Latest news with #UnitedStatesMilitary
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Congressman Neal hosts Academy Day information session for youth seeking military careers
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – Congressman Richard Neal hosted the 2025 Academy Day information session inside the Springfield Museums on Sunday. Season finale concert held at Springfield Symphony Orchestra Currently, the United States Military, Naval, Air Force, and Merchant Marine Academies are in need of nominations. Academy Day helps interested students determine if a military service academy or a similar education path is something they want to pursue. In order to qualify, students learned that they must be involved in extracurricular activities while having a high SAT score and GPA. Congressman Neal said they're looking to nominate aspiring candidates to serve our country. 'These are individuals who generally aspire to military academies, maybe when they're 14 or 15 years old,' Neal said. 'The process is arduous, it's a family commitment that has to be made.' During the forum, Congressman Neal recognized four local students who were accepted to service academies this summer. Three of them are joining the military academy, with one going to the Navy academy and another going to the Merchant Marines. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Fox News
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Iran's leader warns US could receive 'severe slaps' following Trump's threats to Houthis
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Friday that the U.S. could receive "severe slaps" if they act "with malice" following President Donald Trump's threats to Yemen's Houthis, a report said. Americans "make a big mistake and call regional resistance centers Iranian proxies. What does proxy mean?" Khamenei said, according to Reuters. "The Yemeni nation has its own motivation and the resistance groups in the region have their own motivations. Iran doesn't need proxies." "They issue threats," Khamenei reportedly added, claiming that "we have never started a confrontation or conflict with anyone." "However, if anyone acts with malice and initiates it, they will receive severe slaps," he was quoted by Reuters as saying. IRAN'S REACTION TO TRUMP'S HOUTHI THREATS, EXPLAINED Trump said Monday that "every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!" "Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Any further attack or retaliation by the 'Houthis' will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there. TRUMP VINDICATED AS EXPLOSIVE REPORT CONFIRMS IRAN SUPERVISES HOUTHI 'POLITICAL AND MILITARY AFFAIRS' "Iran has played 'the innocent victim' of rogue terrorists from which they've lost control, but they haven't lost control," he continued. "They're dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, "Intelligence.'" U.S. Central Command said Saturday it had "initiated a series of operations consisting of precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen to defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation." Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday that he "ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen." Fox News' Taylor Penley, Andrea Margolis and Lucas Y. Tomlinson contributed to this report.
Al Jazeera
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Trump warns Iran will be ‘held responsible' for Houthi attacks from Yemen
United States President Donald Trump has threatened to hold Iran responsible for any attacks carried out by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, in an escalation of his pressure campaign against the government in Tehran. The Republican leader issued the warning on his social media platform Truth Social on Monday, signing the post with his name. 'Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,' Trump wrote. 'Any further attack or retaliation by the 'Houthis' will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there.' The Houthis have led a series of attacks against Israeli vessels and other commercial ships in the Red Sea, in protest against Israel's war in Gaza and its blockade of humanitarian supplies into the Palestinian territory. Experts widely acknowledge that Iran helps to arm the Houthis, who are considered part of an informal ' axis of resistance ' backed by Iran. While Trump has previously pushed Iran to end its support for the Houthis, his remarks on Monday signal a significant escalation — hinting at potential military action against Iran itself. 'Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!' Trump wrote in his post. The comments arrive at a delicate time diplomatically for Trump and his counterparts in Iran. Trump has been pushing Iran to denuclearise — though in 2018, during his first term in the White House, the president withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a deal that would have seen Iran curtail its nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief. Earlier this month, Trump sent a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warning that the US could respond 'militarily' if a nuclear deal is not reached. But Khamenei has rebuffed Trump's attempts to negotiate, dismissing him as ' bullying ' and pointing to the fact that Trump scuttled the previous agreement. Iran has consistently said its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes, and it has denied pursuing a nuclear weapon. Simultaneously, Trump has heightened US attacks on the Houthis, after the armed group warned last week it would seek to ban Israeli ships from nearby waterways. 'Any Israeli vessel attempting to violate this ban will be subject to military targeting in the declared operational area,' the Houthis said in a statement. The rebels signalled the ban arose from a blockade Israel has imposed on Gaza, preventing humanitarian supplies from entering the war-torn territory since March 2. Israel, however, is a longtime ally of the US, and Trump responded to the Houthis' threats with one of his own on Saturday. 'Today, I have ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen,' Trump wrote over the weekend, ushering in a 24-hour period of intense bombing in Yemen. From Saturday to Sunday, the US conducted an estimated 47 aerial strikes, hitting seven Yemeni provinces and killing an estimated 53 people. The Yemeni capital of Sanaa, which is controlled by the Houthis, was among the areas affected. In announcing the weekend attacks, Trump also warned Iran about its backing for the Houthis. 'To Iran: Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY! Do NOT threaten the American People, their President, who has received one of the largest mandates in Presidential History, or Worldwide shipping lanes,' he wrote. 'If you do, BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable and, we won't be nice about it!' The Houthis have attacked nearly 100 vessels in the region since November 2023, sinking two, and Trump is not the first president to carry out attacks against Houthi targets. Trump's predecessor, Democratic President Joe Biden, likewise ordered multiple rounds of attacks on Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen. But Biden and his administration described the attacks as designed to disrupt the Houthis' military capabilities, and they adamantly denied seeking to escalate the violence. 'We don't want to see a regional war,' Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said in 2024. Trump, however, dismissed Biden's efforts against the Houthis as 'pathetically weak'. He and Biden were rivals in the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost. The Houthis, meanwhile, have promised to respond to Trump's attacks. 'We will confront escalation with escalation,' their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said on Sunday. Already, the group has claimed to have made a retaliatory strike against a US naval vessel. Colin Clarke — the director of research for the Soufan Group, a consultancy firm — told Al Jazeera that Trump's increasingly heated rhetoric appears to run contrary to some of his campaign-trail rhetoric. In running for a second term in 2024, Trump pledged to bring peace to the Middle East and withdraw the US from foreign wars. ' Look, Trump has talked endlessly about withdrawing from the Middle East. He doesn't want to become entangled in foreign wars,' Clarke said. 'So it's interesting that he's escalating with these kinetic strikes, really as a signal directly to the leadership in Tehran.' Clarke added that the strikes on the Houthis may be method for Trump to force Iran into nuclear negotiations. 'Trump does hope to get the Ayatollah's attention with this, and he does hope to use these strikes and potentially more in the coming days and weeks to push the Iranians closer to the table.'
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Attacked Biden's 'Crazy' Yemen War. Now He's Reopening It.
Candidate Donald Trump thought that bombing Yemen was "just a failed mentality" when then-President Joe Biden did it. "It's crazy. You can solve problems over the telephone. Instead, they start dropping bombs. I see, recently, they're dropping bombs all over Yemen. You don't have to do that. You can talk in such a way where they respect you and they listen to you," Trump said in a May 2024 interview with podcaster Tim Pool. Trump is now dropping bombs all over Yemen. Over the weekend, the U.S. military launched its first air raids on Yemen in months, hitting targets around the country and killing at least 53 people. Sources in the administration have told The New York Times that the attacks will continue for weeks—and that advisers are pushing for "an even more aggressive campaign" to roll back Houthi control on land, an idea Trump has so far shied away from. "Today, I have ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen," Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Saturday. And he threatened a wider war on Monday: "Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible." Instead of calling Biden a warmonger, as he had a year ago, Trump claimed on Sunday that Biden's "pathetically weak" policy had allowed "unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism" against American shipping. In fact, those attacks had already stopped earlier this year—thanks to Trump picking up the phone. The Houthi movement, one of two rival governments in Yemen, had tried to blockade the Red Sea in support of the Palestinian cause. After Trump brokered an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, the Houthis declared an end to their attacks on foreign shipping; American ships then returned to the Red Sea. But when Israel began blocking all foreign aid into Gaza earlier this month, Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree announced that the movement would resume its blockade on Israeli ships. After Trump ordered the airstrikes over the weekend, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi declared that his forces would attack American ships too. Biden's earlier campaign in Yemen had been an expensive failure. After playing whack-a-mole with alleged Houthi bases—and blowing through a year's worth of Tomahawk missile production in one night—Biden admitted that the campaign was not achieving its goals. "Are [the airstrikes] stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes," the then-president told reporters in January 2024. By the end of the year, Houthi missile attacks were regularly hitting Israeli cities. The U.S. intervention came on the tail end of an even larger war. When Houthi rebels stormed Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in September 2014, neighboring Saudi Arabia intervened to stop them. Both the Obama administration and the first Trump administration supported the Saudi campaign, which involved a ground invasion and a crushing starvation siege. In 2022, both sides agreed to a ceasefire that has held until today. Trump's notoriously hawkish national security adviser, Mike Waltz, thinks this campaign will be different. "These were not kind of pinprick, back and forth—what ultimately proved to be feckless attacks. This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out. And the difference here is, one, going after the Houthi leadership, and two, holding Iran responsible," he told ABC on Sunday. Specifically, Waltz threatened to target "Iranian trainers" in Yemen or "other things that they have put in to help the Houthis attack the global economy," alluding to alleged Iranian spy ships in the Red Sea. Iran has both smuggled weapons to the Houthis and trained Yemeni engineers to produce weapons locally. So far, Iran's government has been trying to wash its hands of the latest Yemeni war. "The Islamic Republic of Iran plays no role in shaping the national or operational policies of any resistance front group," Iranian Maj. General Hossein Salami told reporters over the weekend. The Trump administration has made it clear that war might come to Iran anyways. Asked by ABC about the possibility that Iran could build a nuclear weapon—Trump is currently trying to open talks with the Iranian government about that issue—Waltz said that Iran would have to give up "everything," including both its uranium enrichment and its missiles, or "face a whole series of other consequences." Iran has negotiated on its nuclear program before, but it considers missiles to be a vital part of its national defense. In another part of that ABC interview, Waltz offered a criticism of past U.S. policy on Russia and Ukraine that could easily be applied to the Middle East right now. "The strategy of the Biden administration was, was, as long as it takes, as much as it takes, no matter what the timeline is, which is essentially endless warfare, in an environment that…could escalate into World War III," he said. "We can talk about what's right and wrong. And we also have to talk about the reality of the situation on the ground." The post Trump Attacked Biden's 'Crazy' Yemen War. Now He's Reopening It. appeared first on
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Hegseth declares 'peace through strength is back' while vowing 'unrelenting' campaign against Houthi targets
The U.S.'s large-scale strike campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen will be "unrelenting" until the Iran-backed proxies pledge to back off U.S. assets, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Sunday. "The minute the Houthis say 'we'll stop shooting at your ships, we'll stop shooting at your drones,' this campaign will end, but until then, it will be unrelenting," he told "Sunday Morning Futures" host Maria Bartiromo. U.S. Central Command said Saturday it had "initiated a series of operations consisting of precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen to defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation." Trump Watches Strike On Iran-backed Houthis In Yemen In New White House Pics As Large-scale Op Continues President Donald Trump wrote in a TRUTH Social post on Saturday that he had "ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen." Hegseth, on Sunday, sought to make "very clear" that the ongoing campaign is about "freedom of navigation" and "restoring deterrence." Read On The Fox News App "An era of peace, through strength is back…" he said. Trump Announces 'Decisive And Powerful' Airstrikes Against Houthi Terrorists In Yemen "We're sitting on four years of deferred maintenance from Joe Biden, where, when you talk about the Houthis, they were allowed over 100 times to shoot at U.S. ships, to shoot at commercial shipping. Four months ago, when we sent a ship through, it was shot at 17 times. Ships haven't been able to go through for over a year without being shot at." He called freedom of navigation a "core national interest," reiterating Trump's vow to restore that freedom and be "unrelenting" in doing so. Saturday's operation marked the first strike against the Iran-backed Houthis since the start of the second Trump administration. Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this article source: Hegseth declares 'peace through strength is back' while vowing 'unrelenting' campaign against Houthi targets
