A source within the Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, has shared with Newsweek a warning to Israel and the United States amid reports of a potential Israeli attack being planned against Iran.
Reports Wednesday of U.S. nonessential personnel and family members being evacuated from regional countries, including Iraq, Bahrain and Kuwait, were followed by a Washington Post article citing unnamed officials indicating that the moves were being undertaken in anticipation of an imminent Israeli strike against Iran.
Israel’s Channel 14 news outlet also reported that the country was preparing to soon launch a major operation against Iran.
The soaring tensions follow an Israeli naval strike conducted Tuesday against Ansar Allah, a member of the Iran-led Axis of Resistance coalition that has been engaged in missile and drone attacks against Israel since the outbreak of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement in October 2023.
Reacting to the reports, an Ansar Allah source told Newsweek that the group had adopted a heightened state of readiness as it was already “essentially in a state of war with the Zionist enemy entity due to its aggression and siege on Gaza, followed by its aggression against Yemen.”
“In this regard, we are in a state of constant readiness and are working to escalate our operations against the usurping entity, against the backdrop of the escalating massacres in Gaza and the worsening humanitarian situation there,” the Ansar Allah source said.
The Ansar Allah source also issued a warning to the U.S. should it pursue actions targeting the group or its Iranian ally.
“We are also at the highest level of preparedness for any possible American escalation against us,” the Ansar Allah source said. “Any escalation against the Islamic Republic of Iran is also dangerous and will drag the entire region into the abyss of war.”
“America has no right to attack the countries of our community and our region in service of the Zionist enemy entity, which is considered the primary security threat to the region,” the source added. “It is certainly not in the interest of the American people to become involved in a new war in service of the Zionist entity.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, the Israel Defense Forces and U.S. Central Command for comment.
Between Diplomacy and War
The developments come amid new uncertainties surrounding ongoing nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran, which were set to enter their sixth round in Oman on Sunday.
Iranian officials were expected to counter an existing U.S. offer at the meeting, with Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei calling the current terms “unacceptable” on Monday.
That same day, President Donald Trump also indicated that Iran’s response thus far had been “not acceptable,” with the alternative being “very, very dire.” He also told the “Pod Force One” podcast on Monday that he was becoming “less confident” in the likelihood of reaching a successful deal.
Yet sources cited by Axios and CNN indicated that Trump had once again discouraged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from taking military action against Iran when they spoke on Monday. Trump has indicated on at least two previous occasions that he had called on the Israeli premier not to conduct attacks on Iran while negotiations were ongoing.
On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi struck a more positive note regarding nuclear talks, saying that Trump’s repeated vow to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon “is actually in line with our own doctrine and could become the main foundation for a deal.”
“As we resume talks on Sunday, it is clear that an agreement that can ensure the continued peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program is within reach—and could be achieved rapidly,” Araghchi, who is leading the Iranian delegation at the talks, said in a statement published to X, formerly Twitter.
“That mutually beneficial outcome relies on the continuation of Iran’s enrichment program, under the full supervision of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], and the effective termination of sanctions,” he added.
The statement came as the Iranian Intelligence Ministry threatened to release a trove of documents purported to be tied to Israel’s own nuclear weapons, an arsenal that Israeli officials have for decades neither confirmed nor denied possessing. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council stated that the sites detailed in the documents would be targeted in the event that Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was subject to attack.
On Wednesday, Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh warned U.S. military positions would also be hit in the event of a preemptive strike.
“Some officials on the other side threaten conflict if negotiations don’t come to fruition,” Nasirzadeh said, as cited by Reuters. “If a conflict is imposed on us … all U.S. bases are within our reach, and we will boldly target them in host countries.”
Hours later, CBS News reported that U.S. officials had been informed Israel was fully prepared to launch a strike against Iran and that retaliation was expected to potentially concern the U.S. presence in Iraq, prompting the partial evacuation of the embassy in Baghdad.
The U.S. Footprint in the Middle East
The U.S. is estimated to host around 2,500 troops in Iraq tasked with advising and training Iraqi forces in the fight against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
While ISIS is a common foe of both Washington and Tehran, the U.S. presence in the country has been viewed as a threat by Iran, which targeted U.S. troops in 2020 following the assassination of top Iranian military figure, Major General Qassem Soleimani. His killing was ordered by Trump in response to clashes between U.S. forces and Iraqi militias aligned with Tehran’s Axis of Resistance.
Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, announced last September a two-phase plan to begin pulling U.S. military personnel from the country, though the current administration has yet to confirm its commitment to the initiative.
The U.S. also hosts a number of key bases and facilities in the region, particularly in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As Biden signaled a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq, he also increased the number of personnel in the broader CENTCOM area of operations from 34,000 to around 43,000, the Associated Press reported at the time.
The Houthi Threat
U.S. forces in the region have conducted direct strikes against Ansar Allah in response to its attacks on Israel as well as an unprecedented campaign that U.S. officials say targeted both civilian vessels and U.S. military vessels on hundreds of occasions between October 2023 and last month, when Trump announced a surprise deal with the group.
The U.S. leader said that Ansar Allah had agreed to suspend its maritime campaign in exchange for a halt to U.S. operations targeting the group. The deal notably did not include a pause to Ansar Allah’s missile and drone strikes against Israel, which resumed in March after the breakdown of a ceasefire reached between Israel and Hamas in January.
Ansar Allah has pressed on with these long-range attacks against Israel, most recently launching a ballistic missile Wednesday just hours after the Israeli Navy targeted Yemen’s Al-Hodeidah port in response to earlier strikes from the group.
The group has emerged as the most active member of the Axis of Resistance since the Lebanese Hezbollah movement signed a ceasefire with Israel last November, the collapse of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government to an Islamist-led rebel coalition less than two weeks later and a lull in attacks by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq following the initial Gaza truce reached in January.
Led by Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, Ansar Allah seized the Yemeni capital from the nation’s a decade ago and today controls around a third of the country’s territory and up to 80 percent of its population. Hostilities between the group and Yemen’s Saudi-backed internationally recognized government have largely ceased since a truce mediated by the United Nations in April 2022.
To this day, the group denies receiving direct support from Iran.
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