Trump’s Yemen campaign tests promise to avoid forever wars

Experts caution Donald Trump’s move to launch a series of major air strikes against the Houthis could lead to months of open-ended conflict despite his vow not to engage in ‘forever wars’.

Just four months after President Trump issued an election eve promise never to embroil the US in a distant forever war, he has ordered a series of major air strikes against the Houthis and threatened their annihilation – moves experts caution could lead to months of open-ended conflict.

“Tremendous damage has been inflicted upon the Houthi barbarians, and watch how it will get progressively worse,” Trump wrote on social media Wednesday (local time). “It’s not even a fair fight, and never will be. They will be completely annihilated.” In the post, Trump also indicated that Iran was still sending military support to Yemen, though less than in the past, and said Tehran must cease all aid to the militant group immediately.

Trump’s latest remarks came during the fifth day of US strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, part of an operation which began with a flurry of air and missile attacks on Saturday. The strikes have deepened US military involvement in the volatile Middle East and put the US on a potential collision course with Iran.

It also started just two days before the Israeli military carried out major air strikes across the Gaza Strip that killed hundreds – an operation that began after a failed effort by Israel and Hamas to negotiate an extension of their ceasefire the Trump administration blessed, US officials say.

A US F/A-18 Super Hornet attack fighter jet takes off from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier. Picture; AFP.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell has portrayed the Trump administration’s first major military operation as a “relentless” but circumscribed campaign.

“This is also not an endless offensive. This is not about regime change in the Middle East. This is about putting American interests first,” Parnell said Monday.

While the Trump administration has broadened the list of Yemen targets to include Houthi leaders, it is confronting a resilient adversary that controls large swathes of Yemen, including the capital, San’a, and survived a seven-year Saudi-led campaign that involved thousands of air strikes.

“The Houthis have proved to be fairly resilient in their conflict against the government of Yemen, which was supported by the Saudi-led coalition, and against limited actions the US took last year,” said Sam Mundy, a retired lieutenant general who led Marine forces in the Middle East. “If the goal is to restore deterrence in the Red Sea, this is going to take time.” The Houthis have given no sign that they are prepared to yield, though their initial efforts at retaliation haven’t been effective. On Tuesday, they fired a ballistic missile at Israel, which the Israeli military said that it successfully intercepted. They also launched at least a dozen drones and a ballistic missile attack at the USS Harry S. Truman strike group, but didn’t come close to damaging the ships.

The Houthis began to launch drones and missiles soon after Israel sent its forces into Gaza in response to the October 2023 Hamas attack inside Israel that killed 1,200 and led to the kidnapping of 250 people.

While their attacks on Israel have been ineffective, they also began to target ships transiting in the Red Sea and nearby waters, disrupting one of the most important shipping lanes Since 2023, the Houthis have targeted the US Navy 174 times and commercial shipping 145 times, according to the Trump administration. Last year, the Houthis sank two non-American commercial ships and killed four sailors. The attacks have led to a marked reduction in shipping traffic through the Red Sea and have raised transport costs, even after the Houthis paused their attacks in January in response to the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

The Biden administration, which along with its allies in the region, was trying to avoid a wider Middle East war as Israel and Hamas clashed, sent US warships to try to protect international shipping as did European nations. The US military also conducted at least 200 strikes intermittently since November 2023, nearly all during the Biden administration.

Those attacks included some substantial raids, including an October attack that was carried out by B-2 Stealth bombers. But the military response has been largely defensive, retired Army General Joseph Votel, a former head of the US Central Command, said Tuesday in a briefing hosted by the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.

During President Joe Biden’s final months in office, an effort was made to develop the options to target Houthi leaders, though no decision was made to do so, former US officials say. After Trump took office, the Pentagon refined the targeting by flying drones over Yemen, a US defence official said.

Last year, Army Gen. Eric Kurilla, the current commander of US Central Command, which is responsible for US military operations in the Middle East, sent a classified letter to then Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noting that military operations in the region were “failing” to deter Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and that a broader approach was needed, according to US officials.

On the eve of his election win in November, Trump vowed to stay out of wars in far-flung trouble spots. “I am not going to start a war,” Trump told his supporters. “I am going to stop wars.” Two days after taking office, however, he issued an executive order to designate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organisation. At the time, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was holding, and the Houthis were refraining from attacking international shipping But the Houthis fired at a US F-16 fighter in February, and missed, and then downed a US MQ-9 Reaper drone early this month. Then last week the Houthis threatened to attack Israeli ships unless Israel allowed humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, a threat that led Trump to take action.

The US military struck Houthi targets every day since Saturday, the Pentagon said, hitting at least 30 targets on the first day of the campaign and several others since.

The latest US campaign will target individuals affiliated with the group, a US defence official said. In addition to targeting training sites, weapon storage facilities and other military infrastructure, the US struck “a terrorist compound where we know several senior Houthi unmanned aerial vehicle experts were located,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the director for operations of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

To escalate the pressure and force an end to Tehran’s support for the Houthis, Trump has said that he will hold Iran responsible for “every shot fired by the Houthis.” While Iran’s support for the Houthis has been well documented, former US officials and experts outside government say that Tehran doesn’t control the group’s every move.

Some who are sympathetic to the case for stepping up military pressure on the Houthis say that the use of force should be part of a wider effort to try to mitigate the risk of civil strife within Yemen that could draw in the Saudis or lead to a further breakdown in order that other terrorist groups could exploit.

“The notion that you kill the top eight or 10 Houthi leaders and then everything is fine is not realistic,” said Daniel Shapiro, who served as a senior Pentagon official in the Biden administration Shapiro, who said he supports the current US strikes, added that he believed the operation should be part of a broader strategy under the Trump administration that includes diplomacy, economic sanctions and stopping weapons shipments to Yemen.

“If there is a broader strategy,” he said, “they haven’t articulated it yet.”

Dow Jones