the families affected, we will not release further information on the missing personnel at this time,” it added.
A former U.S. official described nighttime boarding operations as some of the most complex and dangerous operations that Navy sailors can carry out and that ocean sea states and environmental considerations are constantly being monitored.
(NEW YORK) — Alleged serial killer Rex Heuermann returns to court next week on Long Island where he is expected to be charged in the death of a fourth woman whose remains were found in a marshy spot near Gilgo Beach, multiple sources told ABC News.
Heuermann, 60, is already charged with killing three women whose bodies were found wrapped in burlap in close proximity and prosecutors have said he is the prime suspect in the death of a fourth, Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to killing Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Costello, all of whom were found dead in December 2010. He is being held without bail.
He is due back in court in Riverhead Tuesday when prosecutors are expected to announce that a grand jury has returned an indictment charging him with a fourth murder, the sources said.
Brainard-Barnes was found wrapped with a belt that had a distinctive buckle bearing the initials WH, which could stand for Heuermann’s father, prosecutors have said.
There was no immediate comment from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, which is handling the prosecution of Heuermann. The suspect is an architect who investigators linked to the women, all sex workers, through DNA evidence, including a sample taken from pizza crust in the trash outside his Manhattan office.
There are six other Gilgo Beach victims whose deaths remain unsolved.
(OKLAHOMA) — A series of earthquakes struck Oklahoma Friday evening into Saturday morning, including at least two of 4.4 magnitude.
A 3.2 magnitude earthquake was recorded at 9:37 p.m. CT near Arcadia, which is located just northeast of Oklahoma City, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
This was followed by two smaller earthquakes of 2.7 magnitude and 2.5 magnitude, respectively, according to the USGS.
On Saturday morning, the earthquakes started again with one of 2.6 magnitude recorded near Acadia around 4:45 a.m. CT.
About an hour later, another 4.4 magnitude earthquake struck, this time near Edmond, which is just north of Oklahoma City, USGS data shows. This was followed by a smaller earthquake of 2.7 magnitude around 6:55 a.m. CT.
As of Saturday morning, no damages or injuries have been reported.
However, the USGS says earthquakes of 4.9 magnitude or under typically only cause disturbances and may be felt by many who are indoors. Earthquakes with a 5.0 magnitude or greater typically cause damage.
The Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) released a statement Saturday reporting “strong shaking in the immediate area and across Oklahoma City” as a result of the earthquakes.
“Whereas most aftershocks are smaller than the mainshock, a very small fraction of aftershocks result in a larger earthquake than the main event,” the OGS said in its statement. “The seismic hazard remains high in the area. Citizens should secure valuables that might shake during possible strong aftershocks and practice Drop, Cover, and Hold On in the event of damaging events.”
The earthquakes did not match the most powerful recorded in the state’s history, which was a 5.8 magnitude earthquake that occurred Sept. 3, 2016, near Pawnee, located in northern Oklahoma.
In March 2017, Pawnee Nation filed a lawsuit suing some Oklahoma oil companies in tribal court, alleging that the companies had injected wastewater underground, which led to the earthquake.
On Jan. 11, 2024, at 2:30 a.m. (Sanaa time), U.S. Central Command forces, in coordination with the United Kingdom, and support from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Bahrain conducted joint strikes on Houthi targets to degrade their capability to continue their illegal and reckless attacks on U.S. and international vessels and commercial shipping in the Red Sea. (U.S. Central Command)
(YEMEN) — The U.S. launched another retaliatory strike against Houthi militants in Yemen on Friday following Thursday’s large-scale airstrikes, according to U.S. Central Command.
The airstrike targeted a Houthi radar site and was a direct response to the launch earlier in the day of an anti-ship fired at a ship in the Gulf of Aden that fell harmlessly into the water.
“At 3:45 a.m. (Sana’a time) on Jan 13., U.S. forces conducted a strike against a Houthi radar site in Yemen,” CENTCOM said in a statement issued after the airstrike.
“This strike was conducted by the USS Carney (DDG 64) using Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles and was a follow-on action on a specific military target associated with strikes taken on Jan. 12 designed to degrade the Houthi’s ability to attack maritime vessels, including commercial vessels,” it added.
Friday’s missed missile attack is now considered the 28th Houthi attack on commercial shipping using drones and missiles since mid-November.
On Thursday night, the U.S. struck 28 Houthi locations in Yemen associated with the drone and missile attacks targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
U.S. officials said the sites were struck by Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by U.S. Navy destroyers, British warplanes, and U.S. Navy fighter aircraft from the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower.
Houthi officials had vowed to retaliate against the U.S. following Thursday’s strikes.
Speaking with reporters Friday afternoon on a trip to Pennsylvania, President Joe Biden called the strikes a “success” and said the U.S. will continue to respond if the Houthis keep up their “outrageous behavior.”
In a statement issued Thursday, Biden warned the Houthis that he would “not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”
U.S. officials said Friday that while assessments of Thursday’s strike are still underway they believe that the Houthis’ ability to launch large-scale attacks has been degraded.
Gen. Douglas Sims, the director of the Joint Staff, told reporters earlier Friday that the strikes have degraded the Houthis capability to launch a major attack like the one they tried on Tuesday.
“I know we have degraded capability,” Sims said. “I don’t believe that they would be able to execute the same way they did the other day,” referring to Tuesday’s Houthi barrage of 21 missiles and drones.
“I would hope that they don’t respond,” he said, adding that “we’re prepared in the event that they do.” He said he hoped the Houthis would realize that trying to retaliate would be “generally fruitless.”
Sims said that any attacks would be harmful to the region.
“It does not simply affect things that are directly tied to the Houthis,” he said. “But it affects many of their partners, quite honestly, or many of the folks that they they’re working with, so I would hope that they don’t retaliate.”
Civilian casualties from Thursday night’s strikes are not expected to be “very high,” he said, given that the majority of the locations struck were in rural areas. He specifically mentioned missile launchers in mountain areas or very lowly populated areas.
“This was not necessarily about casualties, as much as it was about degrading capability,” said Sims.
“This was solely designed to get after the capability that is impeding international freedom of navigation and international waters and that’s where we feel pretty confident we did good work on that,” he said.
(IOWA) — Weather continues to impact the schedule of presidential candidates heading into the Iowa caucuses as former President Donald Trump has now canceled three out of his four in-person commit to caucus rallies.
Instead, Trump will hold a series of telerallies and is still expected to go forward with his in-person appearance at his commit to caucus rally in Indianola, Iowa.
“I’ll get there sometime around Saturday night or something, one way or the other I’m getting there. You have the worst weather I guess in recorded history, but maybe that’s good because our people are more committed than anyone else,” Trump said in a video message posted on X shortly after his campaign announced the schedule adjustments.
The video comes as the campaign had to cancel four surrogate events they had planned this week as Trump made voluntary court appearances on Tuesday and Thursday.
Trump was in Iowa on Wednesday for a Fox News town hall, but his last campaign event was on Jan. 6, where he delivered remarks in Newton and Clinton.
The four-stop Iowa swing this weekend would have served as the final boost for Trump in the final days of Iowa caucuses, during an election cycle when the former president has had a lighter campaign schedule compared to some of his GOP rivals.
So far this cycle, Trump has visited Iowa 21 times, compared to other Republican presidential hopefuls, who have visited the Hawkeye state dozens of times.
Yet still, Trump remained determined on Friday to make the most out of the situation.
“It’s gonna be a little bit of a trek. Nobody knows how exactly we’re gonna get there, but we’re gonna figure it out,” Trump continued in his video message.
Just as the campaign was announcing the cancelation of his rallies, Trump joined conservative radio show “The Mark Levin Show” to explain that he had to cancel the events because of the weather.
Now, Trump is scheduled to join three telerallies this weekend: One each on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Also on Monday – ahead of the caucuses – Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle are scheduled to campaign on behalf of Trump in Ankeny.
As the state braces for dangerous sub-zero temperatures and a once-in-a-decade blizzard, Trump and his team have remained confident at his chances at clinching the Hawkeye state while also tempering expectations.
“First of all, a win, a win is a win but anything over 12 [points] I think is a great night,” Trump senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita told reporters Wednesday.
And despite the severe weather, Trump supporters ABC News spoke with were undeterred about going out to caucus for him on Jan. 15
“I’m definitely going to be there,” Nancy Iveling from Johnson, Iowa, who volunteers for the campaign, told ABC News. “We pray that the other people will show up too, regardless of the weather because this is an important cause and we need to win this race.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday publicly faulted Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for not informing him earlier that he was hospitalized for complications from cancer treatment.
When a reporter asked Biden whether it was “a lapse in judgment for him not to tell you earlier,” Biden replied, “Yes.”
At the same time, when asked by a reporter if he still had confidence in Austin, Biden replied he did.
Biden made his first comments on the controversy while visiting small businesses in battleground Pennsylvania on Friday.
Austin and the Pentagon are under immense scrutiny for initially keeping the White House and others in the dark for days about his health. The defense secretary underwent a minimally invasive surgical procedure for prostate cancer Dec. 22, which led to a urinary tract infection and serious intestinal complications.
Austin remained hospitalized this week, as the U.S. planned and led a coalition of retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen over the group’s attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday Austin’s performance was “seamless.”
“His participation was no different than it would be on any other given day, except that he was briefing the president on options and engaged in the discussions from the hospital,” Kirby said. “But he was fully engaged as he would be in any other event.”
The Pentagon, too, emphasized his role in the significant strikes against the Houthis — who’ve voted to retaliate.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Department of Defense press secretary, said Austin had two conversations with President Biden as well as daily calls with other officials about how to respond to the Houthis and how to execute the strikes.
“Then yesterday afternoon, the secretary gave the order to Central Command to initiate those strikes, and then monitored in real time with a full suite of secure communications,” Ryder said.
Austin, in a statement on the strikes against the Houthis, said the action was intended to disrupt the group’s abilities by targeting their unmanned aerial vehicle, uncrewed surface vessel, land-attack cruise missile and costal radar and air surveillance capabilities
He said the move “sends a clear message to the Houthis that they will bear further costs if they do not end their illegal attacks.”
The Pentagon’s communications breakdown when it came to Austin’s hospitalization is being independently investigated by the Department of Defense inspector general. The Pentagon has also ordered its own 30-day review of the circumstances, and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee launched a formal inquiry.
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow and Selina Wang contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The next week in Congress will be consumed by efforts to keep the lights on as Congress — for the third time in the past year — is running up against a funding deadline that could lead to a government shutdown.
With each looming deadline, the stakes grow higher and the politics more winding.
Here’s a quick catch up on where we are, and what’s at stake, a Friday’s funding deadline looms.
When is the government slated to shut down?
This upcoming funding deadline is unlike others we’ve seen because there are two different looming deadlines. This is because of the way House Speaker Mike Johnson crafted the last short-term bill that has been funding the government since mid-November.
The government is funded through 12 individual spending bills. When Congress needs more time to pass them, they often use a stopgap measure to bump back the expiration deadlines for all 12 of those bills.
But in November, Congress split them up.
So, on Friday, Jan. 19, funding will run out for programs under four of the 12 bills: Agriculture, Energy and Water, Military Construction-Veterans Affaifs, and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development.
If Congress doesn’t act to extend funds for those four bills by Friday, there will be a partial government shutdown.
Programs under the other eight bills, including defense spending, are currently slated to run out of funds two weeks later, on Feb. 2.
So what is Congress going to do to try to avert a shutdown?
This Congress, Republicans made it a goal to try to return the government funding process to regular order by passing the 12 appropriations bills individually. They’ve missed their deadline to do it twice, and are coming up on a third.
As was the case with the last two funding deadlines, the four bills that are running out of funds aren’t ready to be voted on yet, and Congress won’t be able to pass them before Friday. So increasingly, the Senate has signaled it’s going to once again aim to buy itself some additional time by punting the funding deadlines with a stop-gap measure.
On Thursday, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer teed the Senate up to take a procedural vote on a bill that would move the funding deadline when it returns to Washington on Tuesday. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Congress would “obviously” have to pass such a measure to keep the government open while lawmakers continue to toil over the final versions of appropriations bills.
It’s not yet clear how long of an extension the Senate will seek, or whether the stopgap bill they aim to push through this week will affect the four bills expiring on Friday or all 12.
What’s also unclear is whether Johnson is prepared to get his wily conference in order to move a stopgap measure through the House, where it’ll be a harder-fought battle.
Johnson previously said he would not approve any additional short-term funding bills, but Johnson also said he does not want the government to shut down next week. Given the crush that Congress is now under, he’ll likely have to make a choice.
It should be noted that a small contingent of Republicans are actually advocating for a shutdown. Because of the razor-thin Republican majority in the House, if Johnson does move on a short-term spending bill, he’ll need the help of House Democrats to pass it.
But wait, I thought a government funding deal was reached. Why won’t that stop a shutdown?
There was a pretty significant breakthrough in negotiations over full-year spending bills on Sunday. While a major step forward in getting the government funded, that deal won’t be done and dusted by Friday’s funding deadline.
Still, the deal, announced jointly by Schumer, Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, tees appropriators up to finally complete their work after months of squabbling between the House and Senate about how much all of the 12 government funding bills should cost.
The deal sets top-line spending for fiscal year 2024 at $1.65 trillion, the amount originally agreed to by President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during negotiations over the government’s debt limit last year. It preserves amounts for both defense and non-defense discretionary spending that Biden and McCarthy agreed on.
The question now is how long it will take appropriators to turn that handshake agreement into bills that can be voted on and passed. It’ll certainly be longer than the week until a partial shutdown.
In the days since the deal was agreed upon, Democrats have been touting it as a home run for their priorities that beat back GOP efforts to exact spending cuts.
“Both parties reached this agreement without resorting to the painful and draconian cuts that the hard-right, particularly those in the Freedom Caucus, clamored for,” Schumer said on the Senate floor earlier this week. “The hard-right wanted to put a chopping block on programs that helped millions of Americans.”
Johnson, meanwhile, has emphasized what he sees as wins for Republicans in the deal: claw-backs of about $6 billion in COVID-19 relief funds and an expedited $10 billion cut in funding to the IRS.
The speaker said the deal would allow Republicans to continue to fight for “conservative objectives” to be included in spending bills, but Schumer has vowed to push back on those “poison pill” additions.
How are Republicans reacting to that deal?
This doesn’t look great for Johnson.
After the top-line spending deal was announced last week, Johnson’s hard-liners were out in force bashing the deal for failing to exact the steep cuts to the federal budget they had hoped to secure.
In a closed-door meeting on Thursday, many urged the speaker to renegotiate the deal, but Johnson ultimately stood by it.
“Our top-line agreement remains. We are getting our next steps together — and we are working toward a robust appropriations process. So, stay tuned for that to develop,” Johnson said.
The move has been enough to anger his right flank, creating a potential vulnerability for Johnson. Former Speaker McCarthy was ousted from his position atop the conference for taking similar moves to keep the government open without demanding spending cuts.
There does not seem to be as much of an appetite from House Republicans to dethrone Johnson this time around. He’s been in the role for less than three months.
But Johnson will likely have to do something to regain favor with his most right-leaning members, or he could face some sort of repercussion.
What about the southern border and Ukraine aid?
Congress has for months been negotiating over border policy changes in hopes that an agreement over them will unlock Republican support for additional aid to Ukraine and Israel, something Republicans conditioned their support upon.
As those negotiations continue, they do so both separate and apart from the ongoing debate over government spending.
But as tension around both issue areas heats up, some Republicans have sought to tie them together by calling for a government shutdown until the condition at the southern border improves.
“The border — is it something a beach worth dying on — I say yes it is,” Rep. Tim Burchette, a Tennessee Republican, said Friday.
But many Republicans want the two to remain separate, as do Democrats who are working to negotiate a border deal.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has been leading Senate negotiations over border policy changes, said those threatening to cause a shutdown over the border were likely never going to support either a bipartisan border or a government funding bill in the first place.
“That’s coming from Republicans who will never ever vote for a border deal, a Ukraine funding deal or a budget,” Murphy said. “So like, at some point, you have to know who the coalition of the willing is, and their opinions really matter, and there’s Republicans and Democrats that are willing to compromise on border and on budget. There are some that aren’t. And so we’ve got to listen to the people that are actually willing to compromise.”
ABC News’ Lauren Peller contributed to this report
(WASHINGTON) — The Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel have riled commercial shipping and threatened to dangerously escalate heightened tensions in the Middle East.
On Thursday, the U.S. and the U.K. led a large-scale, retaliatory strike against the militants, hoping to degrade their ability to carry out attacks on vital waterways. But the group is already vowing to hit back.
Who are the Houthis, who are their allies, and what do they hope to achieve? Can the U.S. and allies contain the threat the militants pose to the region?
Officials and analysts break it down.
Rebels and de facto rulers in Yemen
The Houthis are a Shiite political and military organization that took form in Yemen during the 1990s as an opposition force to the Yemeni government.
Through the years, the group became increasingly inspired by anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments coursing through the Middle East.
In 2011, the Houthis played a major role in sparking the Yemeni Revolution, which was born out of a wave of anti-government protests and uprisings known as the Arab Spring.
The revolution forced a transfer of power, but the Houthis were displeased with the newly installed leaders and in 2014 the group took control of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, prompting an ongoing civil war that has ravaged the country.
A Saudi-led coalition intervened in the conflict with the stated goal of restoring the former rulers to power, but Yemen remains fractured. The Houthis retain control of Sanaa and large swaths of territory in western Yemen, but the group has failed to accomplish its aim of becoming the country’s internationally recognized government.
The Yemeni civil war entered a cooling period in 2022, when the United Nations brokered a ceasefire between the warring parties. The conditions of the truce have largely held, but U.S. officials are concerned that reverberations from Israeli-Hamas war could lead to a rekindling of hostilities.
Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’
As the Houthis’ control over Yemen has grown, so has the complexity and depth of their arsenal — thanks to Iran, which has assembled an informal network of anti-American, anti-Israeli proxies dubbed “The Axis of Resistance.”
Analysts say Iran capitalizes on groups like the Houthis, as well as designated terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, to conduct indirect, irregular warfare against its enemies– allowing Tehran to more effectively battle against better equipped adversaries like the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
“The Iranians have been supporting the Houthis for more than a decade, probably at a pace of about $100 million per year,” said Jon B. Alterman, a former State Department official and the director of the Middle East Program at the Center for International Strategic and International Studies.
“One of the Iranian government’s innovations in recent years has been to support regional forces that they do not actually control. Their efforts are attributable but deniable, and the Iranians feel they enjoy benefits without paying the costs,” he continued.
Trouble in the Red Sea
During the most intense years of Yemen’s civil war, the Houthis stockpiled improved drone technology, advanced munitions, and anti-ship missiles provided by Iran–using the weapons to strike at their common enemy, Saudi Arabia, and its coalition.
Though they were still outgunned, the Houthis were able to launch effective strikes against Saudi Arabian oil tankers and disrupt the flow of oil and other resources to and from the immediate region.
In the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel, the Houthis have repurposed that strategy, launching attacks on more than two dozen ships transiting through commercial lanes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, according to U.S. Central Command.
The group also seized a Japanese vehicle carrier as well as its 25-person crew in November and is still holding the ship and the seafarers hostage.
The Houthis claim their aggression in the Red Sea is in support of the Palestinians, that militants are only targeting vessels with ties to Israel and say the attacks will only stop when the Israeli siege of Gaza ends.
However, according to the governments of U.S. and Israel as well as international registries that track commercial shipping movements, many of the vessels that have come under Houthi fire are not linked to Israel at all.
After carrying out strikes on sites used by the Houthis to launch maritime strikes, the Pentagon said there were “early indications are that the Houthis’ ability to threaten merchant shipping has taken a blow.”
But the Houthi’s weapon systems are mobile and can be launched from small watercraft and trucks, so U.S. officials anticipate the group has retained ample firepower to follow through on its promise to retaliate for Thursday’s bombardment and perhaps continue its assault on commercial waterways.
“Targeting weapons storage depots is how the administration is trying to handicap the Houthis. But it remains to be seen what missiles and drones the Houthis have in store,” said Benham Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Wars of the Middle East these days are all about resolve, and the Houthis have the intention to carry out their campaign,” he added.
Tehran may also be motivated to increase their support to the Houthis. A spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the actions of the U.S. and U.K. militaries and warned that they would fuel “insecurity and instability” in the region, according to Iranian media reports.
Can the US do more?
The White House released a joint statement with allied powers on Thursday, promising the U.S. will not hesitate to strike again if the Houthis continue to wreak havoc in the Red Sea
“Let our message be clear: we will not hesitate to defend lives and protect the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways in the face of continued threats,” the statement reads.
But some U.S. officials are worried that continuing to exchange volleys with the Houthis will restart the simmering conflict in Yemen or inspire other belligerents—like Hezbollah—to ramp up its war against Israel, potentially prompting a regional war.
On Friday, the Biden administration announced a new wave of sanctions aimed at disrupting the flow of supplies and finances from Iran to the Houthis.
Administration officials also say there has been some deliberation over whether the Houthis should be officially labeled as a terrorist group, but there is concern that the legal limitations that accompany the designation would inhibit the peace process aimed at resolving the Yemeni civil war.
