The following article has been translated from the Punto Rojo blog with thanks.
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After two months of sustained attacks against Yemen, the United States has announced its decision to abandon the costly military campaign. US president Donald Trump has tried to disguise this measure as part of a ceasefire agreement, but the reality is that the bombings have been a resounding failure and have resulted in enormous expenses for the Pentagon.
On the contrary, the unilateral US withdrawal represents a victory for Yemen’s Supreme Political Council government, led by the Ansarullah movement, also known as the Houthis. Not only has it managed to resist pressure from the US-led coalition to abandon the Gaza Strip amid the genocide perpetrated by Israel, but it has also succeeded in dividing its enemy, isolating Tel Aviv at a time when it is intensifying its blockade campaign.
A victory for the Houthis
On the afternoon of 6 May, President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “[The Houthis said] they don’t want to fight anymore, we will honour that and stop the bombing, they have capitulated … They said, ‘Please don’t bomb us anymore and we will not attack your ships.’” The Republican president thus announced the suspension of airstrikes in Yemen. Washington has sought to present this result as a victory, since American ships will be able to sail again in the Red Sea.
However, this was never about the United States, but about Israel. It was the USA that initiated the bombing of Yemen to disrupt the naval blockade imposed on the zionist state by the Houthis in response to the genocide in the Gaza Strip. The Yemeni group maintains that it will stop attacking US military ships if Washington halts its campaign, but that “we will definitely continue our operations in support of Gaza”.
The Ansarullah movement was clear on this point when, on 1 March, it issued an ultimatum for the zionist army to lift the siege on Gaza, giving it four days to comply. That day, Israel had broken the ceasefire by blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid into Palestinian territory, aiming to force a famine that continues more than 60 days later.
At the end of the ultimatum, the Houthis reimposed their naval blockade against Israel. Subsequent actions depended entirely on the reaction of other regional actors. If there has been a confrontation with the United States, it is because the White House made the decision to launch a campaign of attacks against Yemen in aid of Tel Aviv on 15 March.
However, as with the Biden administration more than a year ago, the Trump administration has been unable to put a dent in the commitment of Yemeni fighters.
Attacks on commercial vessels have been linked to enforcing this blockade against the zionists, but they have not been the primary objective. Countries that have not interfered in Yemeni operations have not been affected.
In fact, although the Trump administration has characterised the Houthi attacks as targeting US commercial vessels, the reality is that the actions against the United States have primarily targeted warships and drones involved in the bombing of Yemen.
They have attacked US destroyers with cruise missiles, drones and anti-ship missiles. The last known Houthi attack on US commercial vessels occurred in December 2024, before Trump’s inauguration, when US warships were escorting three US-flagged vessels en route to Djibouti.
Since Trump came to power in January 2025, there have been no further such attacks, as the Yemeni operation has been so effective that most commercial vessels have been deterred from entering the Red Sea.
The attacks against US forces were not being made purely in Yemen’s national interest but in support of Palestine, recognising that USA plays the main role in supporting Israeli genocide in Gaza. In short, the ‘deal’ can be summarised as follows: the Houthis will stop attacking US ships in the Red Sea, and the United States will leave Yemen alone to continue its blockade of Israel.
The Houthis have always followed this principle of self-defence and have no interest in concentrating their efforts on attacking the US power at this time.
In this way, the Ansarullah movement has proven to be true to its promise: both during the ceasefire that began in January and afterward, the solidarity front with Palestine has been opened and closed in coordination with the resistance forces and according to their needs. This, according to their logic, is the best way they can support the Palestinian people: not by insisting on an unnecessary military escalation, but by calibrating their forces and using them to keep the front open against Israel, while simultaneously creating a gap with the United States.
Back in April, a senior Ansarullah leader told Drop Site News that if the United States ends its campaign against Yemen, Houthi forces would commit to halting all attacks on US vessels in the region. “We do not consider ourselves at war with the American people,” declared Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of Ansarullah’s political bureau and spokesperson for the Houthis. “If the United States stops attacking Yemen, we will cease our military operations against it.”
As stated through their press office: “Our military operations in support of Gaza will not cease until the aggression against Gaza stops and the blockade on its residents is lifted, allowing the entry of food, medicine and fuel.
“As for our attacks on the USA, they fall within the context of the right to self-defence. If it halts its attacks on us, we will halt our attacks on it. This position also applies to Britain.
“We are committed to our operations in support of Gaza, regardless of the sacrifices it costs us. If the USA persists with its operations in support of the zionist entity, even if they are immoral, the only way to stop the war and avoid escalation is for the USA to pressure Netanyahu to respect the terms of the ceasefire agreement. At that point, we will halt all our military operations in the Red Sea and deep within the zionist entity.”
US objectives in Yemen
Like Joe Biden’s Democrats, the new Republican administration has failed in its attempt to defeat Ansarullah. In early April, The New York Times reported that in just three weeks, the Pentagon had used $200m worth of munitions in Operation Rough Rider. In closed-door briefings, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers has been limited.
The total cost could well exceed $1bn. Had it wanted to continue operations, the Pentagon would almost certainly have had to request supplemental funding from Congress. The United States has had to use so many precision munitions – especially advanced long-range ones – that some Pentagon contingency planners became concerned about the Navy’s total stockpile and the implications for any situation in which Washington would need to ‘deter’ a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Maintaining operations in Yemen was unsustainable. During the course of these operations, the United States has lost 22 MQ-9 Reaper drones – each worth around $30m – and three F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets – worth approximately $55m each. In total, US operations in the region, including Yemen, have already cost the US government $4.86bn over the course of 18 months.
Washington even expanded the operation’s deployment by sending a second aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, to support the USS Harry S Truman carrier strike group, which has lost two Hornet fighter jets in the past two weeks, allegedly due to having to “perform evasive manoeuvres” to avoid being hit by the Houthis. The Pentagon also deployed six B-2 bombers to the US air base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean – one-third of its entire fleet.
On the other hand, although Centcom [the US regional command overseeing middle-east operations] claims to have struck more than 800 targets in Yemen, the truth is that many of them were not military targets at all. This reflects one of the operation’s main problems: the lack of intelligence. The United States lacks local assets who can gather reliable information and compile targets.
This has led to episodes in which open source data have been used to identify military targets. In one case, this resulted in the killing of eight civilians, including a woman and a child, after an X account published a satellite photo of homes claiming to contain an underground Houthi base. Centcom confirmed to journalist Ryan Grim that it has obtained military targets using these methods, apparently without verifying the information.
The United States has simply realised that continuing this war is pointless, opting for the pragmatic path and leaving Israel in the lurch. The American power has finally given in because it cannot dent the Houthis’ will. However, if we dig a little deeper, we can better understand Washington’s motivation.
In the Signal leaks about the Yemen attacks, defence secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged that “this is not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) restoring freedom of navigation, a core national interest; and 2) restoring deterrence, which Biden gutted.”
The goal was to create a narrative, and in that, the Trump administration may have succeeded, even if the rest has been a failure. It can now proclaim that it has ‘restored freedom of navigation’, even though the naval, and now air, blockade remains in place. It can also boast that it has ‘reestablished deterrence’, even though nothing has changed and the Houthis’ position has strengthened.
This act was important because there were “two major risks in waiting: 1) that this leaks out and we appear indecisive; 2) that Israel takes the initiative and attacks first, and we can’t initiate this on our own terms.”
Because Washington was able to maintain the initiative, it achieved a result acceptable to its objectives, although shameful for its strategic position. Trump himself praised the bravery of the Yemeni fighters: “We hit them very hard. They have a great capacity to withstand punishment. They endured tremendous punishment. You can say there is a lot of courage. What they endured was incredible. But we honour their commitment and their word.”
Regional context in the middle east
Oman’s mediation in negotiating this ceasefire clearly indicates the direction the process is taking. The decision is in line with the continuation of nuclear negotiations with Iran – which Israel opposes – and seeks to create a favourable climate ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to the Arabian Peninsula. The US president will be in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, but not Tel Aviv, which is excluded.
Trump has claimed he will make a “very, very big” and “positive” announcement before the trip, but did not specify what.
In the Persian Gulf, there is little appetite for a confrontation with Iran, and unlike in 2015, there is support for a nuclear deal and an agreed resolution to the war in Yemen, from which Saudi Arabia wishes to withdraw.
Therefore, by sidelining Israel, the conditions may be being created for a major agreement with Iran. The ceasefire with the Houthis is already a severe blow to the Riyadh-backed puppet government in south Yemen, which has been seeking US support for weeks to launch a new offensive against the Ansarullah-led government in Sana’a. Washington has negotiated directly with Tehran, bypassing them.
According to diplomatic sources, the USA presented the Houthis with three conditions in Muscat to halt military operations: a halt to all attacks against US vessels, whether commercial or military; a halt to attacks on Israel; and the resumption of peace talks within the framework of the Saudi-led roadmap.
It’s clear that Ansarullah stood firm and only accepted the proposal they themselves had made. However, this third point indicates the possibility of a comprehensive agreement that would reduce tensions and ensure the continuity of the agreements between Iran and Saudi Arabia, potentially resulting in a Saudi withdrawal from the conflict in exchange for recognition of the Houthi government in Sana’a.
Thus, the unilateral US withdrawal from its failed campaign in Yemen makes any future ground offensive against Ansarullah by local proxy forces completely unviable, while Israel is now left alone in its attempt to halt the ongoing Yemeni attacks against it.
