Red Sea debacle: How Yemeni resistance brought American war machine to a halt

By Kit Klarenberg

On May 12, the New York Times published a forensic autopsy of the failure of the Trump administration’s renewed hostilities against the Ansarullah-led Yemeni military in the Red Sea.

The probe teemed with extraordinary disclosures, spelling out in stark detail how the combined air and naval effort – launched with enormous fanfare and much bombastic rhetoric from US officials – was an even greater debacle, and devastating defeat, for the Empire than hitherto thought.

The scale of the cataclysm may explain Washington’s sudden determination to reach a negotiated settlement with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Perhaps the most striking revelation is that Trump’s blitzkrieg against Yemen was initially planned to be a long-term, large-scale engagement, culminating in a ground invasion using proxy forces.

General Michael Kurilla, Commander of the Pentagon’s Central Command, which covers Central, South and West Asia, had been in favor of all-out war with the Ansarullah resistance movement ever since its righteous anti-genocide Red Sea blockade began in late 2023.

Reportedly, though, Joe Biden was wary that a “forceful campaign” would elevate them “on the global stage.”

With Trump’s re-election, “Kurilla had a new commander in chief” and an opportunity to up the ante against Ansarullah significantly. He pitched an eight-to-10-month effort, starting with a saturation bombing of Yemen’s air defense systems, before a wave of targeted assassinations of movement leaders, directly inspired by Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah’s senior members in September 2024.

Kurilla’s grand operation was eagerly supported by elements of the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and then-National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

Saudi officials were also on board, providing Washington with a target list of 12 Ansarullah leaders “whose deaths, they said, would cripple the movement.”

However, the UAE, which had in concert with Riyadh relentlessly bombed Yemen 2015 – 2023 to no tangible result, “was not so sure.” Several members of Trump’s administration were also skeptical of the plan’s prospects and worried a protracted attack on Sana’a would drain valuable, finite resources, including the president himself.

Yet, after concerted lobbying, Trump “signed off on part of General Kurilla’s plan – airstrikes against Houthi air defense systems and strikes against the group’s leaders.”

So it was on March 15, US fighter jets began battering Yemen anew, while a carrier force led by the USS Harry S. Truman thrust into the Red Sea.

White House officials boasted the onslaught would continue “indefinitely”, while Trump bragged that Ansarillah would be “decimated” via “overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.”

Some degradation

In reality, The New York Times suggests Trump privately made clear he wanted Ansarullah bombed “into submission” within just 30 days, and failure in this objective would mean the operation’s termination.

By the 31st day of hostilities, the US president “demanded a progress report.” As the outlet records, “the results were not there,” which is quite an understatement. The US “had not even established air superiority” over Ansarullah, while the resistance group continued “shooting at vessels and drones, fortifying their bunkers and moving weapons stockpiles underground.”

Moreover, during those first 30 days, Yemeni military “shot down seven American MQ-9 drones” costing around $30 million each, “hampering Central Command’s ability to track and strike back. Meanwhile, several American F-16s and an F-35 stealth fighter jet “were nearly struck by Houthi air defenses, making real the possibility of American casualties.”

All along, too, the US burned through weapons and munitions at a rate of about $1 billion in the first month alone:

“The cost of the operation was staggering. The Pentagon had deployed two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses…So many precision munitions were being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners were growing increasingly concerned about overall stocks and the implications for any situation in which the US might have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.”

Concerned, “the White House began pressing Central Command for metrics of success in the campaign.”

In a bitter irony, Pentagon officials “responded by providing data showing the number of munitions dropped” to prove they were achieving their goals. They also claimed, without evidence, to have hit over 1,000 military targets, while killing “more than a dozen senior Houthi leaders.”

US intelligence was unconvinced, acknowledging there was “some degradation” of the Ansarullah-led military, but “the group could easily reconstitute” regardless.

As a result, “senior national security officials” began investigating “pathways” for either withdrawing from the theatre with minimal embarrassment or keeping the fiasco going using local proxy forces.

One option was to “ramp up operations for up to another month and then conduct ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises in the Red Sea using two carrier groups, the Carl Vinson and the Truman.” If AnsarAllah did not fire on the ships, “the Trump administration would declare victory.” 

Another option was to extend the campaign, giving forces under the control of the Riyadh-based Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council “time to restart a drive to push the Houthis out of the capital and key ports” in a ground assault.

The plan was hatched despite prior Saudi-led invasions of Yemen invariably ending in total disaster. This may account for why talks between Hegseth and Saudi and UAE officials in late April “to come up with a sustainable way forward…they could present to the President” came to nothing.

Great ability

As luck would have it, right when Hegseth’s last-ditch efforts to breathe life into the collapsing effort were floundering, Trump’s West Asia envoy Steve Witkoff was in Oman, engaged in nuclear talks with Iran.

Officials there separately suggested a “perfect offramp” for Washington in its war with Ansarullah. The US “would halt the bombing campaign and the militia would no longer target American ships in the Red Sea, but without any agreement to stop disrupting shipping that the group deemed helpful to Israel.”

Well-publicised fiascoes around this time, such as the loss overboard of an F/A-18 Super Hornet, costing $67 million, due to the USS Harry S. Truman conducting evasive maneuvers to avoid an Ansarullah drone and missile attack, further depleted White House enthusiasm for the operation.

According to The New York Times, “Trump had had enough”. He duly accepted the Omani proposal, and on May 5th, CentCom “received a sudden order…to ‘pause’ offensive operations” in the Red Sea.

That a ballistic missile fired by the Yemeni military evaded the Zionist entity’s air defenses and struck Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport the previous day likely provided further incentive to halt hostilities.

So it was on May 6, Trump declared victory against Ansarullah, claiming the resistance group had “capitulated”, and “don’t want to fight any more”. Nonetheless, the president expressed clear admiration for God’s Partisans, indicating he placed a high degree of trust in Ansarullah’s assurances that US ships would no longer be in their redoubtable crosshairs:

“We hit them very hard and they had a great ability to withstand punishment. You could say there was a lot of bravery there. They gave us their word that they wouldn’t be shooting at ships anymore, and we honor that.”

Per The New York Times, Trump’s “sudden declaration of victory…demonstrates how some members of the president’s national security team underestimated a group known for its resilience.”

But more deeply, it surely reflects how the bruising, costly experience was a blunt-force education in the glaring deficiencies of US military power, and the Empire’s fatal vulnerability in the event of all-out war against an adversary actually able to defend itself. This could account for the Trump administration’s sudden determination to finalize a nuclear deal with Tehran.

It must not be forgotten that before even taking office, Trump and his cabinet openly planned for a significant escalation of belligerence against the Islamic Republic.

Among other things, they boasted of drawing up plans to “bankrupt Iran” via “maximum pressure”. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long called for tightening already devastating sanctions on Tehran, was a key advocate for this approach, and eagerly supported by Mike Waltz, among others.

At an event convened by NATO adjunct the Atlantic Council in October 2024, Waltz bragged about how the president had previously almost destroyed the Islamic Republic’s currency, and looked ahead to inflicting even more severe damage on the country following Trump’s inauguration.

Fast forward to today, though, and such rhetoric has vanished from mainstream Western political discourse. It appears Trump and his team have not only jettisoned their previously stated ambitions towards Iran but are determined to avoid war.

Moreover, just as the Zionist entity was not consulted before Washington struck a ceasefire with Ansarullah, Tel Aviv has been completely frozen out of nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran, and if an agreement does result at last, it will not take into account Israel’s bellicose position towards the Islamic Republic.

Just as the Cuban Missile Crisis transformed Cold warrior John F. Kennedy into a dove, Trump’s experience in the Red Sea may well have precipitated a seismic shift in his administration’s foreign policy.