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U.S. Navy three-star admiral discusses the mission to stop Houthi Red Sea attacks
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, is warning that it would be unwise to think of the Houthis as a ragtag group.
Though Yemen, where the Houthi militia is based, is the poorest country in the Middle East, the terrorist group has been backed, supplied and trained by Iran for years, Cooper said. It’s enabled the group to launch a barrage of drones and anti-ship ballistic missiles, targeting at least 45 ships in the last few months, disrupting crucial international shipping corridors.
“For a decade, the Iranians have been supplying the Houthis. They’ve been resupplying them. They’re resupplying them as we sit here right now, at sea,” Cooper said. “We know this is happening. They’re advising them, and they’re providing target information. This is crystal clear.”
Who are the Houthi rebels and why are the Houthis firing on ships in the Red Sea?
After Hamas launched its deadly terrorist attack in Israel in October, and Israel began its unrelenting war in Gaza in response, President Biden warned Iran and its allies in the Middle East to stay out of the conflict. But the Houthis, a Shia Islamist group, decided to jump into the fray.
The Houthis, who seized Yemen’s capital Sanaa in 2014 and now control the most populous parts of the country, initially stated they would only shoot at ships linked to Israel, in support of the Palestinian people, to force a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
But their aims — both politically and in targeting ships — appear to be imprecise. The Houthis have fired at ships tied to dozens of nations, wielding anti-ship ballistic missiles that have never been used in a conflict before. The U.S. government in January re-designated the Houthi movement as a terrorist organization as the group stepped up attacks in the Red Sea. The Houthis’ official motto is: “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam.”
Why the U.S. is targeting Houthi operations
Yemen’s nearly 1,200 miles of coastline sit strategically where a trillion dollars worth of global trade moves every year in and out of the Suez Canal. The waterway is the primary route by sea between Europe and Asia. So when the Houthis began attacking commercial ships in solidarity with Hamas, the world’s largest container ship companies began to avoid the Suez and go around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope instead, adding as much as a month of travel time and a million dollars in fuel costs on each roundtrip.
The disruption could pose a risk to the global economy, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently told “60 Minutes,” adding that it’s “going to affect Europe much more than it’s going to affect” the U.S. Tesla and Volvo were both forced to suspend some European production last month due to the disruptions.
60 Minutes
This has led Mr. Biden to deploy the U.S. Navy into the first major naval fight of the 21st century. Right now, there are around 7,000 sailors in the Red Sea, Cooper said.
“We are not going to let the Houthis hold this strait hostage,” he said.
The U.S. isn’t alone in defending the Red Sea corridor: it is part of a coalition of more than 20 nations, operating under the name Operation Prosperity Guardian. But the bulk of the ships, aircraft and firepower is coming from the U.S.
“Fifteen percent of global trade flows exactly through the Red Sea,” Cooper said. “Keeping these vital waterways open is critical. It’s a core commitment the United States has from a strategic perspective, maintaining the free flow of commerce.”
How the U.S. is targeting Houthi operations, protecting commercial ships in the Red Sea
Cooper said the last time the Navy engaged in combat at this scale and intensity for several months was World War II.
American destroyers are a key part of the fleet. Commander Justin Smith captains the USS Mason, which is one of four American warships in the area that have shot down more than a dozen Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles. Crew members often have only seconds to decide whether to engage and what types of weapons to deploy to destroy an incoming threat, like a Houthi drone or ballistic missile.
During this mission, the Navy has engaged about 100 of their Standard surface to air missiles, which can cost as much as $4 million each. Sometimes the missiles are used to shoot down Houthi drones that could cost about $10,000, but Smith says it’s about more than money.
“I don’t think you can put a price tag on safety and the defense of our sailors on board,” Smith said.
60 Minutes
On the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, Rear Adm. Marc Miguez said the Houthis have proven to be resourceful adversaries.
Miguez said that so far, the USS Eisenhower has only been focused on the Houthis in the Southern Red Sea. Since Jan. 11, planes deployed from the aircraft carrier have regularly targeted Houthi launch sites in Yemen to reduce the group’s capabilities.
Miguez said the aircraft carrier has been focusing on Houthi activity in the Red Sea and not on targeting other Iranian proxy groups in the region. The U.S. has reported at least 170 attacks against American forces in Syria, Iraq and Jordan by Iran-backed groups since the Israel-Hamas war began. A drone strike on a base in Jordan killed three U.S. service members on Jan. 28.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is inside Yemen, and they are serving side-by-side with the Houthis, advising them and providing target information, Cooper said. He added that whatever’s done to degrade that capability would “obviously end up being a policy decision.”
“Our role at this point is to simply be ready and continue to be aggressive in exercising our right to self-defense in targeting those missiles and drones that are trying to target us,” Cooper said.
When will U.S. operations in the Red Sea end?
Cooper said he believes the U.S. airstrikes against Houthi targets will not escalate the conflict, since they are mainly done in self-defense.
60 Minutes
“Again, we’re targeting those platforms that are targeting us,” he said.
But Houthis keep firing back, with attacks in December and January that show no signs of stopping. However, Cooper said it’s clear the U.S. military is degrading Houthi capability.
“Every single day they attempt to attack us, we’re eliminating and disrupting them in ways that are meaningful, and I do believe have an impact,” he said.
Cooper also said he has an endgame in mind.
“That is the restoration of the free flow of commerce and safe navigation in the Southern Red Sea,” he said.
CBS News
Tajikistan nationals with alleged ISIS ties removed in immigration proceedings, U.S. officials say
When federal agents arrested eight Tajikistan nationals with alleged ties to the Islamic State terror group on immigration charges back in June, U.S. officials reasoned that coordinated raids in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia would prove the fastest way to disrupt a potential terrorist plot in its earliest stages. Four months later, after being detained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, three of the men have already been returned to Tajikistan and Russia, U.S. officials tell CBS News, following removals by immigration court judges.
Four more Tajik nationals – also held in ICE detention facilities – are awaiting removal flights to Central Asia, and U.S. officials anticipate they’ll be returned in the coming few weeks. Only one of the arrested men still awaits his legal proceeding, following a medical issue, though U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive proceedings indicated that he remains detained and is likely to face a similar outcome.
The men face no additional charges – including terrorism-related offenses – with the decision to immediately arrest and remove them through deportation proceedings, rather than orchestrate a hard-fought terrorism trial in Article III courts, born out of a pressing short-term concern about public safety.
Soon after the eight foreign nationals crossed into the United States, the FBI learned of the potential ties to the Islamic State, CBS News previously reported. The FBI identified early-stage terrorist plotting, triggering their immediate arrests, in part, through a wiretap after the individuals had already been vetted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News in June.
Several months later, their removals following immigration proceedings mark a departure from the post-9/11 intelligence-sharing architecture of the U.S. government.
Now facing a more diverse migrant population at the U.S.-Mexico border, a new effort is underway by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and the Intelligence Community to normalize the direct sharing of classified information – including some marked top-secret – with U.S. immigration judges.
The more routine intelligence sharing with immigration judges is aimed at allowing U.S. immigration courts to more regularly incorporate derogatory information into their decisions. The endeavor has led to the creation of more safes and sensitive compartmented information facilities – also known as SCIFs – to help facilitate the sharing of classified materials. Once considered a last resort for the department, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has sought to use immigration tools, in recent months, to mitigate and disrupt threat activity.
The immigration raids, back in June, underscore the spate of terrorism concerns from the U.S. government this year, as national security agencies point to a system now blinking red in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, with emerging terrorism hot spots in Central Asia.
A joint intelligence bulletin released this month, and obtained by CBS News, warns that foreign terrorist organizations have exploited the attack nearly one year ago and its aftermath to try to recruit radicalized followers, creating media that compares the October 7 and 9/11 attacks and encouraging “lone attackers to use simple tactics like firearms, knives, Molotov cocktails, and vehicle ramming against Western targets in retaliation for deaths in Gaza.”
In May, ICE arrested an Uzbek man in Baltimore with alleged ISIS ties after he had been living inside the U.S. for more than two years, NBC News first reported.
In the past year, Tajik nationals have engaged in foiled terrorism plots in Russia, Iran and Turkey, as well as Europe, with several Tajik men arrested following March’s deadly attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow that left at least 133 people dead and hundreds more injured.
The attack has been linked to ISIS-K, or the Islamic State Khorasan Province, an off-shoot of ISIS that emerged in 2015, founded by disillusioned members of Pakistani militant groups, including Taliban fighters. In August 2021, during the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, ISIS-K launched a suicide attack in Kabul, killing 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians.
In a recent change to ICE policy, the agency now recurrently vets foreign nationals arriving from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries, detaining them while they await removal proceedings or immigration hearings.
Only 0.007% of migrant arrivals are flagged by the FBI’s watchlist, and an even smaller number of those asylum seekers are ultimately removed. But with migrants arriving at the Southwest border from conflict zones in the Eastern Hemisphere, posing potential links to extremist or terrorist groups, the White House is now exploring ways to expedite the removal of asylum seekers viewed as a possible threat to the American public.
“Encounters with migrants from Eastern Hemisphere countries—such as China, India, Russia, and western African countries—in FY 2024 have decreased slightly from about 10 to 9 percent of overall encounters, but remain a higher proportion of encounters than before FY 2023,” according to the Homeland Threat Assessment, a public intelligence document released earlier this month.
A senior homeland security official told reporters in a briefing Wednesday, that the U.S. is engaged in an “ongoing effort to try to make sure that we can use every bit of available information that the U.S. government has classified and unclassified, and make sure that the best possible picture about a person seeking to enter the United States is available to frontline personnel who are encountering that person.”
Approximately 139 individuals flagged by the FBI’s terror watchlist have been encountered at the U.S.‑Mexico border through July of fiscal year 2024. That number decreased from 216 during the same timeframe in 2023. CBP encountered 283 watchlisted individuals at the U.S.-Canada border through July of fiscal year 2024, down from 375 encountered during the same timeframe in 2023.
“I think one of the features of the surge in migration over recent years is that our border personnel are encountering a much more diverse and global population of individuals trying to enter the United States or seeking to enter the United States,” a senior DHS official said. “So, at some point in the past, it might have been primarily a Western Hemisphere phenomenon. Now, our border personnel encounter individuals from around the world, from all parts of the world, to include conflict zones and other areas where individuals may have links or can support ties to extremist or terrorist organizations that we have long-standing concerns about.”
In April, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that human smuggling operations at the southern border were trafficking in people with possible connections to terror groups.
“Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once, but that is the case as I sit here today,” Wray, told Congress in June, just days before most of the Tajik men were arrested.
The expedited return of three Tajiks to Central Asia required tremendous diplomatic communication, facilitated by the State Department, U.S. officials said.
Returns to Central Asia routinely encounter operational and diplomatic hurdles, though regular channels for removal do exist. According to agency data, in 2023, ICE deported only four migrants to Tajikistan.
Robert Legare and
contributed to this report.
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