UK defense chief: Iran must tell Houthis, Hezbollah to ‘cease and desist’

UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps says Iran needs to tell Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and its other proxies in the Middle East to “cease and desist.”

In an interview with The Telegraph, Shapps warns that a “limit has been truly crossed.”

When asked what message he would send to Iran, Shapps said: “You must get the Houthi rebels, others who are acting as proxies for you, Lebanese Hezbollah are obvious examples, [and] some in Iraq and Syria, you must get these different organizations to cease and desist because we are, the world is, running out of patience.”

“We see you, we see through what you’re doing. We see how you’re doing it, particularly the Houthi rebels, and no good can come from it,” Shapps says.

The comments were published hours after the US military struck another Houthi-controlled site in Yemen that it had determined was putting commercial vessels in the Red Sea at risk, a day after the US and Britain launched multiple airstrikes targeting Houthi rebels.

The US-led strikes were launched in response to a recent campaign of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships in the vital Red Sea maritime route.