The Trump administration should seize it.
The Trump administration should seize it.
T he Houthi offensive in Yemen is a transformational opportunity — for the United States. It provides Washington, at long last, with a way to demonstrate to the powers of the Middle East that there is no alternative to American support, a reality that Washington should impress across Eurasia. The Trump administration should therefore act with strategic patience, while preparing for a coalition intervention in Yemen. Indeed, the New Middle East requires that the Houthi threat be eliminated, the Gulf States finally wedded into an American-led coalition, and America’s allies reminded that the United States is a powerful, unmatched partner.
The Houthi movement is the result of an evolutionary contest sparked by the Global War on Terror. The United States waged a remarkably successful tactical-level military campaign against al-Qaeda in particular, alongside other predominantly Sunni Jihadist groups, throughout the 2000s, using a combination of increasingly exquisite intelligence, high loiter-time drones, and Special Operations Forces to grind down these organizations during and independently of counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reaction in the 2010s was the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an entity that formally claimed the mantle of statehood and sought to control territory. This model, however, met an even more rapid end, with the United States underpinning a truly global coalition to destroy the self-declared Islamic Caliphate.
The Houthis have charted a middle path between these types of terrorist organizations. On the one hand, they largely abstain from international terrorism, whether that of the al-Qaeda suicide-bomber variant or that of the hijackings by Palestinian terrorist groups during the Cold War. On the other hand, they do not simply control territory, like the post-2021 Taliban or the Sharia-led Syrian government. They work closely with other non-state actors and, crucially, with Iran. They have obtained capabilities — namely ballistic missiles and long-range drones — that allow them to attack high-value infrastructure targets in Saudi Arabia and, at minimum, harass shipping moving through the Bab-el-Mandeb. Contemporary evidence exists of Houthi cooperation with al-Shabaab, Somalia’s highly durable al-Qaeda franchise, alongside Houthi and Iranian presence in Sudan to smuggle arms. Combined with this is the Houthi model of low-tech warfare, under which lightly armed, hardy, ideologically committed fighters blend into Yemen’s terrain. The result is a persistent threat that can quickly escalate from a limited problem into a severe regional one.
The Houthi threat mattered well before the 2026 Iran war. The Houthis are a key member of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, generating pressure against Saudi Arabia and the UAE from the south. Pressure on the Bab-el-Mandeb also disrupts Israeli and Egyptian trade, while threatening Saudi oil exports from its Yanbu west-coast bypass pipeline. Moreover, adding two weeks of transit time by directing traffic around Africa, rather than taking the Bab-el-Mandeb, imposed meaningful costs for the global economy.
With the Strait of Hormuz disrupted, the potential for a full-scale Houthi blockade of the Bab-el-Mandeb becomes an even more acute risk. Taking the 3–5 million barrels of oil that are shipped daily from the Saudi port of Yanbu off the market would send inflation skyrocketing. Indeed, this situation is increasingly a reality. Allegedly, the Houthis hit Saudi Arabia’s East–West Pipeline — more likely Iran executed the operation from either Yemeni or Iraqi territory. This is combined with a Houthi offensive that has taken much of Yemen’s west coast. Iran can thus dramatically increase its global economic leverage on the eve of the 2026 midterms.
The stubborn reality of the Houthi problem is that it requires a ground deployment to solve. Operation ROUGH RIDER, the U.S. air campaign against the Houthis in early 2025, was canceled after only two months of a planned yearlong effort. But the United States has limited capacity to execute a similar campaign today. The U.S. could use its two Carrier Strike Groups currently dedicated to deterring and periodically attacking Iran against targets in Yemen. But the logistics of this would be complicated, requiring refueling from Diego Garcia–based tankers. Moreover, no additional carrier is available for deployment to the Mediterranean and Red Sea, unlike in 2025. While American airpower applied over time would certainly have better results than Saudi airpower in 2015, the Houthi problem must be addressed more rapidly than in just one year. All this speaks to the use of ground forces.
This does not, however, mean that the deployment of significant U.S. forces should be imminent. There are, instead, two key intersecting forces that make an American effort against the Houthis not simply strategically relevant but an opportunity for long-term leverage.
The first is the way the Houthi threat demonstrates the real stakes of Saudi Arabian duplicity over the past three years. The Kingdom, despite its soothing rhetoric toward the Trump administration, has repeatedly attempted to constrain American actions and undermine other regional partners. It has spurned formal cooperation with Israel, even joining with multiple American adversaries in condemning the U.S. ally. It has refused to allow the U.S. to use its bases for attacks on Iran in the past months, with Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman repeatedly indicating that threats to Saudi oil infrastructure outweigh other American interests.
And yet, over the past 18 months, Saudi Arabia has chosen to pick repeated fights with the UAE and align with Turkey, all at Israel’s expense. This policy has led directly to Houthi gains — after Saudi-backed forces drove the UAE to abandon its investments in Yemen, Riyadh proved incapable of taking over any regional proxy networks. The result has been a staggering Houthi success, under which the group now seeks control of the Bab-el-Mandeb.
Washington obviously suffers from the current Houthi success. But for Riyadh, the issue is existential. The very fact that Saudi Arabia is unwilling to respond to the Houthi offensive beyond token airstrikes demonstrates its degree of vulnerability. It undoubtedly fears that a major counterattack would invite direct Iranian reprisal. Saudi vulnerability presents an opportunity to compel its realignment with the UAE, and by extension with Israel, against Iran.
American intervention, meanwhile, should not take the form of a major ground deployment. It should instead leverage the model that the UAE used in the first place, combining Special Operations, intelligence, and private contractors to weave together a local force to combat the Houthis. The networks the UAE established are largely still in existence. They must simply be reactivated, a task that can be accomplished with cash and intelligence support.
This generates the second upshot, an unmistakable demonstration of American power. By generating a new Middle Eastern order through strategic patience and the targeted application of force, the United States can remind allies and adversaries of the value the U.S. provides as a partner. Doing so will benefit U.S. interests far beyond the immediate one, securing safe passage from Suez to the Indian Ocean.