In Yemen Strikes, Trump Takes On a Group That Has Outlasted Powerful Foes

In ordering a pre-emptive attack on the Houthis in Yemen, President Trump is taking on a group that has outlasted powerful enemies for years.

The Houthi movement started in the 1990s as a tribal insurgency and seized swaths of northern Yemen, including the capital in 2014, sparking a continuing civil war. The group sustained thousands of airstrikes by a Saudi-led and U.S.-backed military campaign that lasted more than seven years and failed to restore the internationally-recognized government to power. With Iranian arms and training, the rebels grew their capacity to menace Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with drones and missiles.

After the Gaza war broke out in 2023, the Houthis turned their sights on Israeli cities and ships passing by the Yemeni coast into the Red Sea, hobbling commerce through one of the world’s busiest commercial waterways. The Biden administration, along with the U.K., responded with intermittent airstrikes that reduced but didn’t stop the Houthi attacks. Israel also conducted its own strikes on Yemen at least four times, including against San’a airport in December.

Now Trump, in the first major military action of his new administration, hopes to succeed where all others have failed. U.S. officials said Saturday’s strikes were intended to reopen shipping lanes and serve as a warning to the Houthis’ Iranian supporters. They described them as the beginning of a sustained campaign, which analysts say could last for weeks.

“Freedom of navigation is basic, it’s a core national interest,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News on Sunday. “The minute the Houthis say, ‘We’ll stop shooting at your ships, we’ll stop shooting at your drones,’ this campaign will end. But until then, it will be unrelenting.”

National security adviser Mike Waltz said the strikes were aimed at the leaders of the Houthis, which Trump designated as a terrorist organization in January after his predecessor delisted them.

“This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out,” Waltz said, without naming the targets. The Houthi-run health ministry said at least 31 civilians were killed and 101 injured.

The Houthis’ attacks and defiant response to Western airstrikes have enabled the group to show solidarity with the Palestinians, gain popularity in the Arab world and cast themselves as an international player, sparring head-on with some of the world’s most powerful militaries.

“The idea that you’re going to do this massive wave of airstrikes and the Houthis are just going to lay on their back and take it is absurd,” said Mohammed Albasha, founder of U.S.-based Middle East security advisory Basha Report. “They’re going to retaliate and retaliate severely. It’s going to be a vicious cycle.”

The airstrikes marked a new level of intensity in the conflict, he said. Besides resuming attacks against Israel and ships, the Houthis could also try to hit U.S. bases in Djibouti, just opposite Yemen, and in the U.A.E., some 800 miles away. If the conflict drags on, he cautioned, the Houthis are likely to resume attacks on Saudi Arabia as an indirect form of pressure on Washington.

Since 2023, the Houthis have targeted more than 100 commercial vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two ships and killing four sailors. They recently claimed to have downed a U.S. surveillance drone and fired a missile at a U.S. jet fighter.

A spokesman for the group said its naval operations were targeting Israel for violating the cease-fire in Gaza and that U.S. attacks on Yemen would elicit a response. “We will meet escalation with escalation, and the one who starts it is the most unjust,” Mohammed al-Bukhaiti wrote on X, casting conflict with the U.S. as a battle between good and evil.

The number of attacks the group can muster may be hampered partially by lost capacity from previous U.S. and Israeli strikes, said Wolf-Christian Paes, a fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think tank.

Trump joins a succession of U.S. presidents since George W. Bush who have ordered airstrikes in Yemen against the Houthis, the local al Qaeda affiliate or both. In the past decade, the ancient country—already one of the world’s poorest—has suffered tens of thousands of casualties, famine and disease alongside state failure.

The latest airstrikes targeted Houthi missile launchers that were being moved toward the coast in preparation for new attacks on shipping, according to people briefed by the Trump administration.

They also focused on Houthi leaders’ homes in San’a and the town of Sa’dah, the group’s mountainous home base, the people said. Going after the leaders, which the Biden administration mostly refrained from doing out of fear of escalation, could further undermine the Houthis’ capacity to respond, analysts say. But it also risks making them more unpredictable and susceptible to lashing out.

“The Houthis are likely to show resistance, meaning the U.S. policy of deterrence will take time to show its effectiveness,” said Osamah Al Rawhani, executive director for policy and partnerships at the San’a Center for Strategic Studies. “The group has consistently demonstrated the ability to adapt and recover.”

The U.S. military action followed a threat last week from the Houthis to resume attacks on Israel-linked ships after Israel cut off aid deliveries into Gaza. The Houthis began attacking ships in November 2023 in response to the Israeli bombardment and siege of Gaza and stopped when a cease-fire went into effect two months ago.

The major difference now is that Iran’s network of allied forces across the Middle East is devastated. The U.S.-designated terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah have been severely weakened in their conflicts with Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, while Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was replaced in December by Islamist rebels.

Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, the top commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, this weekend rejected Trump’s claim that Tehran was backing the Houthis and threatened “a decisive and devastating response” to any direct U.S. attack against Iran.

Deliveries of small arms, drones and missiles to Yemen have been disrupted by frequent seizures at sea by the U.S. and its allies, but Western security officials say Iran has found alternative smuggling routes.

Targeting the Houthis threatens to remove one of Iran’s last remaining levers of retaliation against the U.S. and Israel, said Elisabeth Kendall, a Middle East expert and the head of the University of Cambridge’s Girton College.

“It is likely also a recognition that the Houthis need to be dealt with directly,” she said. “Even if a deal were reached with Iran, the Houthis operate with enough independence and capability to continue to be a thorn in the side of the U.S. and its allies.”