The US is considering backing a ground offensive against the Houthis in Yemen, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The report said that plans to back anti-Houthi militias on the ground have been brought to the US by the UAE and that the US is open to the idea but hasn’t made a final decision yet.
The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, have controlled Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since 2014 and currently govern an area where 80% of Yemenis live. The US supported a Saudi/UAE-led coalition against the Houthis from 2015 to 2022 in a brutal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis but failed to return former Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.
In 2022, after reaching a ceasefire with the Houthis, the Saudis pushed Hadi aside and replaced him with a Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) that includes several different factions. The PLC’s leadership is based in Saudi Arabia, but it is considered Yemen’s “internationally recognized” government.
Factions allied with the PLC have fighters on the ground in southern and eastern Yemen, including the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a southern separatist group. Last year, an investigation from the BBC revealed that the UAE had recruited former al-Qaeda members who joined the STC, including Nasser al-Shiba, an STC commander who is a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole.
Previous reporting during the Saudi/UAE war against the Houthis revealed that the coalition had recruited al-Qaeda fighters to join its ranks. US weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and the UAE also ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Before backing the coalition, the US actually briefly cooperated with the Houthis against AQAP and reportedly shared intelligence with the Zaydi Shia group.
The idea of the new potential ground offensive in Yemen would involve the UAE-backed factions launching an offensive against Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeidah. The Journal report said that Saudi officials have privately said they don’t want to be involved in the ground offensives over fears the Houthis could begin targeting oil fields deep inside Saudi Arabia.
Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, said in a post on X that if the Saudis really opposed the ground offensive, they would stop funding their Yemeni proxies.
“If Saudi truly opposes a new ground war, they can easily stop it by threatening to cut funds for proxy Yemeni ‘government,'” Sperling said. “But if they keep funding their Yemeni proxies as they launch a major ground escalation, Saudi oil and other infrastructure will likely be targeted again.”
The US has been pounding Yemen with airstrikes since March 15, but the bombing campaign has done nothing to deter the Houthis, who have vowed their attacks on Israel and blockade on Israeli shipping would only stop if there was a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory.
A senior member of Ansar Allah’s political bureau has said the Houthis would stop attacks on US warships if the US stopped bombing Yemen. Trump administration officials have claimed they would stop the airstrikes if the Houthis declared they would stop targeting US ships, but there’s no sign the US is considering the offer since the bombing campaign is really about protecting Israel.
