Fresh Air

The renewed and more expansive US bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen differentiates itself from earlier unsuccessful operations against the group – including Poseidon Archer, Prosperity Guardian, EUNAVFOR Aspides and multiple Israeli strikes on Houthi areas over the past year – in a number of potentially fruitful ways if it is augmented by additional measures and the rhetoric surrounding it is backed up by concrete action.

The current coercive campaign is intended not simply to degrade Houthi capabilities or defend foreign commercial and naval vessels from its drones and missiles, but also to deliver body blows to the organisation – including by targeting its leaders, several of whom the US claims to have killed – until the group stops firing. This contrasts with previous operations that were primarily defensive and calibrated to minimise casualties and reduce escalation risks.

However, a campaign consisting solely of military strikes against the Houthis, no matter how intense or “unrelenting”, is unlikely to be effective in halting their attacks and thus fully reopening the Red Sea and Suez Canal to civilian maritime traffic. Far more important than the scope or intensity of the strikes in Yemen are the new Administration’s threats against the Iranian regime, which has been behind the Houthi campaign of maritime terror.

President Donald Trump recently posted on his social media platform, “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”

His National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, added, “We will hold not only the Houthis accountable, but we’re going to hold Iran, their backers, accountable as well. And if that means they’re targeting ships that they have put in to help their Iranian trainers, IRGC and others, that intelligence, other things that they have put in to help the Houthis attack the global economy, those targets will be on the table, too.”

Waltz is referring to Iranian ships like the Behshad and Safiz, which regional expert Michael Knights said last year “are transshipment points for Iranian weapons” and “loaded with Iranian electronic intelligence equipment used to locate target vessels for the Houthis to strike.” It is critical such ships be targeted as part of the campaign, as well. Unverified reports that the intelligence ship Zagros was recently sunk by the US would, if accurate, be a good indicator that the Administration is serious.

The Houthis, more accurately known as Ansar Allah (“The Partisans of God”), are not independent decision-makers, despite the claims to the contrary. They are, instead, an organic element of the Islamic Revolutionary movement that conquered Iran in 1979 and especially the guardians thereof, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC). The Houthis are completely beholden to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ali Khamenei, not merely dependent on the regime for military and financial support.

Even the name Ansar Allah is an alias also used by Hezbollah in Lebanon, itself a constituent element of the IRGC, while an IRGC Qods Force (IRGC-QF) Brigadier General, known as a “Jihad Assistant”, and his Hezbollah deputy both sit on the Houthi Jihad Council, its supreme decision-making body. The “de facto commander” of the Houthis’ missile and drone forces is none other than the infamous IRGC-QF commander in Yemen Abdul Reza Shahlai. It was he who personally directed the opening salvoes in the Red Sea. The first Trump Administration reportedly tried to assassinate Shahlai in Yemen at the same time as it assassinated IRGC-QF chief Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020.

All weapons and components used in the Houthi martime attacks and nearly all targeting intelligence comes from Iran, while all attacks are planned, and directly ordered and overseen, by IRGC commanders, including from Hezbollah.

As I argued in the February 2024 edition of the Australia/Israel Review, only a campaign that involves substantial strikes against Iran itself might force it to halt attacks against commercial and naval vessels and restore freedom of navigation.

There is now a window of opportunity to launch just such a substantial campaign against Iran. The region has changed drastically since late 2024 due to the near destruction of the so-called “Axis of Resistance”, particularly the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the decimation of Hezbollah’s leadership and arsenal in Lebanon. Moreover, Israel’s retaliatory strike last year reportedly destroyed much of Iran’s air defence capability. Hamas, too, is not only severely degraded but is now under renewed attack by Israel and thus pre-occupied.

If currently rhetorical threats against Iran are coupled with sustained kinetic, diplomatic and economic action against the Iranian regime, as well as ground operations by local forces against the Houthis inside Yemen and more robust interdiction of the shipments of Iranian weapons and components, eventual success is a possibility.

Using local Gulf proxies as a ground component of this campaign, for instance, could easily roll back Houthi positions in certain key areas, as the UAE and Saudi Arabia managed to do in late 2021 through early 2022.

Unfortunately, this optimistic scenario is only likely if the campaign is expanded as outlined above and the current rhetoric isn’t outpacing both means and intention. Already, the US Defence Department seems to be dialling back expectations, with spokesman Sean Parnell telling reporters that the operation is “to degrade [Houthi] capability,” which sounds like little more than a continuation of Poseidon Archer. The number of targets hit in the initial wave of strikes during this operation was only about half the amount hit in the opening salvo of Poseidon Archer.

The emphasis of the Trump Administration, based on the rhetoric of the President and his senior officials as well as precedents from the first Trump term, also seems to be on getting the Houthis not to fire at American ships and assets, despite lip service to freedom of navigation. Both Parnell and US Defence Secretary Hegseth have stressed that the Houthis can end the campaign if they promise not to fire at US assets, while the White House’s own announcement talks about “American [emphasis added] commercial and naval vessels,” suggesting the campaign may be focussed more on US force protection than general freedom of navigation.

Furthermore, Trump has long made it clear that he wants a new nuclear deal with the Iranian regime and has been thwarted from pursuing this only by the regime’s unwillingness to engage. It is possible we might see the IRGC agree to temporarily halt Houthi attacks in the Red Sea as a small concession designed to tempt the US to focus on negotiating a new nuclear deal, or President Trump himself halting the bombing campaign as a measure to try to incentivise negotiation. Stark threats against Iran during the Houthi bombing campaign could even be Trump’s next “fire and fury” moment, along the lines of similarly strong rhetoric used against North Korea during his first term, which led to no concrete action and the establishment of a close personal relationship with Kim Jong Un.

Nor is the President interested in getting involved in a serious overseas conflict. The primary concern of the Administration is a global drawdown and general withdrawal from the Middle East, including Iraq and Syria as well as assets in the Gulf, something Trump wanted but failed to accomplish during his first term.

The President could also simply lose patience with the campaign and approach the Houthis directly for a deal to try to stop the attacks against US ships and then claim victory. This could well be a replay of the first Trump Administration’s disastrous Afghanistan deal with the Taliban after the failure of an intensified air campaign against the group.

An additional worrying element is the involvement of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Trump seems to trust implicitly. Russia has been participating in Iran-brokered talks to provide anti-ship missiles and other materiel to the Houthis, and has provided targeting data to further enable the campaign against international shipping in the Red Sea. This allegedly includes Russian military intelligence officers being stationed in Yemen. Putin could either try to convince Trump to halt the bombing by offering Russian “mediation” or guarantees, or else tacitly encourage him to get sucked further into a quagmire in Yemen.

Finally, there is also a danger that a protracted campaign will further deplete the US arsenal of certain munitions it would require in a Pacific contingency, such as a crisis over Taiwan.  This has been a long-standing worry, partially related to the past year or so of defending ships from Houthi attacks. Trump’s own nominee for Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, told Congress that the US was at a “dangerously low level from the stockpile perspective as well as new [weapon stocks being produced].”

With the US defence industrial base currently in a moribund state, a decision would eventually have to be made whether this bombing campaign remains worth the cost – not only financially, but also in terms of its usage of scarce munitions and the other overstretched military and intelligence resources it would require.

Nonetheless, if the US Administration’s rhetoric is not simply bluster and does reflect the intent of the Administration to restore freedom of navigation through the Red Sea – including  via direct strikes against Iranian assets, a much more devoted interdiction campaign and orchestrating a ground component – there are reasons to hope this operation in Yemen could succeed where previous ones have failed.