Iran is­sued a warn­ing Sun­day to the U.S. over po­ten­tial­ly tar­get­ing two car­go ships in the Mideast long sus­pect­ed of serv­ing as for­ward­ing op­er­at­ing bases for Iran­ian com­man­dos. The warn­ing came just af­ter the U.S. and the Unit­ed King­dom launched a mas­sive airstrike cam­paign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The state­ment from Iran on the Behshad and Sav­iz ships ap­peared to sig­nal Tehran’s grow­ing un­ease over U.S. strikes in re­cent days in Iraq, Syr­ia and Yemen tar­get­ing mili­tias backed by the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic.

Those strikes were in re­tal­i­a­tion for the killing of three U.S. sol­diers and wound­ing of dozens of oth­ers in Jor­dan, at­tacks that stem back to Is­rael’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which has es­ca­lat­ed ten­sions across the wider Mid­dle East and raised fears about a re­gion­al con­flict break­ing out.

The U.S. strikes overnight Sun­day struck across six provinces of Yemen held by the Houthi rebels, in­clud­ing in Sanaa, the cap­i­tal. The Houthis gave no as­sess­ment of the dam­age but the U.S. de­scribed hit­ting un­der­ground mis­sile ar­se­nals, launch sites and he­li­copters used by the rebels.

“These at­tacks will not dis­cour­age Yemeni forces and the na­tion from main­tain­ing their sup­port for Pales­tini­ans in the face of the Zion­ist oc­cu­pa­tion and crimes,” Houthi mil­i­tary spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Sa­ree said. “The ag­gres­sors’ airstrikes will not go unan­swered.”

U.S. De­fense Sec­re­tary Lloyd Austin warned the Houthis af­ter the strikes that “they will con­tin­ue to bear fur­ther con­se­quences if they do not end their il­le­gal at­tacks on in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping and naval ves­sels.” That mes­sage was echoed by British For­eign Sec­re­tary David Cameron, who said: “The Houthi at­tacks must stop.”

Biden’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er, Jake Sul­li­van, al­so warned the strikes may con­tin­ue.

“We are pre­pared to deal with any­thing that any group or any coun­try tries to come at us with,” Sul­li­van told CBS’ “Face the Na­tion.” “And the pres­i­dent has been clear that we will con­tin­ue to re­spond to threats that Amer­i­can forces face as we go for­ward.”

The Behshad and Sav­iz are reg­is­tered as com­mer­cial car­go ships with a Tehran-based com­pa­ny the U.S. Trea­sury has sanc­tioned as a front for the state-run Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic of Iran Ship­ping Lines. The Sav­iz, then lat­er the Behshad, have loi­tered for years in the Red Sea off Yemen, sus­pect­ed of serv­ing as spy po­si­tions for Iran’s para­mil­i­tary Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard.

In 2017, Sau­di Ara­bia de­scribed the Sav­iz as a mar­itime base and weapons trans­fer point for the Guard, staffed by men in mil­i­tary fa­tigues. Footage aired by Sau­di-owned tele­vi­sion chan­nels showed the ves­sel armed with what ap­peared to be a cov­ered ma­chine gun bolt­ed to the ship’s deck.

In the video state­ment Sun­day by Iran’s reg­u­lar army, a nar­ra­tor for the first time de­scribes the ves­sels as “float­ing ar­mories.” The nar­ra­tor de­scribes the Behshad as aid­ing an Iran­ian mis­sion to “coun­ter­act pira­cy in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.” How­ev­er, Iran is not pub­licly known to have tak­en part in any of the re­cent cam­paigns against ris­ing So­ma­li pira­cy in the re­gion off the back of the Houthi at­tacks.

Just be­fore the new cam­paign of U.S. airstrikes be­gan, the Behshad trav­eled south in­to the Gulf of Aden. It’s now docked in Dji­bouti in East Africa just off the coast from a Chi­nese mil­i­tary base in the coun­try.

The state­ment ends with a warn­ing over­laid with a mon­tage of footage of U.S. war­ships and an Amer­i­can flag.

“Those en­gag­ing in ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties against Behshad or sim­i­lar ves­sels jeop­ar­dize in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime routes, se­cu­ri­ty and as­sume glob­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for po­ten­tial fu­ture in­ter­na­tion­al risks,” the video said.

The U.S. Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet de­clined to com­ment over the threat.

The Sav­iz, which is now in the In­di­an Ocean near where the U.S. al­leges Iran­ian drone at­tacks re­cent­ly have tar­get­ed ship­ping, has come un­der at­tack be­fore. In 2021, a like­ly mine ex­plo­sion blew a hole through the hull of the Sav­iz, forc­ing Iran to bring the ship home. That at­tack, sus­pect­ed to have been car­ried out by Is­rael, is part of a wider shad­ow war be­tween Tehran and Is­rael af­ter the col­lapse of the Iran nu­clear deal.