‘We can’t let thugs harass international shipping’

Riley-Smith Ben

Grant Shapps tells

the decision to strike back against Houthis was an act of self-defence rant Shapps was in bed at his constituency home in Hertfordshire when the news came through that the British mission to strike Houthi sites in Yemen had succeeded.

The Defence Secretary had been monitoring the operation via his phone, secure messages pinging with updates, stepping out of the bedroom to take calls periodically.

One word sprang to mind when hearing British pilots were back at base in Cyprus in the early hours of yesterday morning, having pulled the trigger at 11.30pm on Thursday.“I can’t think of a better word than ‘relief ’ to see all our crews had returned,” Mr Shapps told in an exclusive interview yesterday.

The sensation must have been shared by Rishi Sunak, who then was somewhere en route to Ukraine for a secret trip to Kyiv to unveil a new Ukrainian military aid package.

Thursday night’s bombing was the

Gfirst known military strike signed off by Mr Sunak.

Mr Shapps, 55, is a Cabinet veteran but the operation came just five months into his tenure heading up the Ministry of Defence. Britain’s Armed Forces were responsible for two of the 16 Yemeni sites struck: an airfield at Abs and a site at Bani, which the UK said had been used for drone attacks. “All of our targets across two different locations were a hit,” Mr Shapps says. We won’t see all the reconnaissance for 24 or 48 hours. But we’ve every reason to believe that all of our intended targets were successfully diminished.”

If the US-led raid appears to have gone without a hitch in operational terms, the merits of the decision itself are sure to be heatedly debated.

The Houthis, a pro-Palestinian Shia Islamist group who control Yemen, have been firing rockets in increasingly escalating attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea since the Israel-Gaza conflict broke out.

The Defence Secretary has confidence in the decision taken to return fire, pointing to the warning statement from the US, UK and other allies issued on Jan 3 and the attempted Houthi attack on US and UK vessels that followed on Tuesday.

“I think we made it very, very clear that the freedom of navigation in international waterways is an absolute guaranteed right,” Mr Shapps says.

In a precarious situation in the Middle East, with different nations and factions lined up on opposing sides in the Israel-Gaza conflict, the possibility of violence escalating hangs heavy.

The true nature of the relationship between the Houthis, who took control of Yemen in an ongoing civil war that began in 2014, and the Iranians remains a point of debate.

“No one wants to see escalation,” Mr Shapps says. “We are acting in self-defence because of the shipping situation, because of HMS Diamond [the UK vessel fired at on Tuesday] being attacked.

“But Iran has an important part to play here and needs to understand that it needs to be clearer with its many proxies in the region that no good can come from this and everyone loses if they carry on going down this track.

“We can’t have thugs, essentially, harassing international shipping and running the risks.”

His comments were similar in tone to ones he gave on Thursday, as strikes

‘We are – the world is – running out of patience. We see you, we see through what you’re doing’