In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the Houthis had “acted very responsibly” since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran.
“Unfortunately, now they are starting up again, shooting at two Saudi Arabian ships last night,” he added.
“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if they do this again, the U.S. will hold Iran responsible, in that the Houthis are a Surrogate and/or Proxy of Iran, and major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran and, of course, the Houthis, themselves.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier that the Houthis “apparently have gotten themselves suckered into this” by Iran, adding: “I hope they will de-escalate.”
Mediator Oman said it was working to resume talks between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia.
Not long after the Encelia was hit, the US military’s Central Command (Centcom) said it had launched another wave of strikes on Iran at Trump’s direction to further degrade the country’s “ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial vessels” in the Strait of Hormuz.
The strikes targeted “Iranian military targets, including maritime capabilities, missile and drone storage facilities, coastal surveillance sites, and air defence assets,” it added.
Iranian state media reported that two people were killed in a US missile strike on the Shalamcheh border crossing with Iraq, and that a military target was hit in the southern province of Bushehr, the location of Iran’s only commercial nuclear power plant.
Iran’s armed forces said they had targeted US military facilities in Kuwait and Jordan in response. Both countries said they had intercepted Iranian missiles and drones overnight.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also said the Strait of Hormuz was “completely closed” and that three tankers had attempted to transit the waterway using what it described as a mined and unsafe route.
One of the tankers caught fire after an explosion and two others turned back, it added.
It came after Trump had promised in another social media post that “any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz… the United States will bomb and destroy one bridge or power plant”.
