[News] The real reason Donald Trump is bombing Yemen

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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<https://mondoweiss.net/2025/03/the-real-reason-donald-trump-is-bombing-yemen/?ml_recipient=149487200281560207&ml_link=149487134859855604&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2025-03-21&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation>
The real reason Donald Trump is bombing Yemen
Mitchell Plitnick
March 20, 2025
------------------------------

Just two days before Israel resumed the full scale of its genocide in the
Gaza Strip, the United States began a bombing campaign in Yemen.

The U.S. aggression is a significant part of the recipe for endless war and
devastation of the Middle East that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump are cooking up.

While Israel <https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-846195> and the
U.S.
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/18/israel-informed-us-before-new-gaza-strikes>
clearly communicated about these operations, each country has presented its
actions as independent of, but cooperative with, the other. Of course, this
is partially an attempt to obscure the reality that Israel cannot pursue
its relentless genocide in Gaza without the material support it gets from
the United States.

But there’s another piece for Trump. He prefers to present his and
Netanyahu’s approach as one of independent, if allied, countries acting in
their own perceived interests. He likes to present an image of Israel
charting its course and the U.S. pursuing its own interests, an image that
crumbles the moment Trump wants Israel or anyone else to act according to
his wishes.

U.S. attention is focused not on Gaza, but on Yemen, allowing Netanyahu to
resume his full-scale genocide, to which Trump is indifferent. Yet, while
Trump can fantasize all he wants about lounging repulsively on Gaza’s beach
with Netanyahu, there are American businesses that have a stake in
preventing Ansar Allah (often called the Houthis) from acting in defense of
and in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Trump’s motivations are always a bit of a muddle, and that is as much by
design as it is the result of his impetuousness, ignorance, and short
attention span. But the U.S. clearly has an interest in stopping Ansar
Allah’s attacks on Red Sea shipping, and there is still an absolute refusal
in Washington to do the one thing that is certain to accomplish that: force
Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza. These realities seem to have been part
of the calculus in the U.S. attacks on Yemen, which are ongoing
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/19/trump-warns-yemens-houthis-will-be-completely-annihilated>
.
*It’s about Iran*

In the bigger picture, it is, as always, also about Iran. It is not a
coincidence that the attacks first on Yemen and then on Gaza came in the
wake of Trump sending a letter
<https://www.axios.com/2025/03/07/trump-iran-nuclear-deal-letter> in early
March to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calling for new talks
on a nuclear deal.

On Wednesday, it was reported
<https://www.axios.com/2025/03/19/trump-letter-iran-nuclear-deal> that in
that letter, Trump gave Iran a two-month deadline to reach a new deal.
Iran already
said
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/03/16/iran-trump-nuclear-program-houthi/>
they were not going to be threatened and bullied into new talks. That
statement came in response to Trump threatening war if Iran did not come
across.

“We are down to final strokes with Iran. We are down to the final moments.
We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon. Something is going to happen very
soon. I would rather have a peace deal than the other option but the other
option will solve the problem,” Trump told reporters
<https://www.axios.com/2025/03/07/trump-iran-nuclear-deal-letter> on March
7.

The two-month deadline also seems to line up with a U.S. intelligence
assessment
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/12/israel-iran-us-intelligence/>
developed in the last days of Joe Biden’s administration and supported by
an early Trump administration assessment, that Israel would attack Iran’s
nuclear facilities sometime during the first half of 2025.

If that is part of Trump’s thinking, he would not need to carry out his
threat directly but simply support Israel in doing so.

This possibility also clarifies why Trump has gone out of his way to blame
Iran
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/17/trump-warns-iran-will-be-held-responsible-for-houthi-attacks-from-yemen>
for Ansar Allah’s activities. Most informed experts
<https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/03/new-us-attacks-houthis-will-not-bring-iran-negotiating-table-could-provoke-worse-violence>
agree <https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/1/yemen_strikes> that Iran and
Ansar Allah have a friendly relationship and that Iran supports the Yemeni
group, but that Ansar Allah does not act on Iran’s orders or under Iran’s
control. Iran’s reported request on Monday that Ansar Allah tone down their
confrontation with the U.S. was rebuked
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/yemens-houthis-wont-dial-down-under-us-pressure-or-iranian-appeals-2025-03-18/>
in no uncertain terms, hardly the behavior of a proxy.

Ansar Allah has vowed that they would maintain their attacks in the Red Sea
until Israel ends their blockade of Gaza. This has been their position
since they began their attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians, and
they did, in fact, suspend those attacks
<https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270518/with-gaza-ceasefire-yemens-houthi-rebels-halt-attacks-on-ships-in-the-red-sea>
during the so-called “ceasefire” in Gaza, even though Israel repeatedly
violated it
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-israel-violate-gaza-ceasefire-new-escalation>.
They only resumed when Israel reinstated its complete blockade of Gaza.
*What is Trump hoping to accomplish in Yemen?*

Ansar Allah’s attacks in the Red Sea have had a profound effect on shipping
in the region. Where ships could once travel from Asia and eastern Africa
along the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal
<https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/07/houthi-attacks-red-sea-shipping-wipe-2b-suez-canal-annual-revenue>
to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, many now sail south, all
the way around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and back up north.
That significantly increases shipping expenses on all manner of goods, and,
when added to rising insurance costs
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/red-sea-insurance-costs-soar-houthi-shipping-threats-loom-sources-say-2024-09-19/>
due to Ansar Allah attacks, has had a significant economic impact
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/business/houthi-red-sea-attacks-shipping-lanes-africa.html>
on the shipping industry and the export and import of goods that goes far
beyond the loss of ships and merchandise in the attacks.

That economic impact is the most significant material cost that anyone has
managed to impose on Israel’s genocidal behavior. Of course, it has not
deterred Israel or the United States.

But Ansar Allah has accomplished what even the combined efforts of
Hezbollah, Iran, and various other armed militias have not by imposing some
cost on Israel’s genocidal activities. The fact that, aside from these
attacks and a handful of drones and missiles, Ansar Allah is obviously no
match for the United States militarily means Yemen meets the criteria for
Trumpian bullying by a cowardly but physically strong state.

Trump’s overall preference is to be able to issue orders and diktats and
have them obeyed, whether out of respect or fear. He knows that one thing
many of his supporters want to avoid is another foreign war. Thus, he’d
prefer to threaten Iran into abandoning their nuclear capacity, and
whatever other conditions he might seek to impose on them. Failing that, he
is likely to strongly consider offering the necessary support to Israel for
it to attack Iran.

Given that such an action could cause major problems for Saudi Arabia, the
UAE, and the rest of Trump’s Gulf Arab allies, it’s not his first choice.
It is also true that those states will have the leverage and influence in
Washington to potentially convince Trump that an all-out Israeli attack on
Iran is a bad idea. Regardless of what the American intelligence assessment
says, Israel cannot carry out a major attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities
without American help.

Since that is a complicated road, Trump is using force against helpless
people as a means to his ends. Trump’s plan, as it was with Ukraine, is to
make it clear that the people he is dealing with have no realistic options.
Ansar Allah has said they would “meet escalation with escalation,” but
while they can attack more ships, and possibly even launch some rockets at
U.S. allies in the region, they have no hope of actually harming American
targets to any significant degree. Thus, Trump hopes, he’ll be able to
force Ansar Allah to back down, and he also hopes that will create a sense
of hopelessness in Tehran.

It’s a plan that is unlikely to work, for all the same reasons that Israel,
with all of that U.S. backing, has been unable to defeat Hamas in Gaza even
after all this time and all this murder and carnage. Iran is trying to do
all it can to avoid more confrontation with the United States, but it’s not
going to simply bow down to Trump’s diktats.

Ansar Allah has greatly enhanced their own reputation in the region, and in
Yemen
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/13/yemens-houthis-emerge-from-gaza-war-emboldened-and-with-more-enemies>,
where many oppose them. Their support for the Palestinian cause gives them
a big boost and is overwhelmingly popular, even among their opponents.
They’re not likely to back down, and Trump is not likely to try to invade
Yemen, which is probably the only military option he has to stop the
attacks. Instead, he is likely to intensify the bombing of major Yemeni
cities, devastating an already devastated country and driving up an already
appalling body count.

All of that just to avoid allowing the people of Gaza some food, water,
medicine, and shelter.
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