In Yemen strikes, Trump takes on a group that has outlasted powerful foes

The Houthis emerged stronger from a seven-year Saudi-led military campaign and survived airstrikes last year by Israel and the Biden administration. They won’t relent under US fire.

In ordering a pre-emptive attack on the Houthis in Yemen, President Trump hopes to succeed where all others have failed, taking on a foe that has outlasted powerful enemies for years.

US officials said Sunday the attacks were designed as a show of overwhelming force, far more intense than the strike order under the Biden administration to take out the Houthis capacity to harass Red Sea shipping lanes. The attacks also hit directly at the Houthi leadership, officials said – something the Biden administration decided against.

And they were intended to serve as a message to the Houthis biggest backers Iran as well as the US’s resolve to act militarily in the Middle East, officials said. 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.”

The #Houthi#terror group has released an animated video showing coffins draped in #American flags floating on the sea near a sunken warship #Houthies#Yemen#Iran#Terrorism#Trumppic.twitter.com/JAJRXnUspf

— Shadi Alkasim (@Shadi_Alkasim) March 16, 2025

The Houthis have withstood attacks from internal and foreign enemies throughout their decade in power. The Houthi movement emerged in the 1990s as a ragtag tribal insurgency and seized swathes of northern Yemen, including its capital, San’a, in 2014 sparking an ongoing civil war.

The group sustained thousands of airstrikes by a Saudi-led military campaign over seven years with US backing and failed to restore the internationally-recognised government to power. With Iranian arms and training, the rebels expanded their capacity to menace Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with drones and missiles.

After the Gaza war broke out in late 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 in Yemen at least four times, including against San’a airport in December.

The question now is whether the US strikes are enough to make the Houthis relent, or up the ante.

Donald Trump watches the strikes against the Houthis with advisers. Picture: X / @WhiteHouse

For the Houthis, their own 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 US-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 US 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 US surveillance drone and fired a missile at a US jet fighter.

An aircraft launches from the USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea before airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen. Picture: US Navy via AP.

A spokesman for the group said its naval operations were targeting Israel for violating the ceasefire in Gaza and that US 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 US as a battle between good and evil.

The number of attacks the group can muster may be hampered partially by lost capacity from previous US 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 US 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, their mountainous home base, the people said.

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

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 US 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 US 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 ceasefire 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 US-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 US attack against Iran.

Deliveries of small arms, drones and missiles to Yemen have been disrupted by frequent seizures at sea by the US 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 US 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 US and its allies.”

Dow Jones