The Trump administration has quietly enmeshed US forces in yet an open-ended conflict in the Middle East, one that risks turning into exactly the sort of draining, distracting quagmire that Donald Trump once had pledged to avoid.
On March 15, the US began a campaign of airstrikes, known as “Operation Rough Rider,” against the Houthis, the Iran-backed militant group that controls much of Yemen, and has been firing at commercial ships and military vessels in the Red Sea since the beginning of the war in Gaza in 2023.
The Biden administration, as well as Israel’s military, also carried out a number of strikes against the Houthis, but the ongoing US campaign is far more extensive. There have been at least 250 reported airstrikes so far, according to open-source data collected by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute.
According to some reports, more than 500 Houthi fighters have been killed, including senior commanders, though the group tends to be tight-lipped about its casualties. The Yemen Data Project, a monitoring group, has also documented more than 200 civilian casualties. The largest strike so far, on a key oil terminal on Yemen’s coast, killed more than 74 people last week.
The administration seems satisfied with the results so far.
The ongoing strikes against the Houthis are “the first operation of this scale that the US has conducted against Houthi forces, and they really are on their back foot right now,” Peter Nguyen, the National Security Council’s director of strategic communications, told Vox.
However, the attacks could place the US on the verge of entering another Middle East war.
The resources devoted to the conflict have been significant. The Pentagon has moved a second aircraft carrier group to the region to join one already there. It has also relocated at least two Patriot missile batteries as well as a THAAD missile defense system — one of the most advanced systems in the US arsenal — from Asia to the Middle East.
The New York Times has reported that in just the first three weeks of the campaign, the US used $200 million worth of munitions, and that military officials are concerned about its impact on stocks the Navy would need in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, making the US underprepared should an Asian conflict arise.
Assuming the Houthis continue their attacks — as they’ve said they’ll do — the question becomes how long the US will sustain the operation. This week, the White House released a legally required report to Congress on the operation, stating that the strikes would continue until “Houthi threat to United States forces and navigational rights and freedoms in the Red Sea and adjacent waters has abated.”
But the Wall Street Journal has also recently reported that officials are considering winding the strikes down. Should that happen, Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemeni defense analyst, told me the Houthis would walk away emboldened.
The alternative could be the US becoming even more deeply involved in the conflict. Internationally backed Yemeni factions opposed to the Houthis are reportedly considering taking advantage of this moment to launch a ground campaign to oust the group once and for all. US officials have not yet made a decision on whether to back that operation.
Most analysts and officials say American troops participating in ground operations in Yemen is highly unlikely, but even more limited support for a ground operation would still be another case of the US backing armed groups in a messy Middle Eastern civil war.
That said, the strikes are not just about the Houthis. They are also widely seen as a demonstration of strength toward the group’s main patron, Iran. The administration is currently locked in a new round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and Trump has not ruled out military action — likely led by Israel — against the Iranians if those talks fail.
