While President Donald Trump declared a victory between the U.S. and the Houthis, a Yemen-based terrorist group, things are still uncertain in the Middle East. This week, Lindsay Cohn of the US Naval War College joined Audacy to discuss the Houthis and the current state of the conflict with the U.S.
“So, the Houthis are a group in Yemen based on both religious and tribal identities,” she explained. “They’ve been involved in the civil war in Yemen since 2014. When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 {2023] and Israel responded, the Houthis took that opportunity to come into the fight on the Palestinian side.”
According to documents shared by Congress, the Houthis are a Zaydi Shia network. Back in 2014, the Houthis seized the Yemeni capital of Sana’a during a period of political instability and later advanced on other areas. In response, a collation led by Saudi Arabia began a military campaign against the group, with eventual support from the U.S.
“Yemeni officials and Sunni [a separate branch of Islam from Shia] states have repeatedly alleged that Iran and its proxy Hezbollah have provided arms, training, and financial support to the Houthis,” per the Wilson Center. “But Iranian and Hezbollah officials have denied or downplayed the claims. The United States, in coordination with Saudi Arabia, has presented physical evidence of Iranian arms transfers to the group.”
As the Israel-Hamas war continues, so has conflict between the Houthis and the U.S. This March, the U.S. State Department designated the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), “fulfilling one of President Trump’s first promises upon taking office.”
Cohn explained that, amid the conflict in Israel and Gaza, the Houthis began firing at shipping in the Red Sea, “which is a passage, a choke point between European and Asian shipping.” President Joe Biden’s administration started firing back, mostly shooting down missiles, but then firing at targets inside Yemen.
“Then the Trump administration came in and said: ‘Well, we’re going to expand this campaign. We just haven’t been firing on enough targets.’ So the Trump administration started firing on significantly more targets in Yemen.”
For example, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s bombshell article “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans,” revealed that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth texted him plans via Signal on the morning of March 15 regarding the U.S. bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
Cohn noted that this campaign has been “extremely expensive for the United States [around $10 billion] and has not appeared to degrade Houthi capabilities anywhere near the extent it was supposed to.” She added that previous carpet-bombing attacks of Yemen by Saudi Arabia over the past decade have likewise been “problematic.”
“The Yemeni people have been suffering horribly for the last 11 years at this point,” she told WWL’s Tommy Tucker. “Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world. The famine rate is intense. And, you know, the U.S. strikes have been more targeted, but the Trump administration strikes are less targeted than the Biden administration. One of our strikes recently hit a migrant center and killed a number of people who had nothing to do with the Houthis.”
Cohn said that the strikes have degraded some of the Houthi’s capabilities, that the U.S. has killed some of the group’s mid-level people and that their exhaustion with being bombed was a factor in the Houthis agreeing to a ceasefire deal. However, the deal doesn’t prevent the Houthis from firing on anyone else, including Israeli ships. Although it might allow U.S. ships to return to the Red Sea area, it is not without risks, as fighting between Israel and the Houthis continues. Listen to Cohn’s talk with Tucker here to learn more.