DRONES, MISSILES AND MONITORS
The White House said that US visual analysis found nearly identical features between Iran's KAS-04 drones and the unmanned vehicles fired by the Houthis, as well as consistent features between Iranian and Houthi missiles.
The Houthis are also reliant on Iranian-provided monitoring systems at sea, the White House said.
"Moreover, Iranian-provided tactical intelligence has been critical in enabling Houthi targeting of maritime vessels since the group commenced attacks in November," Watson said.
Despite the findings presented by the White House, there have been doubts among some US and allied policymakers on whether the Houthis are acting at the behest of Iran.
One diplomat from a US ally who follows the region noted that Lebanon's Hezbollah - which has much closer ties with Iran - has been comparatively restrained in the face of US warnings including a show of naval might in the Eastern Mediterranean.
"Of Iran's proxies in the region, the Houthis have the weakest link to Tehran. And it is hard to see how the attacks serve their or Iran's interests," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
The Biden administration had initially kept a low-key tone on the Houthi attacks, in part out of an interest in preserving a fragile peace in Yemen.
The Houthis and the Saudi-backed government have effectively maintained a UN-brokered truce since April 2022, halting a devastating war that triggered a humanitarian crisis in which most of the population relies on aid.
In a recent research paper, Michael Knights, a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the Houthis shared the "paranoid" mindset of Iran's ruling clerics.
The United States should think of the Houthis as a sort of North Korea, "an insular, aggressive, well-armed player that is hostile to the United States and sitting on key geography", he wrote.
Iran's religious leadership openly supports Hamas, whose gunmen broke through Gaza's militarized border on Oct 7 and killed around 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
US officials have said they have no evidence that Tehran had previous knowledge or directly planned the attack.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas. Its relentless bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza has killed more than 20,000 people, most of them women and children, according to Hamas authorities.
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2023-12-23 07:21:00Z
CBMiWWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNoYW5uZWxuZXdzYXNpYS5jb20vd29ybGQvdXMtaXJhbi1kZWVwbHktaW52b2x2ZWQtaG91dGhpLXNoaXAtYXR0YWNrcy00MDA4MDk20gEA
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