• Rear Admiral Marc Miguez said the US leadership rejects a more aggressive strategy against the Houthis.

• The high command was concerned about Iran at the time, Miguez said recently in a video interview.

• For months, Miguez was in charge of a carrier battle group defending merchant ships in the Red Sea.

A U.S. Navy commander who oversaw most of the Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group’s eight-month deployment in the Red Sea said officers had proposed more aggressive attacks on the Houthis, but high command had rejected them.

Rear Admiral Marc Miguez said in an interview with YouTuber Ward Carroll that the U.S. National Command Authority must take Iran’s response into account.

“Concrete strategies have been proposed, but our national command authority has decided that we do not want to question these – I would call them more aggressive postures and more aggressive attacks,” Miguez said in the interview published on Monday.

“We all know that this threat comes from Iranian groups like the Houthis,” he said. “And that’s the calculation that’s being done at level zero, at the National Command Authority, at the NSA and everyone else.”

“These are things I don’t concern myself with,” he added.

Miguez told Carroll that the carrier battle group launched seven targeted strikes on Houthi targets during its twice-extended deployment from October 2023 to June 2024.

According to previous reports, the group, which includes the aircraft carrier Ike, had fired more than 500 explosive devices in an attempt to directly hit Yemeni rebels and intercept their drones and missiles as they attacked merchant ships in the strait.

Since the withdrawal of the Eisenhower Group, the Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier battle groups have advanced into the Middle East, where tensions in the region continue to rise.

Miguez indicated that he believes the US should take a more aggressive stance against the Houthis.

“We will continue to have to deal with this in the future,” he said. “It will be up to our national command authority to be more aggressive with our battle groups and all our assets, not just the Navy.”

The Houthis have said they only attack ships linked to Israel during the Gaza war, but the group has also launched attacks on ships from other countries that have no obvious ties to Tel Aviv.

Recently, the rebel group attacked a Greek-flagged oil tanker, which caught fire and drifted in the Red Sea.

To stop the attacks, Miguez said the US would have to pool all its resources more aggressively, including diplomacy and economic policy.

“If we can achieve this focus with a cross-government approach, I believe it will lead to freedom of navigation in this critical strait, which affects about 20 percent of global trade,” he said.

Miguez was appointed chief of legislative affairs for the Navy in July.

Since relinquishing command of the Eisenhower carrier battle group, he has been vocal about the need for the U.S. to have more training in countering drones after seeing the extent to which the Houthis used them in the Red Sea.

The Pentagon press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

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