The Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen shot down a $30 million U.S. MQ-9 “Reaper” drone on Wednesday, according to both American officials and Houthi spokesmen.
The Houthis claimed they attacked the drone over Yemen’s territorial waters, while a U.S. defense official told CBS News it was operating over international waters. In any event, the Houthis are not the legitimate government of Yemen, so they have no legal control over its territorial airspace.
The official who spoke to CBS said the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is “assessing the incident.” The Pentagon has not stated whether the drone was armed or not.
A Houthi statement issued on Wednesday claimed the drone was “carrying out hostile monitoring and spying activities in the airspace of Yemeni territorial waters and within the framework of American military support for the Israeli entity.”
“Hostile movements will not deter the Yemeni armed forces from continuing to carry out military operations against the Israeli entity in support of the oppression of the Palestinian people,” the Houthi statement said.
The Houthis, armed and financed by Iran, have demonstrated the capability to shoot down high-end drones like the MQ-9 before. Houthi forces were able to down two Reaper drones in 2019.
Iran-sponsored terrorist groups and militias have attacked United States and Israeli targets in an effort to halt Israel’s operation against the Hamas terrorists in Gaza. The response from the Biden administration has been minimal so far, consisting mostly of complaining about Iran’s influence and begging the Iraqi government to put a stop to rocket and drone attacks by Shiite militias.
On Wednesday, the administration ordered its second airstrike on a warehouse in eastern Syria used by militia groups and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to store weapons. The strike was aimed at “disrupting and degrading the capabilities of groups directly responsible for attacking U.S. forces in the region” while inflicting minimal casualties, according to a U.S. defense official.
The Houthis call themselves “Ansar Allah” and operate under the slogan “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory for Islam.” They were listed by the United States government as a foreign terrorist organization until President Joe Biden rescinded that classification as one of his first acts in office.
The terrorists captured Yemen’s capital of Sana’a and drove the legitimate government into exile in 2014, launching a brutal decade-long civil war that became one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. Like other Iranian proxy forces, Ansar Allah routinely engages in war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of child soldiers.
Kahlan, a 12-year-old former child soldier, demonstrates how to use a weapon at a camp for displaced persons where he took shelter with his family, in Marib, Yemen, in this July 27, 2018 photo. Houthi rebels took Kahlan and his classmates, promising to give them new school bags, but instead they were enlisted and trained as fighters tasked with carrying supplies to the front lines. There, he had to elude explosions and airstrikes that left mangled casualties on the battlefield. “The sight of the bodies was scary,” he said. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
The Houthis declared war on Israel on October 30 after launching missiles and drones at Israeli targets. Some of those missiles were intercepted by a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea on October 18.