President Trump on Wednesday claimed that the US’s daily airstrikes on Yemen have been “very successful” and vowed the bombing campaign would continue for a “long time.”
The US started bombing Yemen again on March 15 in response to the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, announcing they would reimpose a blockade on Israeli shipping due to Israeli ceasefire violations in Gaza.
Since the Trump administration launched the bombing campaign, the Houthis have restarted attacks on US warships and resumed firing missiles at Israel, operations they ceased when the Gaza ceasefire went into effect on January 19. Despite this, President Trump claims the Houthis want “peace.”
“The Houthis are looking to do something. They want to know, ‘How do we stop? How do we stop? How can we have peace?’ The Houthis want peace because they’re getting the hell knocked out of them,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“They want us to stop so badly… They’ve got to say, ‘No mas.’ But I can only say that the attacks every day, every night… have been very successful beyond our wildest expectations… We’re going to do it for a long time. We can keep it going for a long time,” the president said.
The Houthis’ message has been that they will meet “escalation with escalation” and that their attacks won’t stop unless there is a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli blockade on aid and all other goods entering the Palestinian territory.
“The Yemeni Armed Forces affirm that the American aggression will only increase the Yemenis’ steadfastness and resilience, and that the confrontations over the last few days were only the beginning of what will be a gradual expansion of defensive operations in the coming days,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Thursday when announcing new attacks on US warships and on Israel.
Trump also claimed that the Houthis are being “hit harder than they have ever been.” But from 2015 to 2022, the Houthis faced a brutal US-backed Saudi-UAE war against them, which involved a heavy bombing campaign, a blockade, and a ground campaign. Trump supported the war during his first term in office and vetoed a War Powers Resolution passed by Congress that would have ended US involvement in the conflict.
Trump said that President Biden should have attacked the Houthis, disregarding the fact that the Biden administration launched a bombing campaign on Yemen from January 2024 to January 2025. The message from the Trump administration has been that Biden didn’t hit Yemen hard enough, and Trump’s bombing campaign has been far more intense.
The Trump administration’s bombing campaign has taken a heavy toll on civilians, with at least 25 killed in just the first week, according to the Yemen Data Project. The leaked Signal chat that caused controversy this week revealed that top US officials celebrated the flattening of a residential building in Yemen, where National Security Advisor Mike Waltz claimed the Houthis’ “top missile guy” was located.
