What the end of the Houthi campaign means for US power

The Hill

19-05-2025

After 52 days of combat, President Trump ordered the cessation of U.S. airstrikes on the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist organization on May 6. A fragile Omani-brokered agreement will notionally see the Houthis stop attacking U.S. military ships, aircraft and drones if the U.S. stops its strikes on the Yemeni group. Thus, Operation Rough Rider — over a thousand U.S. airstrikes launched in seventy waves — comes to an untidy end, at least for now.
Rough Rider commenced on March 15, 2025 because the Houthis threatened to attack Israeli shipping in the Red Sea if the Gaza ceasefire broke down. On May 7, hours after Trump suspended U.S. operations, Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam repeated exactly the same threat against Israel and 'Israeli ships.'
This perfect circle makes one ask: Did the U.S. just conduct a thousand airstrikes, spend about a billion dollars, and lose eight drones and two F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft for nothing? Worse yet, did the U.S. blink in a staring match with a tiny adversary, signaling weakness to great power competitors like China? Or, as 'restrainers' such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) promptly noted, has the U.S. just pragmatically extracted itself from a potential quagmire where it never should have been in the first place?
The Trump administration was never united on the issue of Rough Rider, as the leaked Signal conversation underlined. The chief 'restrainer,' Vice President JD Vance, struggled to find direct U.S. trade interests to post-facto justify the U.S. pressure campaign against the Houthis. Being that the Houthis were never going to fold to U.S. military pressure — just as they did not submit to 20 years of non-stop combat against the Yemeni government and Gulf States — it was a matter of time before the U.S. sought a face-saver to back out of the fight.
Almost from the outset, Trump and his team repeatedly stressed their willingness to end the operation if the Houthis would return to the status quo ante bellum — the exact same circumstances as before Rough Rider began. Masters at seizing the narrative, the Houthis are already convincingly portraying the U.S.-sought ceasefire as a U.S. defeat.
For all the doom and gloom, the operation has done some good. Fifty-two days of U.S. airstrikes delivered long-overdue 'mowing of the grass' of Iran-provided missiles, drones, radars and air defenses in Yemen, plus the military industries and technicians needed to build and maintain them.
The reality, however, is that all of this can be rebuilt, possibly within a year, unless Iran is prevented from rearming the Houthis by sea and via smuggling routes in eastern Yemen and Oman. The Houthis have a long track record of using such ceasefires to break the momentum of enemy efforts, recover, and then return to the offensive — overrunning domestic opponents, seeking to seize oil and gas sites in Yemen's east, and demonstrating their ability to threaten international shipping — except, of course, ships from their partners in China and Russia.
The Houthis are playing the long game, and so should the U.S. If Israel is to be left to face the Houthis alone, Washington should quietly provide it with all the targeting intelligence needed to keep mowing the grass. U.S. drones should continue to overfly Yemen to 'trust but verify' that the Houthis are not preparing to strike U.S. forces. The U.S. should sustain its closer watch over Iranian efforts to rearm the Houthis.
In addition, under the auspices of U.S. Central Command, draw together the Yemeni government, Saudis, Egyptians, Israelis, Emiratis and Omanis to create a Red Sea security group in which the U.S. is merely a convener, observer and enabler. Stress to all these parties that, should the Houthis threaten them, a collective defensive effort will be activated to provide missile and drone defense, much as Israel was protected twice from Iranian attacks in 2024.
Most important, the U.S. should work to coordinate these partners to strengthen governance and ports in the non-Houthi parts of Yemen, where the UN-recognized government loosely rules. U.S. and Israeli attacks on ports and airports mean that other parts of Yemen — and land borders to the Gulf States — must now carry the burden of importing food and fuel, and they must do so without being intimidated by the Houthis. At very little cost and with practically no U.S. presence, Yemeni forces can be built into a counterweight to the Houthis on the ground, to contain their threat and incentivize Houthi involvement in the Saudi-driven peace process in Yemen.
What does not kill the Houthis makes them stronger, and they will get much stronger if the U.S. now washes its hands of Yemen. In a brutal reckoning, the Trump administration was smart to extract itself from endless bombing of the Houthis. They can now be smarter than prior U.S. administrations by recognizing that there are median options between all-in and all-out. That means convening under one umbrella the forces that want to end the Yemen war and contain the Houthis, all while keeping the Suez Canal open and creating the stability needed to supercharge U.S.-Gulf economic partnership.
Michael Knights is the Jill and Jay Bernstein Fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He visited all the frontlines in Yemen during multiple trips in 2017 and 2018 and is the author of two books and numerous reports on the Yemen war.