U.S. military strikes on Yemen’s Houthi militants will be “unrelenting” until the group stops shooting at civilian and military vessels in the Red Sea, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said on Sunday, a day after President Donald Trump ordered new operations in the Middle East.

“This campaign is about freedom of navigation and restoring deterrence. The minute the Houthis say, ‘We’ll stop shooting at your ships, we’ll stop shooting at your drones,’ this campaign will end,” Hegseth said in an interview on Fox News’s "Sunday Morning Futures." “But until then, it will be unrelenting.”

On Saturday, Trump said he ordered “decisive and powerful” action against the Houthis. In a post on his social media platform Truth Social he said the group has “choked off shipping in one of the most important Waterways of the World, grinding vast swaths of Global Commerce to a halt.” He added attacks on American vessels “will not be tolerated.”

The Houthi ruling political council vowed to retaliate for what it called U.S. “aggression,” saying the maritime operations will continue until the Gaza blockade is lifted, according to the Houthi-controlled Saba news agency. On Tuesday, the militant group said it would resume attacks on Israeli ships for the first time in about two months after demanding Israel end a ban on aid entering Gaza, which the country imposed following disagreements with Hamas over a ceasefire.

The Houthis will now also target U.S. vessels, including warships, as part of escalation in response to the airstrikes, the group’s leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi said in a televised speech Sunday. “We still have escalatory options” should the U.S. attacks persist, he added.

Hegseth said the latest strikes were also a warning to Iran, which backs the Houthis.

“Iran has been enabling the Houthis for far too long. They better back off,” he said.

White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said the attacks were successful.

“We hit the Houthi leadership, killing several of their key leaders last night — their infrastructure, the missiles,” Waltz said on Fox News Sunday. “We just hit them with overwhelming force and put Iran on notice that enough is enough.”

Speaking in a separate appearance on ABC’s "This Week," Waltz said Iranian targets in and around Yemen — including ships near the coast that provide intelligence and trainers — “will be on the table, too.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on CBS’s "Face the Nation" that the Houthis had attacked U.S. naval vessels in the area 174 times over the last 18 months, in addition to disrupting global shipping. Asked if there were any plans for U.S. ground operations in Yemen, Rubio said that currently looked unlikely.

“Those are military decisions to be made, but I’ve heard no talk of ground raids,” Rubio said. “I don’t think there’s a necessity for it right now.”

The Houthi health ministry said 31 people were killed and at least 191 injured in strikes on Sana’a, Saada and Albaydha provinces. Most of the casualties were women and children, the ministry said, according to the Houthi-run Saba news agency.

The Houthis began their attacks shortly after Hamas’s Oct. 7 incursion into Israel sparked war in the Middle East. The Houthis have repeatedly said their missile and drone strikes in the Red Sea, and against Israel, were in solidarity with the Palestinians over the war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. The Yemeni group has previously said it would stop their attacks when Israel stopped its war.

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(With assistance from María Paula Mijares Torres and Sherif Tarek.)

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