Trump Gets Bored With the War in Yemen
The pendulum within Trump’s Middle East policy has swung back toward deal making, for now.
The month was January 2025. The Houthis were not attacking American ships, and the U.S. was not bombing Yemen. The month is May 2025. The Houthis are not attacking American ships, and the U.S. is not bombing Yemen. In between, there was a whole lot of bombing.
President Donald Trump claimed victory over the Houthis on Tuesday afternoon, after several months of a U.S. air campaign against them. "They just don't want to fight, and we will honor that, and we will stop the bombings," he told reporters at the White House. Shortly after, the foreign ministry of Oman—the famously neutral sultanate bordering Yemen—announced that it had brokered a U.S.-Yemeni ceasefire deal "ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping."
In fact, the Houthi movement, one of the two rival governments in Yemen, has not attacked commercial ships since the beginning of Trump's term, when Trump brokered a ceasefire in Gaza. (The Houthis had started the attacks in November 2023, demanding such a ceasefire.) Trump began an air campaign in Yemen three days before the Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire broke down. The new Yemeni ceasefire is simply a return to the status quo ante bellum, at least with regard to shipping.
Although no American troops have died during Trump's war in Yemen, the campaign has been incredibly costly for U.S. military preparedness. The military spent $1 billion in just the first three weeks, a U.S. official told CNN. Last week, the U.S. Navy accidentally dropped a $64 million fighter jet into the sea. It lost another one to a landing accident on Wednesday; the jet was returning to its carrier after the ceasefire was announced. And it's not just about the financial price tag. The Department of Defense warned Congress behind closed doors that it was "risking real operational problems" due to being stretched thin by the Middle Eastern war.
Significantly, Trump seems to be extracting the U.S. from Israel's war. Asked whether the deal included a Houthi-Israeli truce, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters that "this is about the Red Sea, the attacking of ships." Israel was reportedly not even informed of the deal beforehand. After the deal was announced, Houthi leader Mahdi al-Mashat said that the attacks on Israel would continue and warned Israelis to "stay in your shelters." Trump told reporters at the White House that he "will discuss that if something happens with Israel and the Houthis."
Just three days ago, Houthi forces hit the international airport in Tel Aviv with a ballistic missile, wounding six people and shutting down all of Israel's international air traffic. American troops in Israel, armed with a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, reportedly tried and failed to shoot down the missile. In response, Israeli planes bombed the airport in Sanaa and the port in Hodeida, killing seven people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to further retaliate against Iran, which arms the Houthis, "at a time and place of our choosing."
Along with stopping the Yemeni campaign, Trump hinted that there were more deals to be made. He promised to make "one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject," with "really, really positive" news, before leaving on a trip to the Middle East next week.
The U.S. and Iran have been negotiating for a deal to restrain the Iranian nuclear program, and the next round of talks is scheduled to take place in Oman over the weekend. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff brokered the Yemeni deal expecting to build momentum with Iran, reports CNN.
Vice President J.D. Vance told an audience on Wednesday that negotiations were going well and that "there is a chance to reintegrate Iran into the global economy," although he said that the Trump administration would go to war before allowing Iran to build a nuclear weapon.
Egyptian sources also told The New Arab, a British newspaper, that Witkoff came to Egypt with a proposal to enforce a "long-term truce" in Gaza before Trump's visit to the region. Israel is mobilizing tens of thousands of troops for a new invasion of Gaza. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oversees the administration of the Palestinian territories, told a conference that Gaza would be "totally destroyed" and the Palestinian population "concentrated" into a small area, after which they would "leave in great numbers" for other countries.
But Trump seems to be losing patience with the Middle East in general, and with Israeli demands in particular. The downfall of former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz symbolizes Trump's shifting attitude. Waltz was demoted after accidentally adding Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, an inveterate war hawk and a personal enemy of Trump, to a group chat for discussing war plans in Yemen. But Waltz had already fallen out of grace—after Trump discovered that Waltz was talking to Netanyahu behind Trump's back about plans to attack Iran.
And the shift is not just a case of Trump's personal grudges. His base of support is increasingly fed up with Middle Eastern wars as well. "We've been told Iran is on the verge of having nuclear weapons at any moment for as long as I can remember," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) wrote on X on Tuesday. "People just don't care anymore because none of these things actually affected our lives unless they were in the military and shipped over to these foreign countries and blown up."
