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    UK launches Yemen airstrikes, joining intense US campaign against Houthi rebels

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    British fighter jets joined their US counterparts in airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels overnight, the first military action authorised by the Labour government and the first UK participation in an aggressive American bombing campaign against the group.RAF Typhoons, refuelled by Voyager air tankers, targeted a cluster of buildings 15 miles south of the capital, Sana’a, which the UK said were used by the Houthis to manufacture drones that had targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.The British defence secretary, John Healey, said the attack was launched in response to “a persistent threat from the Houthis to freedom of navigation”. The Iran-backed group has attacked merchant shipping and western warships, leading to a sharp drop in trade flows.“A 55% drop in shipping through the Red Sea has already cost billions, fuelling regional instability and risking economic security for families in the UK,” Healey added in a social media post shortly after midnight.Further updates were expected from the UK later on Wednesday.Britain had joined with the US to conduct five rounds of airstrikes against the Houthis between January and May 2024, part of a campaign authorised by the Biden administration, but has not been involved in a fresh and more intense US effort until now.Since the launch on 15 March of Operation Rough Rider under the Trump administration, 800 targets have been struck resulting in the deaths of “hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders”, according to the US military’s Central Command.There have also been reports of higher civilian casualties. This week, the Houthis said 68 people were killed when a detention centre holding African migrants was struck in Saada, north-west Yemen, while 80 civilians were reported to have died in an attack on the port of Ras Isa on 18 April.Annie Shiel, the US director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (Civic), said the “US strikes continue to raise significant questions about the precautions taken to prevent civilian harm, as required by both international law and US policy”, and noted that there appeared to have been a shift in policy under Donald Trump.Overnight on Tuesday, the UK said it had taken steps to minimise the risk of civilian casualties. The Houthi buildings were targeted with Paveway IV missiles once, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, “very careful planning had been completed to allow the targets to be prosecuted with minimal risk to civilians or non-military infrastructure”.The MoD also emphasised that “as a further precaution, the strike was conducted after dark, when the likelihood of any civilians being in the area was reduced yet further”, though no damage assessment was offered.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere was little immediate comment from the US, though the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has emphasised that the American military must emphasise “lethality, lethality, lethality” and has cut programmes intended to minimise civilian harm.News agencies said the Houthis reported several strikes around Sana’a, which the group has held since 2014, but there were few other details immediately available. Other strikes hit the area around Saada.The Houthis are targeting shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in support of Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza, subject of a renewed offensive by Israel. Though the US boasts considerably more firepower than the group, a $60m (£45m) US navy F-18 Super Hornet jet was lost at sea on Tuesday.US officials said initial reports from the scene indicated the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, on to which the F-18 was being towed, made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire. That contributed to the fighter jet falling overboard and sinking.The start of Operation Rough Rider caused controversy in the US over Hegseth’s use of the unclassified Signal messaging app to post sensitive details about the attacks, including a group containing a journalist. More

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      Trump 100 days: ‘unpredictable’ US alienates allies and disrupts global trade

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      For US foreign policy, Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office were the weeks when decades happened.In just over three months, the US president has frayed alliances that stood since the second world war and alienated the US’s closest friends, cut off aid to Ukrainians on the frontlines against Vladimir Putin, emboldened US rivals around the world, brokered and then lost a crucial ceasefire in Gaza, launched strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and seesawed on key foreign policy and economic questions to the point where the US has been termed the “unpredictable ally”.The tariffs Trump has unleashed will, if effected, disrupt global trade and lead to supply chain shocks in the United States, with China’s Xi Jinping seeking to recruit US trade allies in the region.The pace of the developments in the past 100 days makes them difficult to list. Operating mainly through executive action, the Trump administration has affected nearly all facets of US foreign policy: from military might to soft power, from trade to immigration, reimagining the US’s place in the world according to an isolationist America First program.“The shake-up has been revolutionary, extraordinary. It’s upended 80-some years of American foreign policy,” said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former ambassador to Nato.The Trump presidency has ended the relative peace in the western hemisphere since the end of the second world war underwritten by US economic, military and diplomatic influence, Daalder said.“The foundation of the Pax Americana was trust, and once you break trust, it’s extraordinarily difficult to restore,” he said. “And restoring trust – trust in America, trust in American institutions, trust in American voters – it takes a long time to rebuild.”The US’s key foreign policy and national security making institutions are in crisis. The Pentagon is mid-meltdown under the leadership of Pete Hegseth, whose erratic and unsteady leadership has been reflected in score-settling among his senior staff, while a leaked Signal chat embroiled the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and others in scandal. The state department under Marco Rubio is undergoing a vast shake-up, and the US’s diplomats are being sidelined in favour of envoys such as Steve Witkoff with little background in foreign policy. Critics say the gutting of USAID will cut back on US soft power for generations.“There’s no better way to get us into a war, perhaps a catastrophic war, than essentially poking out your eyes and numbing your brain, and you’re left with Donald Trump and a few people sitting in the White House winging it, and they’re not competent to wing it,” said Steven Cash, a former intelligence officer for the CIA and Department of Homeland Security, and the executive director of the Steady State, an advocacy group of former national security professionals. “And so we’ve seen that with the tariffs. We’ve seen that with Nato. We’ve seen that with Ukraine, and we’re gonna see a lot more of it.”After assuming office in 2021, Joe Biden declared: “America is back.”“The world now knows America is not back,” Daalder said. “America is gone again.”In a recent interview with the Zeit newspaper, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, expressed similar sentiments, saying: “The west as we knew it no longer exists.”View image in fullscreenIn Munich, JD Vance delivered a landmark speech openly pandering to Europe’s far right, accusing European leaders of “running from their own voters” and saying: “America can do nothing to help you.”A backlash has begun. Last month the EU presented an €800bn ($913bn) plan on the future of European defense, a putative step in what would be a herculean task to overcome internal divisions and onshore European defense manufacturing. The UK and other US allies have considered other efforts, such as limiting intelligence-sharing with the US. “We still need America now, but there is a vision [of a time] when we won’t any more,” said one European diplomat.Meanwhile, the Trump effect is beginning to sway elections as well – though not as he might hope.In the western hemisphere, Trump has terrorised US neighbours and tacitly declared what some have compared to a new Monroe doctrine, saying the White House planned to “take back” the Panama canal and annex Greenland, while regularly calling Canada the future 51st state.In an extraordinary bit of election-day meddling, Trump wrote a social media post suggesting that he was on the ballot in Canada’s vote, repeating that Canada should become the 51st state in order to avoid tariffs and reap economic awards.Canadians responded by duly electing the liberal candidate Mark Carney, completing a 30% swing in polling that has largely been explained by opposition to Trump’s tariff war and territorial menaces.In Europe, populist parties seen as Trump’s ideological allies are also on the defensive. While Trump was popular in terms of his ideological and anti-woke agenda, the trade war has made him “quite toxic, just in the last month or two, with a lot of the populist voting bases”, said Jeremy Shapiro, the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former special adviser to the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.Nowhere has the shift in US foreign policy been felt more acutely than in Ukraine, where the sudden cutoff in US military and intelligence sharing confirmed the Trump administration’s goals of pressuring Ukraine to accept a deal with the Kremlin, rather than the other way around. Those frustrations boiled over into an Oval Office meltdown fueled by Vice-President JD Vance that one former US official close to the talks called “disgraceful”.Trump has swung wildly on the war, on certain days targeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and then quickly pivoting to call out Putin for continuing to rain down missiles on Ukrainian cities. His theatrics have produced symbolic moments, including a sudden recognition that “maybe [Putin] doesn’t want to stop the war” after speaking with Zelenskyy this weekend in the baptistry of St Peter’s Basilica. But in terms of hard results, Trump has not fulfilled a promise to end the war within 24 hours or produced a clear path to peace many months later.View image in fullscreenThe Russians have said they largely tune out what he says in public.“We hear many things coming from President Trump,” said Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, during a television appearance this weekend. “We concentrate, as I said, on the real negotiations which President Trump supports and instructed his people to continue to engage in these negotiations.”Key among those people is Witkoff, a neophyte diplomat who has spent hours in conversation with Putin, often with no other adviser present. One person close to the Kremlin said that Witkoff was viewed as a reliable negotiator in Moscow with “a chance to make an agreement”, but added: “There is a chance it will pass by.”Much of the burden of international diplomacy now rests on Witkoff, who is also running point on other key negotiations. Trump has tasked him with reaching a deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, in effect renegotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that he scuttled in 2018. Both the US and Iran have played up the talks, although “differences still exist both on major issues and on the details”, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told state television this week.And then there is the Middle East, where the Trump administration scored its greatest early success by negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza but then failed to prevent its collapse, with Israel cutting off new aid to Gaza as the fighting continues.“There now seems to be less focus on ending the devastating conflict,” wrote Stefanie Hausheer Ali, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs. “Trump’s threat in February to Hamas to release the hostages or ‘all hell is going to break out’ has, in practice, meant Israel restarting the war and blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Without an alternative to Hamas rule, the militant group may hang on and continue to fight as an insurgency, replenishing its ranks by recruiting desperate people.”Trump’s most extreme remarks have turned out to be bluster: he stunned the world when he claimed that he would turn the Gaza Strip into beachfront condos and said that the local Palestinian population would be forcibly removed. Months later, the initiative is largely forgotten.While attempting to close three landmark negotiations at once, the Trump administration has also launched a trade war with the entire world, establishing sweeping tariffs on all foreign imports before abruptly reversing course and cutting tariffs to 10% save for those against China.With so many major efforts ongoing, observers say that the government is largely paralysed to deal with smaller but still crucial issues in foreign policy and national security. As part of a blanket ban on refugees, tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted US troops against the Taliban are left waiting for relocation to the United States, a promise that was extended by previous administrations.“The lack of clarity and the chaos are the things that are causing so much pain,” said Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a group that works with the state department to help resettle Afghans.He said he was critical of both the Biden and Trump administrations for failing to relocate the tens of thousands of Afghans who were far enough along in the vetting program to be relocated before Trump came into office.“The truth is, is that when America makes a promise, you should be able to trust our word,” he said. “If our flag waving over an embassy in Tunisia or Baghdad or Kabul, or Kyiv doesn’t mean this is the place where there’s truth, where there’s justice … well, then what are we even doing here?” More

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      Trump promised peace but brings rapid increase in civilian casualties to Yemen | Dan Sabbagh

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      “I am the candidate of peace,” Donald Trump declared on the campaign trail last November. Three months into his presidency, not only is the war in Ukraine continuing and the war in Gaza restarted, but in Yemen, the number of civilian casualties caused by US bombing is rapidly and deliberately escalating.Sixty-eight were killed overnight, the Houthis said, when the US military bombed a detention centre holding African migrants in Saada, north-west Yemen, as part of a campaign against the rebel group. In the words of the US Central Command (Centcom), its purpose is to “restore freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea and, most significantly, “American deterrence”.A month ago, when US bombing against the Houthis restarted, the peace-promising Trump pledged that “the Houthi barbarians” would eventually be “completely annihilated”. It is a highly destructive target, in line perhaps with the commitments made by Israeli leaders to “eliminate” Hamas after 7 October, and certainly in keeping with statements from Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, that the US military must focus on “lethality, lethality, lethality”.Photographs from Almasirah, a Houthi media organisation, showed a shattered building with bodies inside the wreckage. TV footage showed one victim calling out for his mother in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. It is not immediately obvious they were material to the Houthi war effort, in which the group has attacked merchant shipping in the Red Sea and tried to strike targets in Israel.That the Houthis have sought to fight on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza is not in dispute but what has changed is that the US military response – joint US and UK airstrikes when Joe Biden was in the White House – has escalated. The data clearly suggests that previous restraints on causing civilian casualties have been relaxed.Approximately 80 Yemeni civilians were estimated killed and 150 injured in a bombing raid on Ras Isa port on 18 April, according to the Yemen Data Project, a conflict monitor. The aim, Centcom said, was to destroy the port’s ability to accept fuel, whose receipt it said was controlled by the Houthis, and, the US military added, “not intended to harm the people of Yemen” – though the country is already devastated by 11 years of civil war. Half its 35 million people face severe food insecurity.So far, the Trump administration bombing campaign, Operation Rough Rider, is estimated to have caused more than 500 civilian casualties, of whom at least 158 were killed. Compare that with the previous campaign, Operation Poseidon Archer, which ran under Biden from January 2024 to January 2025: the Yemen Data Project counted 85 casualties, a smaller number over a longer period.Parties in war are supposed to follow international humanitarian law, following the principle of distinction between military and civilian targets, and respecting the principle of proportionality, where attacks that cause excessive civilian casualties relative to any military advantage gained are, in theory, a war crime.The clear signs from the US campaign in Yemen are that it is following a looser approach, mirroring the unprecedented level of civilian casualties in the Israel-Gaza war. It is hardly surprising, given that Hegseth has already closed the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation office, which handled policy in the area, and the related Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, responsible for training.That could make it difficult for traditional allies to assist. Whereas the UK participated in Poseidon Archer, British involvement in the latest operation has gone from minimal to nonexistent. No air-to-air refuelling was provided in the most recent attacks, the UK Ministry of Defence said, unlike in March.In justification, Centcom says that after striking 800 targets, Houthi ballistic missile launches are down 69% since 15 March. But one figure it does not cite is that transits of cargo ships in the Red Sea during March remain at half pre-October 2023 levels, according to Lloyd’s List. A broader peace in the region may prove more effective in restoring trade than an increase in demonstrative violence. More

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      Dozens Killed in Attack on Migrant Facility in Yemen, Houthis Say

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      There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military, which the Iran-backed Houthi militia blamed for the attack in Saada.Dozens of people were killed in an attack on a migrant facility in Houthi-controlled northern Yemen, the Iran-backed militia and aid officials said on Monday.The Houthi militia said that an American strike hit what they called a migrant center in Saada, killing at least 68 African migrants. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the claim.The attack came hours after the U.S. military said that American forces had conducted more than 800 strikes in Yemen since mid-March in a campaign against the Houthis. It said the campaign targeted “multiple command-and-control facilities, air defense systems, advanced weapons manufacturing facilities and advanced weapons storage locations” — but made no mention of civilian casualties.Houthi officials have said that more than 100 civilians have been killed, and condemned the latest strike as a “heinous crime against African migrants.”The Houthis and the U.S. military have made competing claims about who was responsible for civilian deaths in recent strikes. Last week, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said that an explosion on April 20 that killed 12 people in the Yemeni capital had been caused by a misfired Houthi missile, not an American strike as the Houthis had claimed.On Monday, graphic footage broadcast by the Houthi-controlled al-Masirah news channel showed bodies scattered amid the rubble in Saada. In addition to the dozens who were killed, at least 40 migrants were injured, according to two aid officials in Yemen who spoke on the condition of anonymity while they further verified the circumstances of the attack.Each year, tens of thousands of African migrants attempt the perilous journey across the narrow strait separating the Horn of Africa from the Arabian Peninsula, hoping to reach wealthy Gulf States north of Yemen. Nearly 60,900 migrants have arrived in Yemen in 2024 alone, according to the International Organization for Migration.Over the past year, the Houthis have launched rockets and drones at Israel and targeted ships in the Red Sea, saying their actions are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.The United States intensified a bombing campaign against the Houthis starting on March 15, under orders from President Trump, who has vowed to continue military operations until the Houthis no longer pose a threat. More

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      U.S. Military Says Its Air Campaign Has Hit More Than 800 Targets in Yemen

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      President Trump ordered a start to the strikes against the Houthis on March 15. Congressional officials say the campaign has cost well over $1 billion.American forces have hit more than 800 targets in Yemen during an ongoing air campaign that began six weeks ago against the Houthi militia, the U.S. military said on Sunday.The military said the targets of the strikes, called Operation Rough Rider, included “multiple command-and-control facilities, air defense systems, advanced weapons manufacturing facilities and advanced weapons storage locations.”Among the arms and equipment in stockpiles struck by the Americans were antiship ballistic and cruise missiles and drones, the types of weapons that the Houthis have used against ships in the Red Sea, the military said. The details were outlined in an announcement issued by U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations and forces in the Middle East.Congressional officials say the campaign has cost well over $1 billion so far, based on closed-door briefings Pentagon officials gave to Congress early this month, just three weeks into the campaign. The New York Times reported in early April on the rapid rate of munitions used in the campaign, a rate that has caused concern among some strategic planners in the U.S. military.The Houthis have been firing projectiles and launching drones at commercial and military ships in the Red Sea as a show of solidarity with the residents of Gaza and with Hamas, the militant group that controls it. They have been under assault by Israel since Hamas carried out a deadly strike in southern Israel in October 2023 and took hostages.On March 15, President Trump ordered the U.S. military to begin a continual air campaign against the Houthis, after the Biden administration carried out some strikes. Until Sunday, the U.S. military had not publicly disclosed the number of targets struck in Operation Rough Rider.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Says Deadly Blast in Yemen Was Caused by Houthi Missile

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      An explosion near a UNESCO world heritage site in Yemen’s capital on Sunday killed 12 people, according to health authorities tied to the Houthi-led government.A deadly blast on Sunday near a UNESCO world heritage site in Yemen’s capital was caused by a Houthi missile, not a U.S. airstrike, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command said on Thursday.The health ministry of the Houthi-led government said earlier this week that an American airstrike had hit a densely populated neighborhood of Sana, the Yemeni capital, killing 12 people and injuring 30 others. The blast struck an area adjacent to Sana’s Old City, a UNESCO world heritage site filled with ancient towers.Dave Eastburn, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said in a statement that while the damage and casualties described by local health officials most “likely did occur,” they were not the result of an American attack. While the United States had conducted military operations over Sana that night, the closest American strike was more than three miles away, he added.The Pentagon’s assessment that the damage was caused by a “Houthi Air Defense missile” was based in part on a review of “local reporting, including videos documenting Arabic writing on the missile’s fragments at the market,” Mr. Eastburn said. The Pentagon did not provide those videos or evidence of its claims in its statements.An initial review by The New York Times of local reporting and open-source material in Yemen found a video showing a missile fragment with Arabic writing posted to social media, however it was from a different location from the market in Sana’s Old City. Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthis’ Politburo, said in a phone interview that the American denial was an attempt to smear the Houthis. He reiterated that the group believed that the United States targeted the neighborhood on Sunday, “just as it previously targeted ports, cemeteries and citizens’ homes, resulting in the deaths of hundreds.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump says Hegseth is ‘doing a great job’ despite reports of second Signal chat

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      Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth a day after it emerged that Hegseth had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.“He’s doing a great job. Ask the Houthis how he’s doing,” Trump said dismissively, referring to the rebel group in Yemen targeted by those missile strikes, on the sidelines of the White House Easter egg roll event on Monday.Hegseth was revealed to have shared, in a series of messages, plans about US strikes against the Houthis on 15 March before they happened in the Signal group chat that included his wife, his brother and a number of his top military aides.The details that Hegseth sent in were essentially the same information that he shared in a separate Signal group chat earlier this year that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic in addition to JD Vance and other top Trump officials, a person directly familiar with the messages said.But pressure on Hegseth has so far come from people outside of the White House. Trump called the defense secretary on Sunday after the story broke and aides concluded that it had been leaked to the news media by a former Hegseth aide who was in the group chat but abruptly fired last week.Trump has resisted firing top officials in his second term, not wanting to be seen as caving to a media swarm even if he has been unhappy with the negative coverage. Trump also stuck by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who had added the editor of the Atlantic to the first chat.According to a person familiar with the call, Trump told Hegseth that he had his support and that disgruntled leakers were to blame for the story, which was first reported by the New York Times.Trump also told his team to back Hegseth in public, and senior Trump aides repeated their defense line that none of the information shared in either of the group chats were classified, although the accusations have centered on why it was shared with Hegseth’s wife, for instance, since she is not a Pentagon official.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe defense secretary himself appeared furious when asked about the second Signal chat during the White House Easter egg roll event on the South Lawn, telling reporters that the story was a “hit piece” that repeated his defense that it had been pushed by “disgruntled former employees”.But Hegseth faced growing pressure to resign after John Ullyot, his former spokesperson, wrote in an extraordinary opinion essay in Politico on Sunday that the Pentagon was “in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership”.Republican congressman Don Bacon, who sits on the House armed services committee, did not explicitly call for Hegseth’s resignation but suggested he would not keep Hegseth in place were he was the president.“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” said Bacon, a former air force general. “I’m not in the White House and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.” More

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      Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat

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      The defense secretary sent sensitive information about strikes in Yemen to an encrypted group chat that included his wife and brother, people familiar with the matter said.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Mr. Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Forget the Signal Chat. The U.S. Strike on the Houthis Was a Necessary Blow to Pressure Iran.

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      It’s unfortunate that the recent uproar over the use of the Signal messaging app by senior leadership in the Trump administration has obscured the importance of the event they were discussing: a strike against the Houthis on March 15. The attack marked the beginning of a necessary military campaign and a potential turning of the page for the United States in the Middle East.The Biden administration mostly chose to ignore the growing threat to world commerce posed by the Houthis, an Iran-backed group that President Trump has designated a terrorist organization. Its responses were telegraphed and thoroughly watered down to avoid any possibility of escalation by Iran, and, concomitantly, any lasting damage to the Houthis. As a result, the impact on the group was ephemeral at best.It’s important to know that striking the Houthi position in Yemen serves United States interests first and foremost. By trying to assure safe passage through Bab el-Mandeb, the strait that leads into the Red Sea and is critical to international shipping routes, we’re doing much more than simply aiding European commerce. Instead, we’re pursuing several broader goals: First, we’re asserting the importance of free passage on the global commons; we are the world’s greatest maritime nation, and the concept of uncontested transit is fundamental to our security. Second, China is watching us, and will draw conclusions from our actions with Yemen about what we will or will not tolerate happening to Taiwan.Finally, striking the Houthis weakens the one still-fully functional arm of Iranian malfeasance in the region. Hezbollah, Syria and even Hamas are already significantly degraded; now the Houthis, too, are under attack for their reckless actions.Meaningful success will not come easily. Using air power alone to defeat militias has traditionally been difficult. In this case, though, there’s a distinction that has been overlooked by many critics: The goal is not to eliminate the Houthis, or create good governance. Instead, it is to force them to cease using high-technology missiles and drones to attack ships at sea. This is a much narrower and more achievable mission. The Houthi attacks have an electronic and visual signature that is uniquely discoverable, and it plays into our high-tech approach.It is quite likely that the Houthis will use the Yemeni population as human shields, just as Hamas has done with civilians in Gaza. This means that despite our very best efforts, there will be civilian casualties. Those are regrettable, and our forces will work hard to minimize them, even as the Houthis will almost certainly work to maximize both the actual casualties and the anti-American messaging about them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More