Netanyahu: “I Ordered the Destruction of Houthi Infrastructure”
Yemen Monitor/Exclusive:
The Israeli Prime Minister stated on Monday that he had ordered the destruction of the infrastructure of the Houthi armed group in Yemen.
Benjamin Netanyahu made the announcement during a speech in the Israeli Knesset.
Netanyahu said that the recent Israeli strikes on the Houthis were “not the first, and I assure you that they will not be the last. We have destroyed significant terrorist assets belonging to the Houthis, which they used against us.”
In a typically noisy Knesset session, Benjamin Netanyahu expressed cautious optimism about the chances of reaching a prisoner exchange deal in the Gaza Strip.
Reports indicated that the Mossad chief called during high-level discussions between the Israeli political and security leadership for a direct strike on Iran following the Houthi attacks.
On Saturday, Hebrew media reported that Israel was building a coalition of several countries to launch attacks on the Houthis. Later that day, the United States launched several raids on Sana’a targeting “Houthi warehouses and command and control,” according to a US military statement, which also announced the downing of a US aircraft by friendly fire.
Israeli intelligence faces a significant challenge in Yemen due to their failure to obtain intelligence. Therefore, they have begun opening a school to teach the Yemeni dialect within the army intelligence branch, according to the Hebrew newspaper Maariv.
Israel launched an aggression against Yemen on Thursday, through a series of strikes against energy infrastructure and ports, killing 9 Yemenis, in a move that Israel said was in response to hundreds of attacks by missiles and drones launched by the Houthis since the beginning of the brutal aggression on the Gaza Strip 14 months ago.