Yemeni-Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Badreddine Al-Houthi responded to an American-led naval coalition to guard the Red Sea in a December 20, 2023 statement on Al-Masirah TV (Houthis-Yemen). He warned that if the U.S. attacks Yemen, the Houthis will target American ships, interests, and maritime traffic. Al-Houthi said that the thing that the Houthis "want most" is for the war with the U.S. and Israel to be a direct confrontation, and not with "American collaborators." He added that if the Americans send their soldiers to Yemen, they will face a lot worse than they did in Afghanistan or Vietnam.
Abdul-Malik Bedreddine Al-Houthi: "If the Americans intend to escalate and embroil themselves even more, or to commit a foolish act by targeting our country or waging a war against it, we will not sit idly by. We will target them. We will turn American ships, American interests, and American maritime traffic into targets for our missiles, UAVs, and military operations. We are not the kind of people who sit idly by while the enemy is beating us up. We are people who reject injustice. We place our trust in Allah. We cannot fear the Americans' threats, even if they want to enter a direct war of aggression against our country. We are not the kind of people who back down from their positions because of that, or surrenders or gives up because of that.
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"The thing that we want more, the thing that we have been wishing for from day one is for the between us and the Americans and Israelis to be a direct confrontation – not for the Americans to fight us through their collaborators.
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"At the same time, we ask all the Arab countries and all those who were mobilized by the Americans in the past to watch from the sidelines and let the Americans enter a direct war with us.
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"If they want to send their soldiers to Yemen, they should know full well that Allah willing, this would be a lot worse than what they faced in Afghanistan or what they suffered in Vietnam.
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"The Americans should not think that they can carry out a strike here and there, and then things will calm down, and they will be able to resort to some kind of mediation, in order to calm things down. If they get themselves in this, it will be an entanglement in the full sense of the word."