Six Dead in Red Sea Vessel Attack... Trump Says 'Watching is the Strategy'

[Anchor]

Gunfire has erupted simultaneously in the waters on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East. The U.S. military attacked a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, while a missile attack by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels at the entrance of the Red Sea left six people dead. Amidst this, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that simply watching is the countermeasure.

Reporter Kim Yongtae has the details.

[Reporter]

Black smoke rises from a small cargo ship.

The upper part of the vessel shows clear signs of an attack.

In the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the entrance of the Red Sea, an alternative shipping route to Hormuz, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels attacked an Egyptian-owned cargo ship.

Yemeni government officials stated that the Houthi rebels fired three ballistic missiles, killing six people, including three Pakistani crew members.

The Houthis, who declared a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia on June 20, claimed that the ship was transporting military supplies for Saudi Arabia. This marks the first time that Houthi attacks on commercial vessels have resulted in casualties since the outbreak of the war with Iran.

On the same day, in the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. military helicopter attacked a Panamanian-flagged vessel.

The U.S. Central Command stated that the ship was heading toward an Iranian port and "attempted to violate the maritime blockade against Iran, so we disabled its steering gear using two air-to-ground precision-guided missiles."

As gunfire echoed simultaneously across the two major crude oil transit choke points, international oil prices rose again.

Although a sense of crisis is escalating, U.S. President Donald Trump said that "taking it easy and watching how terrible the situation is for Iran" is part of the strategy against Iran.

The argument is that Iran will fail even if left alone, which critics pointed out effectively means there is no actual countermeasure.

[Donald Trump / U.S. President: We have total control over the Strait of Hormuz. We control it, not them. We've got it.]

Directly contradicting Trump's remarks, Mohsen Rezaei, the newly appointed secretary of Iran's Expediency Discernment Council—a hardliner—raised his voice, stating that Iran will never open the Strait of Hormuz until the U.S. ends the war and releases frozen funds.

(Video Editing: Lee Seung-yeol, Design: Kim Min-young)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.