The White House released on January 16 a press briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby, in which the latter stated that the US was not seeking war in the Middle East.
During the press briefing, Kirby noted that the US had witnessed “lower-scale retaliatory strikes by the Houthis in the last few days.” He also claimed that none of the strikes had proven effective.
We fully anticipated, when we launched […] that salvo on Friday night […] that the Houthis would probably conduct some retaliatory strikes.
However, the NSC coordinator stated that the strikes were effective “in terms of disrupting and degrading their capability to conduct military offensive operations.”
“As you saw today, we took additional strikes knocking out four ballistic missiles that we believe were prepped and ready to be launched from Yemen, took them out before they could do that.”
Kirby declared that the US was ready “to defend our interests, our sailors, our ships, and that of merchant shipping as required.” He also added that the country is not seeking to expand the war on Middle East:
We’re not looking for a war. We’re not looking to expand this. The Houthis have a choice to make, and they still have time to make the right choice, which is to stop these reckless attacks.
