From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is the Daily.

Over the past few months, attacks by Huthy militants on global trade and the Western military,

which once seemed like a dangerous sideshow to the war in Gaza, have become a full-blown crisis.

Today, my colleague, Golf Bureau Chief Vivian Niera, on what the Huthies, really want. It's Thursday, January 18th. There's a marked escalation of tensions along one of the world's busiest shipping routes.

Hooty militants claimed responsibility for yet another attack on a container ship.

The latest target of Yemen's Huthies, Norwegian tanker Stranda, struck by a missile.

A US warship shot down 14 drones fired by suspected huthie rebels in Yemen.

The escalation of attacks have encouraged a series of shipping companies to announce they would suspend their movements through the Red Sea.

A United States official tells CNN the U.S. military has carried out strikes on multiple

hoothedy targets in Yemen.

This war could be escalating big time.

The Pentagon confirms it has carried out more strikes against the Yemen-based Houthi rebels,

the third assault on the group in recent days.

The Uthi leaders said this aggression will not go unanswered.

Threatening to keep on attacking those ships that are passing through the Red Sea.

President Biden saying he will not hesitate to act further if that continues. Vivian over the past few weeks as militants in Yemen have carried out this

really unusual military campaign against commercial ships in the Red Sea

and have basically crippled this trade route and triggered a very significant

military response from the US and its allies.

The question I think all of us have had with increasing urgency is what exactly has motivated these militants, the

hoothes, to do this? What do they want and how do these attacks in the Red Sea

serve that cause?

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