US President Donald Trump on Tuesday shrugged off the threat of the Iran-backed Houthis blockading the Red Sea, telling reporters that “if there is something like that, we’ll just have to take care of business.”
“So far, it hasn’t happened. Might happen, but we take care of things,” he said from the Oval Office. “We’ve done that with the Houthis before and we haven’t heard from them in a while since we did what we did originally.”
A naval blockade of the Red Sea could open up a new front in the US’ war with Iran, further squeezing the flow of oil out of the Middle East.
Houthi forces in Yemen warned Saudi vessels to refrain from using the Red Sea, in a message broadcast on Monday to shipping in the vital waterway. That’s already impacting shipping and leaving corporations anxious, a risk manager for a Fortune 500 company told CNN earlier Tuesday.
Trump declined to detail how the US would respond if the Houthis sought to close off the waterway, instead pointing to previous strikes on the group.
“It was about 45 days of very powerful action we took against the Houthis, and we’ve had no problem with the Houthis,” he said. “They’ve had no problem with us for a long period of time, including during this conflict.”
Source: CNN
– Agencies
