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

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1. Trump is returning fire to begin a war with the Houthis in Yemen. 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.

2. I wish the US luck in this endeavour. The Houthis have always been a problem as they threaten trade through the Red Sea. One of the main challenges analysts believed with countering that threat was any confrontation with the Houthis was the conflict is highly asymmetric. The cost to the Houthis to attack (e.g. drone attacks and missile barrages) is far lower than the cost to defend against the attack. Even escalating the conflict would require significant investment, potentially in American blood.

   Trump is not exempt from this same challenge. Given his anti-military spending and no new war rhetoric, it will be interesting to how he resolves this paradox. Will he, as I’m sure he’s currently hoping for, quickly resolve this conflict purely by shock and awe, or will the analysts be correct and he ends up getting bogged down in this conflict and either commit his administration into a new protracted conflict or have to make an embarrassing capitulation to the Houthis/Iran (ala Afghanistan withdrawal) in order to fulfil his campaign promises.

3. A tit-for-tat proxy-escalatory scenario is a distinct possibility as a result of this campaign – not unlike US-Iran escalations in late 2019 into 2020. This was only disrupted by the pandemic, the US was very close to open warfare with the state of Iran.

4. What is worst case scenario if USA takes the fight directly to Iran? But this time there is no “nation building”, but nation “breaking.”? This is more feasible if there is a US-Russia alliance I suppose. Iran would fold very quickly without Russian support.

   Insanity.

5. Quid pro quo. He’s negotiating that golf deal with them.

6. It’s worth pointing out that the Houthis hace ceased their attacks since the Gaza cease-fire.

   This isn’t therefore a retaliation from the US but the first salvo of Trumps middle-east foreign policy.

   If it’s an attempt to pressure Iran, I doubt it’ll work. The Houthi-Tehran relationship is one of convenience and doesn’t have any of the sense of kinship that the IRGC-Hezbollah relationship has.

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