After nearly two years of Houthi strikes on Western shipping, President Donald Trump suddenly announced a ceasefire in May with the Houthi terrorists occupying parts of Yemen. But this agreement has not stopped the rebel group from attacking American interests. Even after it was announced, the Houthis continued to target our regional allies, including shooting missiles at civilian targets in Israel. American operations may have ended, but the war has not.
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Retreating from the Red Sea sends the wrong signal to the world. For one, trusting guarantees made by terrorist groups never works out well for America — these fanatics are utterly committed to the destruction of us and our allies. Furthermore, withdrawal would give the Iranians an opportunity to rearm the Houthis and prepare them for yet another round of terrorism. Rather than committing to a ceasefire, then, the administration should find ways to defeat the terrorist group.
At the outset of his administration, Trump took the right stance against the Houthis. He inherited a series of strategic catastrophes from the Biden administration, but few were as dangerous as the crisis in the Red Sea. The Houthis, backed by Iran, effectively deployed cheap drone and missile technology in the narrow Bab al Mandab Strait to put increased stress on supply chains that were already overburdened. In contrast to the somewhat lackluster military response from the Biden administration, Trump, upon reentering office, immediately ordered a series of bold actions to hit the Houthis with much more strength. After that effort, code-named “Operation Rough Rider,” began in March, American strikes killed over 500 Houthi fighters and substantially degraded their military infrastructure.
Despite this initial success, Trump reversed course. The administration allegedly received assurances from the terrorist group’s leaders that they would stop attacking Western vessels in exchange for a halt in American airstrikes. It is uncertain at this point if the Trump administration will also follow its predecessor’s lead and remove the Houthis’ designation as a foreign terrorist organization. What is certain, though, is that Trump would like to pivot away from this fight.
As the continued strikes against Israel show, retreat is shortsighted. Houthi attacks on America and its allies must be understood in the wider context of Iran’s proxy war against the West — a conflict that will not end with this ceasefire, or even with a nuclear deal being discussed. Too weak to take on America and its allies by themselves, the mullahs have spent years building up a network they refer to as the “Axis of Resistance” out of terrorist groups across the Middle East. Iranian weapons turned the Houthi movement, originally a somewhat backwater group of religious extremists, into first a full-fledged rebellion against Yemen’s government and then the de facto rulers of the country. The Houthis are utterly dependent on Tehran for what strength they possess, and the regime expects them to carry out attacks on the hated Westerners in exchange for continued support.
So even if a truce between the United States and the Houthis holds, it can be safely assumed the terrorist group will continue doing the Islamic Republic’s bidding in this proxy war. The exact nature of the “capitulations” the Trump administration extracted remains somewhat unclear, but Houthi representatives have already said they do not include a cessation of hostilities against Israel. Since Trump announced the ceasefire, the terrorist group has attempted to hit civilian targets within the Jewish state with drones, likely provided by Iran. Following the lead of their masters in Tehran, the Houthis have no real intention of actually recanting their aggression, and, therefore, a ceasefire will only give them time to lick their wounds and rearm for future assaults.
This was a lesson former President Joe Biden failed to learn, with disastrous effects. Mere days before the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, his administration hubristically declared that the Middle East was “quieter than it has been for decades” because of its “persistent and principled” commitment to diplomacy. But what that actually looked like was appeasement and retreat. Biden’s hasty decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan began his administration with a signal of fundamental weakness that invited aggression from America’s enemies around the world. That catastrophe was accompanied by a number of smaller, but no less imprudent, decisions regarding the Middle East itself, such as removing the Houthis from our list of designated terrorist organizations, that enabled Iran to build up its proxy forces and prepare for an all-out assault on the West.
Despite their predecessors’ mistakes, some Trump administration officials seem to support this new truce with the same enemies out of a similarly shortsighted desire to move on from this fight. Vice President JD Vance, for instance, said in the now-infamous leaked Signal chat about Operation Rough Rider that even the initial strikes were a “mistake” because taking a stand against Houthi terrorism would just be “bailing out Europe again.” Many so-called “America Firsters” seem to believe that a faraway conflict has little to do with our national interests. Others have worried about the cost of the military action, which is reaching over $1 billion. Another faction holds that this truce could help build “momentum” for a new nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. While these concerns are each valid to some extent, they neglect the way Houthi terrorism and the Iranian aggression fueling it directly affect Americans.
Shipping companies seem to understand the risks of a ceasefire better than Trump administration officials. Although some have expressed cautious optimism that the ceasefire will hold, the Wall Street Journal reports that most remain deeply skeptical that they are actually safe from Houthi attacks. Total traffic through the Red Sea has dropped by at least 60% since the crisis there began, and it is unlikely to go back to normal any time soon without firmer assurances that the violence has truly ended. That uncertainty has led to increased shipping costs not only for European consumers but also for Americans. The public should not be called upon to bear such an unnecessary price, especially in a time of rampant inflation.
To make matters worse, Iran is not the only enemy using the chaos caused by Houthi terrorism to damage American interests. President Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Chinese Communist Party are also exploiting the situation. Putin has been supplying the extremists with weapons and intelligence and has been providing vital diplomatic support on the global stage. The CCP has also backed the Houthis since the start of the Red Sea crisis, providing similar kinds of aid in exchange for safe passage for its own cargo vessels. These enemy powers hope that joining Iran’s proxy war against the U.S. will tie down our power in the Middle East so that they can carry out acts of aggression unimpeded in their own regions.
Some have argued that this axis of revisionist adversaries seeks to lock American forces in a “strategic trap” as we fight the Houthis. They are right — the CCP would much rather see the U.S. Navy conducting a counterterrorism campaign in the Red Sea than patrolling the Taiwan Strait, and we can be sure that Putin loves the distraction from his criminal invasion of Ukraine. But the so-called “prioritizers” in the Trump administration who want to end Operation Rough Rider do not understand that backing away from the fight now, without securing a real victory, would damage American prestige in ways we cannot afford. Even more concretely, retreat now leaves open the possibility of our adversaries deploying the Houthis in a similar manner again. This crisis underscores the ways that great power competition in the 21st century is complicated and truly global in ways it has never been before. Playing to win means projecting power to answer our adversaries’ challenges wherever they arise. The world is too interconnected to be reduced to artificial “theaters” with distinct conflicts.
Instead of simply retreating from the Red Sea, then, the U.S. needs a new and more effective plan for eliminating the Houthi threat once and for all, one that balances our limited resources with our broader strategic aims. A recent report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies outlines a helpful playbook for achieving that goal. Among an array of options, the monograph proposes targeting “Houthi stockpiles of strategic materials including cash and fuel; the regime’s carefully cultivated image of invincibility among Yemenis; and the key security leaders responsible for enforcing Houthi control over Yemen.” Operation Rough Rider was already succeeding in achieving these aims in part — it makes no sense to stop until the job is done.
Aside from these tactical strikes to undermine the Houthis’ capabilities in the near term, there is also much the administration could do to erode the terrorist group’s more fundamental sources of power. The FDD report, for instance, recommends toppling “the major pillars that uphold the regime, forcing it to contend with instability or collapse if its destabilizing and rogue behavior persists.” From Houthi-controlled banks to the flow of weapons and other supplies from Tehran, eliminating these vital centers of gravity would make it very difficult for the organization to recover enough to return to any kind of strength. While military might is certainly an important aspect of this approach, there are also less costly ways to weaken the Houthis, from sanctions to cutting off the group from the global banking system.
Continuing the offensive against the Houthis would also be beneficial to a broader U.S. strategy in the Middle East. Even if the administration wanted to shift more of the actual warfighting responsibilities to regional partners, American leadership of an anti-Houthi coalition could help promote further Arab-Israeli normalization and demonstrate the power of the new order created by the administration-backed Abraham Accords. Sharing the burden of these counterterrorism operations would enable the U.S. to reallocate assets according to global needs, as well as build up a more permanent security architecture administered by our allies in the Middle East.
Such a campaign would also further the trend of denying Iran the ability to use its proxies. After the decapitation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, and the ruination of Hamas in Gaza, Tehran is increasingly isolated and weakened. Destroying its proxy forces in Yemen would be another great blow, delegitimizing the regime’s strategy and anti-Western “Axis of Resistance” bluster. We cannot lose sight of the fact that the Islamic Republic’s insane quest for hegemony is the greatest cause of instability in the Middle East — any geopolitical strategy adopted by the U.S. must aim first and foremost at denying it to them.
While it is not necessarily the U.S.’s responsibility to rebuild Yemen completely, it is entirely within our interest and ability to keep degrading the ability of Tehran’s proxy there to commit acts of terrorism against the West. So long as Houthi militants occupy strategic positions on the Arabian Peninsula and possess the weapons for strikes in the Red Sea and beyond, Americans’ freedom of navigation and our regional allies’ security will face grave risks. Truly, a victory over this threat would be a far better outcome, and a far better guarantee of peace, than another temporary ceasefire.
Michael Lucchese is the founder of Pipe Creek Consulting, an associate editor of Law & Liberty, and a contributing editor to Providence.