Just call it a win: What's behind Trump's sudden victory declaration against the Houthis?

Sydney Morning Herald

13-05-2025

When he approved a campaign to reopen shipping in the Red Sea by bombing the Houthi militant group into submission, President Donald Trump wanted to see results within 30 days of the initial strikes two months ago.
By day 31, Trump, ever cautious of drawn-out military entanglements in the Middle East, demanded a progress report, according to administration officials.
But the results were not there.
The United States had not even established air superiority over the Houthis. Instead, what was emerging after 30 days of a stepped-up campaign against the Yemeni group was another expensive but inconclusive American military engagement in the region.
The Houthis shot down several American MQ-9 Reaper drones and continued to fire at naval ships in the Red Sea, including an American aircraft carrier. And the US strikes burned through weapons and munitions at a rate of about $1 billion in the first month alone.
It did not help that two $93 million F/A-18 Super Hornets from America's flagship aircraft carrier tasked with conducting strikes against the Houthis accidentally tumbled off the carrier into the sea.
By then, Trump had had enough.
Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, who was already in Omani-mediated nuclear talks with Iran, reported that Omani officials had suggested what could be a perfect off-ramp for Trump on the separate issue of the Houthis, according to American and Arab officials. The United States would halt the bombing campaign, and the militia would no longer target American ships in the Red Sea, but without any agreement to stop disrupting shipping that the group deemed helpful to Israel.
US Central Command officials received a sudden order from the White House on May 5 to 'pause' offensive operations.
The sudden declaration of victory over the Houthis demonstrates how some members of the president's national security team underestimated a group known for its resilience. General Michael Kurilla, the head of Central Command, had pressed for a forceful campaign, which the defence secretary and the national security adviser initially supported, according to several officials with knowledge of the discussions. But the Houthis reinforced many of their bunkers and weapons depots throughout the intense bombing.
Significantly, the men also misjudged their boss's tolerance for military conflict in the region, which he is visiting this week, with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Trump has never bought into long-running military entanglements in the Middle East, and spent his first term trying to bring troops home from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
What's more, Trump's new chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, was concerned that an extended campaign against the Houthis would drain military resources away from the Asia-Pacific region. His predecessor, General Charles Brown Jr, shared that view before he was fired in February.
Ready to move on
By May 5, Trump was ready to move on, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials with knowledge of the discussions in the president's national security circle. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions.
'We honour their commitment and their word,' Trump said in remarks at the White House on Wednesday.
A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, said in a statement to The New York Times that 'President Trump successfully delivered a ceasefire, which is another good deal for America and our security.'
She added that the US military had carried out more than 1100 strikes, killing hundreds of Houthi fighters and destroying their weapons and equipment.
The chief Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said the operation was always meant to be limited.
'Every aspect of the campaign was co-ordinated at the highest levels of civilian and military leadership,' he said in an emailed statement.
A former senior official familiar with the conversations about Yemen defended Michael Waltz, Trump's former national security adviser, saying he took a co-ordinating role and was not pushing for any policy beyond wanting to see the president's goal fulfilled.
Kurilla had been gunning for the Houthis since November 2023, when the group began attacking ships passing through the Red Sea as a way to target Israel for its invasion of the Gaza Strip.
But president Joe Biden thought that engaging the Houthis in a forceful campaign would elevate their status on the global stage. Instead, he authorised more limited strikes – but that failed to stop the Houthis.
Now, Kurilla had a new commander-in-chief.
He proposed an eight- to 10-month campaign in which air force and navy warplanes would take out Houthi air defence systems. Then, he said, US forces would mount targeted assassinations modelled on Israel's recent operation against Hezbollah, three US officials said.
Saudi officials backed Kurilla's plan and provided a target list of 12 Houthi senior leaders whose deaths, they said, would cripple the movement. But the United Arab Emirates, another powerful US ally in the region, was not so sure. The Houthis had weathered years of bombings by the Saudis and the Emiratis.
By early March, Trump had signed off on part of Kurilla's plan – airstrikes against Houthi air defence systems and strikes against the group's leaders. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth named the campaign Operation Rough Rider.
At some point, Kurilla's eight-to-10-month campaign was given just 30 days to show results.
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In those first 30 days, the Houthis shot down seven American MQ-9 drones (costing around $46.7 million each), hampering Central Command's ability to track and strike the militant group. Several American F-16s and an F-35 fighter jet were nearly struck by Houthi air defences, making real the possibility of American casualties, multiple US officials said.
That possibility became reality when two pilots and a flight deck crew member were injured in the two episodes involving the F/A-18 Super Hornets, which fell into the Red Sea from the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman within 10 days of each other.
US strikes had hit more than 1000 targets, including multiple command and control facilities, air defence systems, advanced weapons manufacturing facilities and advanced weapons storage locations, the Pentagon reported. In addition, more than a dozen senior Houthi leaders had been killed, the military said.
But the cost of the operation was staggering. The Pentagon had deployed two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defences, to the Middle East, officials acknowledged privately. By the end of the first 30 days of the campaign, the cost had exceeded $US1 billion ($1.6 billion), the officials said.
The White House began pressing Central Command for metrics of success in the campaign. The command responded by providing data showing the number of munitions dropped. The intelligence community said that there was 'some degradation' of Houthi capability, but argued that the group could easily reconstitute, officials said.
In late April, Hegseth organised a video call with Saudi and Emirati officials and senior officials from the State Department and the White House to come up with a sustainable way forward and an achievable state for the campaign that they could present to the president.
The group was unable to reach a consensus, US officials said.
On April 28, the Truman was forced to make a hard turn at sea to avoid incoming Houthi fire, several US officials said. The move contributed to the loss of one of the Super Hornets, which was being towed at the time and fell overboard. That same day, dozens of people were killed in a US attack that hit a migrant facility controlled by the Houthis, according to the group and aid officials.
Then on May 4, a Houthi ballistic missile evaded Israel's aerial defences and struck near Ben-Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv.
On May 6, two pilots aboard another Super Hornet, again on the Truman, were forced to eject after their fighter jet failed to catch the steel cable on the carrier deck, sending the plane into the Red Sea.
By then, Trump had decided to declare the operation a success.
Houthi officials and their supporters swiftly declared victory, too, spreading a social media hashtag that read 'Yemen defeats America'.