The Trump administration announced a ceasefire agreement with the Yemen-based Houthis nearly a month ago, and while attacks have stopped in the Red Sea, the group’s ambition and arsenal, albeit depleted, remain.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth abruptly declared a U.S. victory on May 6, after a seven-week campaign in which U.S. forces hit more than 1,000 Houthi targets across Yemen. The Pentagon had said they began the campaign to restore the freedom for ships to navigate through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, colloquially known as freedom of navigation. 

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“They’ve continued to operate in the country, and they’ve been continuing to mobilize and resupply. So they’re not inactive, and there’s still plenty of threat remaining,” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “I think, like any good military, they’re using this as an opportunity to reconstitute, rather than try to actually go back and do something different with their time.”

The mission was very expensive for the United States. The cost of all the munitions U.S. forces fired totaled more than $750 million. The Houthis were able to shoot down seven U.S. MQ-9 drones, which are valued at approximately $30 million a piece, and the U.S. lost two F/A-18 fighter aircraft that cost more than $60 million each, according to the Associated Press.

The Houthis “will rebuild their arsenal,” Brian Carter, an expert with the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “That’s a given.”

The Houthis first started attacking commercial vessels off their coasts in November 2023 in the aftermath of the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. They targeted more than 100 commercial vessels, many of which missed the target or were intercepted by Western forces, sinking two ships and killing four sailors. They also detained the crew of a vessel they seized and held them prisoner for many months.

Trump said in announcing the ceasefire that the Houthis have agreed to stop firing missiles and drones at commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea, off Yemen’s coasts, but they hadn’t done so since December anyway, according to Wolf-Christian Paes, a senior fellow for Armed Conflict at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Trump said the Houthis had “capitulated but, more importantly, we will take their word that they say they will not be blowing up ships anymore. And that’s what the purpose of what we were doing.”

When the attacks began, shipping companies and insurers were put in the position to decide between continuing sailing through the Red Sea — a much shorter, cheaper, and more dangerous route — or avoiding it by taking the longer voyage around the entire African continent. Many companies chose the latter option, and those that did are cautiously optimistic about the ceasefire.

Clark predicted that many shipping companies that rerouted to go around the Cape of Good Hope will want some “assurances” before going back to the previous routes off Yemen’s coast.

Paes told the Washington Examiner that the percentage of shipping vessels that currently transit the Red Sea is still approximately 50% of what it was before the attacks began.

While the Houthis have maintained that agreement to date, they continue firing missiles at Israel, which was not covered under the ceasefire deal. The two sides continue to carry out retaliatory airstrikes at one another, and the rhetoric between them shows the potential for the conflict to escalate.

“It’s not a perfect end state,” Hegseth acknowledged recently. “[The Houthis are] not completely destroyed.”

The Houthis reportedly now plan to target commercial aircraft flying in and out of Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport, according to a Lebanese publication, which it hit a day after the U.S.-Houthi ceasefire was announced and days after Israeli fighter jets bombed the Houthi-controlled Sanaa International Airport.

The Houthis’ continued attacks against Israel demonstrate they maintain some capabilities even after the U.S.’s seven-week mission, which they have used to bolster themselves domestically. They have said they will cease their attacks on Israel when Israel ends its war in Gaza, and they stopped their attacks during the most recent temporary ceasefire.

“From a political perspective, this is a win [for the Houthis], and they celebrate it as such,” Paes told the Washington Examiner. “If you look at the media, they say, ‘Well, we took on the United States, the biggest military power in the world, and we’re still here to tell the story,’ and  if you’re in their strategic position, that alone is a win.”

If the conditions on the ground change, the Houthis can resume attacks on vessels nearby.

“The Houthis can decide to do things in the Red Sea at any time and for any reason of their choosing,” Carter added. “If they are given a reason to resume and they think that shooting things in the Red Sea will accomplish the objective they’ve set for themselves, then they will.”

One of the Houthis’ closest partners is Tehran, which supplies them with weapons that have enabled their attacks against shipping vessels. The Houthis are, however, less reliant on Tehran for support than other members of the Axis of Resistance, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

The U.S. is also simultaneously negotiating with Tehran over its nuclear program. U.S. and Iranian representatives have met five times in recent weeks to discuss a possible deal and are expected to continue those negotiations.

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Many of Iran’s allies in the region have been severely depleted by the U.S. and Israeli militaries over the last year and a half since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

“The strategy for Tehran is simple, live to fight another day, secure a peace that puts enough of a distance, that buys time, and that time you can exploit the incentive of the other side and the will of the other side,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior director with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said.

Given their weakened state, Israeli leaders are debating whether to conduct a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program, though Trump warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to do so, and to give the negotiations a chance to succeed.