President Donald Trump has, in the past, described America’s military involvement in the Middle East as “the worst decision ever made” and came into office vowing to to “end these endless wars.”
In some areas, the administration has followed through. The US has begun a major drawdown of US troops in Syria, following through on a goal dating back to Trump’s first term, and is threatening to “walk away” from its involvement in the war in Ukraine, with or without a deal to end the fighting.
But at the same time, the administration has quietly enmeshed US forces in yet another open-ended conflict in the Middle East, one that risks turning into exactly the sort of draining, distracting quagmire that Trump had pledged to avoid.
On March 15, the US began a campaign of airstrikes, known as “Operation Rough Rider,” against the Houthis, the Iran-backed militant group that controls much of Yemen and has been firing at commercial ships and military vessels in the Red Sea since the beginning of the war in Gaza in 2023.
The Biden administration, as well as Israel’s military, also carried out a number of strikes against the Houthis, but the ongoing US campaign is far more extensive. There have been at least 250 reported airstrikes so far, according to open-source data collected by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute.
According to some reports, more than 500 Houthi fighters have been killed, including a number of senior commanders, though the group tends to be tight-lipped about its casualties. The Yemen Data Project, a monitoring group, also documented more than 200 civilian casualties in the first month of bombing. The largest strike so far, on a key oil terminal on Yemen’s coast, killed more than 74 people last week.
The strikes have destroyed “command and control facilities, weapons manufacturing facilities, and advanced weapons storage locations,” a US defense official told Vox.
The administration seems satisfied with the results so far.
The ongoing strikes against the Houthis are “the first operation of this scale that the US has conducted against Houthi forces, and they really are on their back foot right now,” Peter Nguyen, the National Security Council’s director of strategic communications, told Vox.
Responding to criticism directed at Pete Hegseth, the embattled defense secretary, over the use of a personal device to conduct sensitive government business, Trump recently told reporters to “ask the Houthis how he’s doing.”
The overlooked conflict in Yemen, briefly explained
With the exception of the accidental leak of the administration’s war plans via Signal last month, the operation has gotten little public attention or debate, which is fairly remarkable given its scale.
Undoubtedly, the Houthis are sustaining damage, but the group’s resources and equipment are scattered and hidden across a wide area, making them difficult to target. The record of superpowers defeating insurgent groups with airpower is not inspiring.
“With air strikes alone, you’re not going to be able to defeat the Houthis,” Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemeni defense analyst, told Vox, pointing out that the group had survived eight years of a punishing air campaign by a Saudi-led military force supplied by the United States.
US officials say the goal is not to wipe out the Houthis, but for them to stop their attacks on shipping through the Red Sea, which virulently anti-Israel, Iran-aligned group began in response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
“They’ve got to say ‘no mas,’” to those attacks in order for the bombing to stop, Trump has said. The Houthis announced a pause on their attacks on shipping when a ceasefire went into effect in Gaza in January, but resumed attacks in early March in response to Israel blocking aid into Gaza.
The Red Sea has been fairly quiet since Operation Rough Rider began, but the Houthis have vowed to continue fighting and have launched a number of missiles and drones at Israel, including one on Wednesday.
“Attacks against shipping in the Red Sea need to stop, and so our operations will continue until that happens,” Nguyen said. “As soon as they stop, then we’re probably fine. But they haven’t, and we assess that the will for them to continue operations is still there.”
Indeed, in a defiant speech this week, the president of the Houthi-backed government, Mahdi al-Mashat, declared that the group was “undeterred by missiles, bombs, or strategic bombers, Trump” and mocked Trump for having “stumbled into a strategic quagmire.”
Is the US on the verge of entering another Middle East War?
A little more than a month in, it’s still too soon to declare a quagmire.
But the resources devoted to the conflict have been significant. The Pentagon has moved a second aircraft carrier group to the region to join one already there. It has also relocated at least two Patriot missile batteries as well as a THAAD missile defense system — one of the most advanced systems in the US arsenal — from Asia to the Middle East.
The strikes are not just about the Houthis. They are also widely seen as a demonstration of strength toward the group’s main patron, Iran.
The New York Times has reported that in just the first three weeks of the campaign, the US used $200 million worth of munitions, and that military officials are concerned about its impact on stocks the Navy would need in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
Contrary to the hopes of many in the Trump administration — including Vice President JD Vance — who argue the US should be shifting its focus from the Middle East to prepare for a potential conflict with China, the US is shifting resources from Asia to the Middle East.
Assuming the Houthis don’t say “no mas” in the immediate future, the question becomes how long the US will sustain the operation. This week, the White House released a legally required report to Congress on the operation, stating that the strikes would continue until the “Houthi threat to United States forces and navigational rights and freedoms in the Red Sea and adjacent waters has abated.” But the Wall Street Journal has also recently reported that officials are considering winding the strikes down.
That’s a scenario that worries Basha, the Yemeni analyst. The Houthis, until recently a fairly obscure group outside its region, have already taken Yemen’s capital, survived a years-long war by the Saudi-led coalition, and — since October 7, 2023 — proven themselves arguably most capable and resilient of Iran’s proxies in the Middle East.
“If they’re not curtailed or defeated or weakened by this, they’re going to be able to say, ‘We defeated Trump, the strongest military in the world. We’re unstoppable,’” Basha said.
As for restoring shipping through the Red Sea, transits through the strategically vital waterway were up slightly last month, but still well below the levels from before the Houthi attacks began in October 2023. It will likely take a long period of calm for shipping companies — and more importantly, the companies that insure them — to assume the risk has abated.
The alternative could be the US becoming even more deeply involved in the conflict. The Obama administration’s campaign against ISIS also began as an air operation before it was deemed necessary to send in ground troops and back local armed groups, frustrating an administration that had also vowed to scale back US military involvement in the Middle East.
The internationally backed Yemeni factions opposed to the Houthis are reportedly considering taking advantage of this moment to launch a ground campaign to oust the group once and for all. US officials have not yet made a decision on whether to back that operation.
Most analysts and officials say American troops participating in ground operations in Yemen is highly unlikely, but even more limited support for a ground operation would still be another case of the US backing armed groups in a messy Middle Eastern civil war — exactly the sort of situation Trump has blasted previous administrations for falling into.
That said, the strikes are not just about the Houthis. They are also widely seen as a demonstration of strength toward the group’s main patron, Iran. The administration is currently locked in a new round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and Trump has not ruled out military action — likely led by Israel — against the Iranians if those talks fail.
It’s still possible the US could simply move on from Yemen quickly, but judging by recent history, it would not be a surprise if the promised American pivot away from war in the Middle East was once again put on hold.
