US officials met with representatives of Ansar Allah, commonly known as the Houthis, at the US Embassy in Muscat, Oman, over the weekend to discuss the conflict in Yemen, according to a report from Reuters.
Sources told Reuters that the meeting took place on Sunday and that Ansar Allah conveyed that it wanted to stick to a ceasefire it reached with the US in May 2025, after a US bombing campaign in Yemen that failed to halt Ansar Allah’s attacks on Israel and its blockade on Israeli shipping. The war ended in a deal that involved the US halting its strikes on Yemen and Ansar Allah halting attacks on US warships and US commercial shipping.
The Ansar Allah officials said they had no intention of targeting US or Israeli ships in the current conflict and that the blockade applies only to Saudi shipping. President Trump had previously suggested such an arrangement was still in place, claiming the “Houthis called us” and said they didn’t want to fight the US.
Trump had also reportedly denied a request from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the US to launch airstrikes against Ansar Allah as its fighters began rapidly gaining territory, which led to Ansar Atook gaining full control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
However, the US is still deeply involved in the war since it’s providing intelligence and targeting support, and reportedly has up to 200 troops in Saudi Arabia to assist in the Saudi bombing campaign. According to a report from Axios, Trump gave MbS the green light to escalate in Yemen before Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes against the Sanaa International Airport on July 13, which reignited the war.
The war had been under a ceasefire since 2022, but no full peace deal was ever implemented. Sanctions the Biden administration reimposed in 2024 that re-designated Ansar Allah as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” block the implementation of a deal that had been negotiated, and the Trump administration ramped up the sanctions last year by re-designating the group as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.”
The Reuters report noted that US officials met with Ansar Allah officials despite the terror designations and that one of the Yemeni officials who was involved in the talks, Mohammad Abdulsalam, is under US sanctions. The US side was represented by US embassy personnel.
