Iran-backed Houthis claim first missile launch on Israel

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels claimed a missile launch toward Israel early Saturday, their first since the war in the Middle East started. The Israeli military said it intercepted the projectile.

The war, now marking its one-month anniversary, erupted after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, which retaliated with strikes against Israel and neighboring Gulf Arab states. The conflict has upended global air travel, disrupted oil exports and caused fuel prices to soar. Iran's stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway, has also exacerbated the economic fallout of the war.

Israel struck Iran's nuclear facilities hours after threatening to "escalate and expand" its campaign against Tehran on Friday. Iran vowed to retaliate and struck a base in Saudi Arabia, wounding more than a dozen U.S. service members and damaging planes.

Before Saturday's attack, there appeared to be a breakthrough as Tehran agreed to allow humanitarian aid and agricultural shipments through the strait.

- Houthi involvement could further complicate the war -

Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a military spokesman for the Houthis, claimed responsibility in a statement aired Saturday morning on the rebels' Al-Masirah satellite television. He said the Houthis fired a barrage of ballistic missiles targeting what he described as "sensitive Israeli military sites" in southern Israel. The attack came hours after Saree signaled in a vague statement Friday that the rebels would join the war.

Sirens went off around Israel's southern city of Beer Sheba and the area near Israel's main nuclear research center as Iran and Hezbollah continued to fire on Israel overnight. Loud explosions also filled the air in Tel Aviv and Israel's Fire and Rescue Service said it was responding to 11 different impact sites across the metro area.

Saturday's assault calls into question whether the Houthis will again target commercial shipping traveling through the Red Sea corridor, as they did during the Israel-Hamas war, upending shipping in the Red Sea, through which about $1 trillion worth of goods passed each year before the war. The rebels also fired drones at Israel.

The potential involvement of the Houthis in the war would also complicate the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the aircraft carrier that went to port in Crete on Monday for repairs. Sending the carrier back into the Red Sea could draw it into the same high tempo of attacks seen by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in 2024 and the USS Harry S. Truman in the 2025 American campaign against the Houthis.

The Houthis have held Yemen's capital, Sanaa, since 2014, and so far had stayed out of the war as the rebels have had an uneasy ceasefire for years with Saudi Arabia, which launched a war against the group on behalf of Yemen's exiled government in 2015.