Trump announces halt to Yemen bombing taking Houthis at their word
The US will stop bombing Yemen “effective immediately”, US President Donald Trump declared on Tuesday at the White House, underscoring his shock and awe preference for unveiling policy decisions.
Trump said the Houthis in Yemen had told the US on Monday night that “they don’t want to fight anymore, they just don’t want to fight”.
“We will honour that. We will stop the bombings,” Trump said.
Oman confirmed Trump’s statement that the Houthis agreed to stop attacking vessels in the Red Sea.
"In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping," Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi wrote on X. He said that Oman had been mediating between the US and the Houthis.
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The surprise announcement seemed to have caught US diplomats and defence officials working on Yemen off guard, according to three current officials who spoke to Middle East Eye. They said they were given no warning of the announcement.
Trump also appeared to spring the cessation of a major US military campaign in the Middle East on his Secretary of State and national security advisor Marco Rubio.
“Marco, you’ll let everybody know that,” Trump told Rubio in the Oval Office. “Do you have something to say about that. That’s a pretty big announcement.”
Trump made no mention of Israel despite this announcement coming just days after a Houthi ballistic missile hit a parking lot close to Terminal three at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, sending shockwaves through Israel.
The Houthis began attacking Israel in what they said was solidarity with besieged Palestinians in Gaza after Israel responded to the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks with a horrific assault on the enclave, and attacks on Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen.
The Houthis have focused most of their fire on ships in the Red Sea, targeting first Israeli-linked vessels and then global shipping tied to the West.
The attacks catapulted the Houthis to prominence across the Middle East and the Muslim world.
The Houthis have been supported by Iran, but other US foes also took notice of their attacks in a critical waterway. Russia dispatched military advisors to help the Houthis refine their targeting, MEE revealed. China has also reportedly provided intelligence to the group.
Trump said the Houthis agreed to stop “blowing up ships” and that he “accepts their word.”
Opposition to broader war
The halt in US strikes will bring a sigh of relief to Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, which led a years-long campaign to remove the Houthis from power in a wide swath of Yemen but then agreed to a truce in 2022. The kingdom’s efforts to reach a political settlement with the Houthis have been complicated by the US strikes.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states moved to prevent the US from using their bases or airspace to attack the Houthis, US defence officials told MEE, fearing reprisals from the group.
Trump is set to visit Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar next week.
The halt in US attacks comes as Israel pummels Yemen. On Tuesday, Israel bombed Yemen's main airport.
The US began bombing the Houthis under the Biden administration, but Trump massively escalated the campaign.
Human rights workers, aid officials and Arab diplomats whose countries border Yemen all expressed shock to MEE at the devastation wrought by the American strikes.
A US strike on a migrant centre in Yemen's northern Saada province last month killed at least 68 people. The centre was previously hit by a coalition of Arab states fighting the Houthis, led by Saudi Arabia.
The strikes raised questions about the US’s targeting. Allegations have also swirled that the US was using amateur open-source intelligence accounts on X to pick target packages.
But perhaps more importantly for Trump, the bombing campaign in Yemen has become a domestic political issue.
Yemen encapsulates how Trump has struggled to square his “America First” foreign policy and pledge to end wars overseas with his hawkish instincts.
On Tuesday morning, before Trump announced a freeze in the campaign alongside Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, one of Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress published a takedown of the campaign.
“I’ve never seen a Houthi. Nor has anyone else I know,’ Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X.
“But what everyone knows is that for some reason we don’t attack the real enemy that kills Americans every single day. No we have to runoff and bomb some country somewhere else in the world because we’re told they’re the bad guys,” she wrote.
Greene also launched a broadside against Russia and Iran hawks, suggesting that Iran would not pose a threat to the US if it had nuclear weapons.
"People just don’t care anymore because none of these things actually affected our lives,” she said.
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