On March 17, Waltz, the national security adviser to the US president, said on the 16th that the US military killed a number of Houthi leaders during the air strike in Yemen on the 15th. Waltz said in an interview with ABC TV that day that the Trump administration regards the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. The air strikes "actually targeted many Houthi leaders and have eliminated them". He said that the US military's operation in Yemen is different from previous ones in two ways. "One is to target the Houthi leadership, and the other is to hold Iran accountable for supporting the Houthis."