In a bid to, in the words of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “do the world a favor” by restoring freedom of navigation to the Middle East, the U.S. military has gone all in on a strategy that rarely works.
Fed up with the ability of the Houthi rebels to disrupt shipping in the vital waterway that connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden for the last year and a half, on March 15, President Donald Trump authorized an “unrelenting” aerial bombardment of the Houthis until they stop shooting at commercial ships and U.S. military vessels.
Trump warned Iran to stay out of the fight while predicting a speedy victory. “Either way they lose, but this way they lose quickly,” he posted on Truth Social. “Watch how it will get progressively worse — It’s not even a fair fight.”
Former President Joe Biden’s administration, which conducted some 112 days of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen between Oct. 7, 2023, and Jan. 20, 2025, had to admit that despite striking hundreds of targets and expending tens of millions of dollars in munitions, it left office with the Houthis degraded but not defeated.
“We have taken a heavy toll on much of their capabilities, but clearly, we have not eliminated that,” John Kirby, Biden’s national security spokesman, ruefully told reporters at his last White House briefing.
This time would be different, said Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz, who has dismissed the Biden effort as a series of “pinprick, back-and-forth, feckless attacks.”
“This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out,” Waltz said on ABC that day after the attacks began. “And the difference here is, one, going after the Houthi leadership and, two, holding Iran responsible.”
Aside from an initial Pentagon briefing and a few details from Waltz, including claiming to have taken out headquarters, missile caches, and “people that the Biden team never could,” there have been few details of the operation released.
While in past U.S. military engagements, the Defense Department has released videos of bombs hitting targets and provided briefings and backgrounders to reporters, the Trump administration has seemingly taken a cue from Fleet Adm. Ernest King, one of America’s World War II five-star officers, who, when asked what to tell the press about how the war was going, reputedly said, “Don’t tell them anything. When it’s over, tell them who won.”
There are no press releases about the daily strikes on the U.S. Central Command website, except for a one-sentence announcement of the beginning of the operation, and videos posted on X largely show repetitive shots of planes launching from aircraft carriers and missiles fired from warships.
When an actual strike is shown, there is no way to tell what was hit or whether it was effective.
As a consequence of the de facto news blackout, there has been a notable lack of critical coverage of the war, which has resulted in Trump becoming the chief and only source of battlefield updates.
And in Trump’s telling, the campaign has been nothing short of a spectacular success.
“The Houthis are absolutely on the run,” Trump said on March 25. “The worst of them has been killed.”
“The Houthis want peace because they’re getting the hell knocked out of them,” he said on March 27. “It’s been very, very strong. The Houthis are dying for peace.”
“The Iran-backed Houthi Terrorists have been decimated by the relentless strikes over the past two weeks,” Trump posted on Truth Social on March 31. “Many of their Fighters and Leaders are no longer with us. We hit them every day and night — Harder and harder. Their capabilities that threaten Shipping and the Region are rapidly being destroyed.”
“We’ve put a major hurt on the Houthis, which nobody’s been able to do,” Trump said on April 7. “We’ve really hit them hard, and they know it, and they don’t know what to do. And it’s every night, night after night … they’ve been very badly damaged. Nobody else was able to do that.”
Trump has laid down the same conditions for ending the strikes as Biden did. “Stop shooting at U.S. ships, and we will stop shooting at you,” he posted on X.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added that not only do the Houthis have to stop shooting, but they must also pledge publicly that they will stop. “It’s only to get more unrelenting until the Houthis declare they will stop shooting at our ships.”
The Trump administration has designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization because, as Rubio told a Fox radio host, “They claim to be the government, but they really aren’t. It’s basically a terrorist organization that over the last 18 months has attacked United States naval vessels 174 times.”
“It’s wrong to think about it as we’re bombing Yemen,” Rubio added. “We’re bombing the Houthis, and they happen to be located in Yemen.”
The U.S. may, in fact, be hitting its targets and killing Houthi leaders, but that’s not necessarily a sign it’s winning.
The Houthis have shown remarkable resilience and seem to be able to feed off their war with military superpower by demonizing the U.S. to whip up anger to maintain popular support among average Yemenis.
Military historians would tell you that standard military doctrine dictates that an air campaign alone cannot bomb a population into submission.
The 1999 war in Kosovo, in which 78 days of NATO bombing forced the capitulation of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, is the exception that proves the rule.
It’s a reality that Russian President Vladimir Putin faces in Ukraine, where three years of punishing airstrikes have leveled entire cities but have yet to break the will of the Ukrainian people.
It’s a lesson the U.S. learned during the Vietnam War.
It’s also the case that the Houthis did not fold under seven years of airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition, assisted by the U.S., which aimed to restore Yemen’s internationally recognized government.
That raises the question of whether Trump, who campaigned on a promise to start no new wars and end old ones, would ever entertain the notion of sending U.S. troops in to finish off the job.
The administration argues that the strong response to the Houthi threat is not just about restoring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.
The massing of American military might in Iran’s backyard, including two air carrier strike groups and a half dozen B-2 stealth bombers armed with 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs, is also, and perhaps more importantly, about putting Iran on notice.
WITH TRUMP LAYING THE GROUNDWORK TO PULL BACK, CAN NATO SURVIVE?
“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing, and it will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,” Trump was quoted as saying in a phone interview with NBC News on March 30.
“We’ve been very clear with the Iranians as well: They should not continue to provide support to the Houthis,” Hegseth said on April 7. “And that message has been made very clear, so we have a lot more options and a lot more pressure to apply.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
