Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Trump administration began bombing Yemen last weekend, when the US Air Force launched 47 air raids on at least seven provinces, killing some 53 persons. On Monday the air raids continued, hitting not only the capital, Sanaa, but also Saadeh in the north, the home town of the movement of Ansar Allah (Helpers of God) or Houthis.
The bombing comes in response to the decision of leader Abdelmalik al-Houthi to react to Israel’s blockade of food and aid on Gaza, where a million minors are in danger of malnutrition, by again targeting Red Sea shipping and Israel itself. Al-Houthi said Monday, “The Israeli enemy’s insistence on preventing aid from entering the Palestinian Strip is a major act of aggression and a terrible, horrific crime that cannot be tolerated.”
That is, in order to support the total war on Gaza of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and in order to pursue his monstrous plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians of Gaza, Trump is drawn into making war on yet another Middle Eastern country. Such a war is dangerous. What if the Houthis managed to kill US seamen on the naval vessels in the Red Sea that are supporting the bombing campaign? Wouldn’t he have to send in troops? Does he realize how costly in blood and treasure a Yemen ground war would be?
If the extensive US air raids were intended to hurt the morale of the Houthi movement, which rules 80 percent of Yemen’s population, they signally failed. Tens of thousands of Yemenis rallied in the streets on Monday in Sanaa, Saadeh, Dhamar, Hodeida and Amran.
The Saudi and UAE governments led a bombing campaign against the Houthis 2015-2022 and failed to dislodge or even make any serious dents in the group. Aerial bombardment against a guerrilla group seldom succeeds unless it is paired with a substantial ground force that can take and hold territory. Even such pairings often fail, as in the US war on Vietnam. It is not clear that the US Air Force can defeat the Houthis from the air any more than the Saudi and UAE fighter jets, which are sophisticated American planes.
What the US air raids can do is kill civilians in large numbers and damage civilian infrastructure, which are war crimes.
Trump said Monday that the Houthi capabilities derive from Iranian backing, but that allegation is deeply flawed. The Helpers of God movement developed out of the Zaydi Shiite branch of Islam in Yemen, to which about a third of its people adhere. It is led by members of the al-Houthi clan. It is a Yemeni movement, and while it receives some Iranian aid and weaponry, it does not have a reporting line to Tehran and is very much an indigenous Yemeni movement. It has the support not only of most Zaydis but also of many Sunni tribes and a portion of the Yemeni national army.
“Abdelmalik al-Houthi,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2025
Helpers of God leader Abdelmalik al-Houthi said at the rally on Monday that he had “more painful and disturbing escalation options” in replying to the US airstrikes. He added, “Banning navigation for Israeli ships is a first step, but when the famine of the Palestinian people in Gaza intensifies, we cannot stand idly by and remain at this level.”
Meanwhile, the 41 million Yemenis, who have a population about the same size as that of Canada, are facing an acute humanitarian crisis, as they have been since 2015.
Trump exacerbated it by putting the Houthis on the State Department terrorism list. Branding the de facto government of most of Yemen a terrorist organization makes it difficult or impossible to get aid to the innocent civilian population, since charitable organizations who deal with the Houthis to make arrangements for aid fear being charged as material supporters. Trump certainly killed thousands of Yemeni children with his macho swagger. There is not evidence that listing a government as terrorists has any impact on that government. It is just performative cruelty.
The aid organization Overcoming Hunger (“Action contre la faim”) writes, “the number of Yemenis in need of humanitarian aid continues to grow, rising from 18.2 million in 2024 to 19.5 million in 2025.” There is a cholera epidemic and food insecurity is widespread.
The US had contributed over a third of the aid for Yemen, but Trump has now cut that off. The country is ravaged not only by civil war and outside intervention but also by climate change events such as downpours and flooding. Yemen is the third most vulnerable country in the world to human-caused climate change.
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