Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has called for other countries to join the US in attacking the Houthis in Yemen, a country she previously strongly opposed intervening in.
The US launched a major round of airstrikes against Yemen on Saturday and in the days that followed, killing at least 53 people, including women and children. Gabbard said that the US wants countries that are more impacted by a disruption in Red Sea shipping to get involved.
“Our country and other countries should not be in a position to reroute commerce going through that area simply because of the threat that exists,” she told the Indian broadcaster NDTV during a visit to India, according to Bloomberg.
Gabbard said that President Trump had taken decisive action and that the US “will look to other affected countries, as there are many impacted by this, to similarly take action.”
The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, ceased their attacks on Israel and Red Sea shipping after the Gaza ceasefire went into effect on January 19. The US began bombing Yemen again in response to the Houthis announcing that they would reimpose a blockade on Israeli shipping in the region.
During President Trump’s previous term in office, when Gabbard was in Congress, she was a leading critic of the US-backed Saudi war against the Houthis in Yemen, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.
“It is absolutely outrageous that the United States has continued its support for years now for Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war in Yemen that has killed thousands and thousands of innocent Yemeni people and caused mass starvation,” Gabbard said in a 2018 interview with The Real News.
At the time, Gabbard was critical of the fact that the Yemen war was unauthorized by Congress, making US participation illegal under the Constitution. President Trump’s new bombing campaign is also unauthorized and illegal, as was President Biden’s airstrikes against the Houthis that he launched from January 2024 to January 2025.
Gabbard was involved in a War Powers Resolution that would have ended US support for the Saudi war in Yemen, which was vetoed by Trump in 2019. “Congress has now for a very long time given up its responsibility to declare war. And this war in Yemen is a perfect example. So, I and a few of my colleagues are introducing a resolution that will take back our congressional authority and responsibility that’s given to us through the United States Constitution to stop this, our illegal participation in this Saudi-led genocidal war in Yemen,” she said in the 2018 interview.
