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Donald Trump said the United States would stop his bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen in response to Iran’s supported group insurance to stop his attacks on the region’s ships.
“The Houthis have announced … or they told us, at least that they no longer want to fight,” said the American president. “They just don’t want to fight, and we will honor this, and we will stop the attacks, and they have capitulated.”
Trump, who ordered extended military strikes against the Houthis in March, made the surprise announcement when he met Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday.
He came a few hours after Israel bombed Sanaa airport, the Yemeni capital which is controlled by the Houthis, destroying its track and its planes. It was in retaliation for a Houthi missile that exploded near Ben Gurion airport in Israel near Tel Aviv on Sunday.
A person familiar with the case said the Israeli government had not been informed in advance and was “surprised” by Trump’s announcement.
And Yemeni analysts said that there was no sign of public announcements in which the group had declared that he would no longer attack the shipment.
The Houthis began to pull missiles and drones on merchant ships in the Red Sea, one of the main maritime commercial routes in the world, after Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after the attack on Hamas on October 7, 2023.
The group, which was one of the most active members of Iran’s so-called resistance axis, said that it was acting in solidarity with the Palestinians and opposing Israel.
Activists interrupted their attacks after Israel and Hamas agreed with a fragile ceasefire in January. But they threatened to take them back after the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke the ceasefire in March and renewed his offensive in Gaza.
Trump then authorized the most intense American bombing campaign in a decade, when he warned the Houthis that “hell will rain on their” if they attacked the Red Sea expedition.
In the weeks that followed, the American army said it operated “24/7” against the rebels, reached more than 800 Houthi targets and killed “hundreds” of combatants.
But the group hardened in combat, which controls most of northern Yemen, says that it has shot down several US Reaper drones, attempted from attacks against American naval ships and pulled more than a dozen missiles in Israel.
Mohammed Albasha, Yemeni analyst and founder of the Basha report, a risk opinion based in the United States, said that if the United States ended its operations against the rebels, “it is very likely that the Houthis would not retaliate”.
“That they have officially transmitted this to the Trump administration is not clear, but the practical dynamics seem simple – if the United States stops hitting them, they will stop retalling,” said Albasha.
“That said, in the light of intense air strikes in the last 24 hours … and with Israeli military operations in Gaza still underway, it is very unlikely that the Houthis will stop their attacks on Israel or the shipping that is linked to it soon.”
Trump has always insisted that the military operation against the Houthis was to restore freedom of navigation in the waters of the region.
But he also used it to send a warning to Iran before the talks on its nuclear program, claiming that he would hold Tehran responsible for “each blow” pulled by the rebels and that the Islamic Republic would face “disastrous” consequences for any attack by activists.
The Trump administration has since organized three cycles of indirect talks with Iran on its vast nuclear program.
Next week, the American president is expected to go to the Gulf rich in oil, with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi intervened in the Yemen civil war in 2015 to fight the Houthis and supported the ousted Yemeni government.
But Saudi Arabia has sought to get out of the conflict since its agreement with a fragile truce with the Houthis in 2022.
