Trump’s Yemen Strikes Could Ruin His Legacy 

As the U.S. renewed strikes on Yemen’s Ansar Allah group, also known as the Houthis, President Donald Trump issued on Saturday a trenchant warning to Iran. Writing on Truth Social, he called the Houthis “sinister mobsters and thugs” and claimed that all their attacks “emanate from, and are created by, IRAN.” He vowed that “from now on, every shot fired by the Houthis will be considered as a shot fired by the weapons and leadership of Iran, and Iran will be held accountable, and suffer the consequences.” 

The U.S. really does have an interest in keeping order in the Red Sea, where Ansar Allah, in professed solidarity with Palestinians, began disrupting maritime freedom after the Israel-Hamas war erupted. The Houthis are recalcitrant actors responsible for targeting over 100 merchant ships with missiles and drones, sinking two ships and killing four sailors between October 2023 and January 2025, when the ceasefire in Gaza came into effect. For those actions, the Trump administration redesignated the group a terrorist organization.

Yet Trump’s decisions to launch the strikes against the Houthis and threaten Iran run counter to U.S. interests and, if allowed to escalate, risk ruining Trump’s presidency in its early months.

It isn’t entirely clear what the U.S. aims to achieve with the latest strikes in Yemen. There doesn’t appear to be any coherent strategy except to show America’s willingness to use force against “bad actors.” The Houthis had threatened to resume attacks against “Israel-linked vessels” only after Israel cut off aid supplies to the strip. Though they hadn’t yet delivered on that threat, the U.S. bombed Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen on a scale not seen since a Saudi-led campaign in 2015.

That Saudi campaign led to over 150,000 killed and 337,000 dead when indirect causes, like famine and lack of healthcare during the war, are also considered, according to the UN. It also led to accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by both the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis. Yet the war failed to dislodge Ansar Allah from power in Sana’a, the capital.

Trump ordered decisive combat operations against the Houthis, but in the absence of ground forces, the new campaign likely won’t be more successful than the failed Saudi one. In a fundamental shift from 2015, America’s regional allies are now extremely reluctant to re-ignite the war with the Houthis. Saudi Arabia is focused on its ambitious modernization program, and the last thing it needs is Houthi missiles raining down on its cities in retaliation. Oman, another key U.S. ally, has discreetly maintained diplomatic ties with Ansar Allah and would be loath to lose that leverage over an unstable neighboring country.

There are, of course, European forces dispatched to the Red Sea as part of the U.S.-led “Operation Prosperity Guardian,” but their mandate is strictly defensive, i.e. to react to the Houthi attacks on the ships but not to initiate strikes, much less ground operations. The one force that would be keen to fight the Houthis on the ground is Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Yet allowing another Middle Eastern state—after Syria—to fall under Al Qaeda’s sway would be in no nation’s interest, no matter how nasty the Houthis are.

Amid the lack of easy answers, Ann Coulter, the conservative writer, asked the essential question about Trump’s strikes: “Why did we have to do this? Is it part of our constitution that we must be bombing someone at all times?” The headline Coulter retweeted—“Houthis vow retaliation against U.S…”—points to the obvious risk that America is hurtling toward another war in the Middle East. 

That Trump portrayed the Houthis as mere pawns of Tehran makes the situation even more perilous. Iran is the main international backer of the Houthis, but the group is not an Iranian proxy. Unlike Hezbollah, the Shiite militia in Lebanon, Ansar Allah does not subscribe to the Islamic Republic’s system of government by a supreme Shiite jurist. Houthis are not Shiites but follow their own Zaydi school of Islamic jurisprudence. Among Iran’s allies in the region, the Houthis arguably are the most autonomous and the least attached to Tehran’s directives. 

In fact, Iranian diplomats have often been exasperated by the Houthis’ failure to heed their advice, as in 2014, when Tehran warned the Houthis against capturing Sana’a, only to be ignored. To imagine that the Houthis’ response to the U.S. strikes would be determined in Tehran rather than Sana’a is delusional. By tying Tehran to the actions of a group over which it lacks effective control, Trump is recklessly raising the stakes.

If the Houthis retaliate by targeting American assets or personnel in the region and the U.S. then holds Iran responsible, the next phase would likely be a cycle of strikes and counter-strikes that could easily spiral out of control and lead to direct war between the U.S. and Iran. That nearly happened in January 2020, after the Trump-ordered assassination of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani. Both sides stepped back from the brink then. There is no guarantee that such luck would prevail this time around.

If anything, U.S. strikes on Iran would guarantee that the window for diplomacy with Tehran that Trump himself has tried to open will be closed indefinitely. The hardliners in Tehran would benefit politically and intensify calls for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons—something the clerical leadership has balked at hitherto. It is all the more puzzling that Trump chose to harshly threaten Iran at a time when the leadership in Tehran is reportedly pondering a response to his letter to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei requesting negotiations. Since Tehran has repeatedly emphasized that it won’t negotiate with the U.S. under threats and pressure, Trump’s actions seem like unwitting acts of self-sabotage.

If, by contrast, Trump failed to deliver on his threats, he would risk being seen as a paper tiger, which could embolden U.S. adversaries. In other words, Trump’s threats against Iran have left him with few good options, if any, going forward. Trump has deservedly won early plaudits for his efforts to end the war in Ukraine. To the delight of many who advocate foreign policy restraint, he has denounced the hawks who pushed the U.S. into the Iraq war and repudiated their mindset by declaring in his inaugural address the ambition to be remembered in history as a “peacemaker.” It doesn’t make any sense to fritter that credibility away by plunging into a war with Iran, which would be far more ruinous for the world and his own legacy than was George W. Bush’s disaster in Iraq.