The White House publicly released US intelligence as the Yemeni insurgents persist with ship strikes they say are in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is conducting a brutal war.

The White House claimed that Tehran has provided drones and missiles to the Houthis as well as tactical intelligence.

"We know that Iran was deeply involved in planning the operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea," National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, without providing substantial evidence.

"We have no reason to believe that Iran is trying to dissuade the Houthis from this reckless behavior," she said.

The Houthis, who control vast parts of the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country including the capital Sanaa, have launched more than 100 drone and missile attacks, targeting 10 merchant vessels, according to the Pentagon.

With commercial traffic increasingly disrupted, the United States recently announced a multinational naval task force of more than 20 countries to protect vessels transiting the Red Sea.

In a show of force, the US aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has entered the Gulf of Aden, with a series of news reports saying President Joe Biden's administration is weighing military strikes if the ship attacks persist.

Rebel leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi warned Wednesday that if they were attacked, the group would strike back against "American battleships, American interests and American navigation."

Drones, missiles, and monitors 
 

The White House said that US visual analysis found nearly identical features between Iran's KAS-04 drones and the unmanned vehicles fired by the Houthis, as well as consistent features between Iranian and Houthi missiles.

The Houthis are also reliant on Iranian-provided monitoring systems at sea, the White House claimed.

"Moreover, Iranian-provided tactical intelligence has been critical in enabling Houthi targeting of maritime vessels since the group commenced attacks in November," Watson said.

Despite the presumed findings presented by the White House, there have been doubts among some US and allied policymakers on whether the Houthis are acting at the behest of Iran.

One diplomat from a US ally who follows the region noted that Lebanon's Hezbollah -- which has much closer ties with Iran -- has been comparatively restrained in the face of US warnings including a show of naval might in the Eastern Mediterranean.

"Of Iran's proxies in the region, the Houthis have the weakest link to Tehran. And it is hard to see how the attacks serve their or Iran's interests," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

The Biden administration had initially kept a low-key tone on the Houthi attacks, in part out of an interest in preserving a fragile peace in Yemen.

The Houthis and the Saudi-backed government have effectively maintained a UN-brokered truce since April 2022, halting a devastating war that triggered a humanitarian crisis in which most of the population relies on aid.

* This story has been edited by Ahram Online.