President Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Thursday that he would target Yemen’s Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, and inflict “military punishment” on Iran if more tankers are targeted in the Red Sea.
“A year ago the United States of America attacked, very powerfully, the Houthis, for their interference with commerce and trade, by shooting at ships. Since that time, and during our conflict with Iran, they have acted very responsibly. Unfortunately, now they are starting up again, shooting at two Saudi Arabian ships last night,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if they do this again, the US will hold Iran responsible, in that the Houthis are a Surrogate and/or Proxy of Iran, and major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran and, of course, the Houthis, themselves, who I am very disappointed with in that they have, until now, acted very professionally and smart,” he added.
Trump launched a bombing campaign in Yemen that was conducted from March 15, 2025, to May 6, 2025, which failed to end Ansar Allah’s blockade on Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea and the group’s attacks on Israel, which were being done in response to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. The bombing campaign ended with a ceasefire between just the US and Ansar Allah, as Yemeni attacks targeting Israel continued.
Joe Kent, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned over objections to the Iran war, acknowledged in a post on X on Thursday that the US failed to defeat the Houthis and explained why the group, which has controlled Yemen’s capital Sanaa since 2014 and governs an area of Yemen where most Yemenis live, is so formidable.
“A year ago, we were unable to militarily defeat the Houthis. Two major factors came into play here,” Kent wrote on X. “Issue #1 is finite, and is the reason no one has been able to beat the Houthis. Issue #2 has now worsened and is the result of our lack of strategy in Iran.”
Kent said the first issue is the mountainous terrain of northwestern Yemen, which gives Ansar Allah a tactical advantage, and the second issue is the fact that they know that the US is stretched thin, meaning they may not agree to another ceasefire with the US in the future if Trump restarts the bombing campaign.
The Houthis proved to be durable under the weight of both US & Israeli bombardment, at that was when they were the US’s only target,” Kent said. “Now, the Houthis know we are spread thin and will use this as leverage—this time around, they’ve got the energy crisis working in their favor, and they can use it to double the pressure on us via the [Bab al-Mandeb Strait].”
Ansar Allah also faced a brutal US-backed Saudi/UAE war against them from 2015 to 2022, which killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, including many young children who starved to death under a blockade, but failed to achieve the Saudi goal of ousting the Houthis from Sanaa and reinstalling the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who died in Riyadh earlier this year.
The Saudis appeared to have reignited the war, which was in a state of ceasefire that has held relatively well since 2022, by bombing the Sanaa International Airport last week to prevent a plane flying from Iran from landing. In response, Ansar Allah targeted a Saudi airport with missiles and drones and announced a maritime blockade on Saudi ports, calling it a “blockade for a blockade.”
