The NPR Politics Podcast - Why The U.S. Bombed Houthi Rebels In Yemen

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Both Presidents Biden and Trump launched bombing campaigns against Houthi rebels in Yemen after the militant group attacked ships in the Red Sea. This week, Trump said the campaign was over, and the Houthis had agreed to a ceasefire — a claim the militants deny. We explain why the campaign started, why it ended, and what's to come. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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I bet that was a big check. Wow, three painful years, it sounds like. Hey there, it's the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis, I cover politics. I'm Greg Myrie, I cover national security. And I'm Tamara Keith, I cover the White House. And today on the show, President Trump announced the end of a months long US bombing campaign in Yemen and that there's a truce with the Houthi rebels

who were the target of that campaign. Greg, I wanna start here. Who exactly are the Houthis and where do they fit in the broader constellation of militants in that region? Right. So the Houthis are a militant group in Yemen, and they've been fighting virtually nonstop for around two decades now. They're very tough fighters. They ousted the government in the capital of Yemen, Sanaa, more than a decade ago. They've controlled much of the country for years, and Saudi Arabia tried to oust them after they took over with an air campaign. They couldn't do it. And then after the Israel-Hamas war broke out in Gaza in October of 23, the Houthis entered the

war in support of the Palestinians. And what the Houthis did is they began firing missiles and drones to attack commercial ships in the Red Sea just off the west coast of Yemen. And this proved pretty effective. It really redirected Red Sea shipping outside the region around the southern tip of Africa. So a huge volume of shipping traffic that used to go through the Red Sea has not been going through the Red Sea and through Egypt Suez Canal. So for the past 18 months global shipping routes have been redirected. This adds to shipping costs, insurance rates, and ultimately higher cost inflationary costs. So the Houthis don't control all of their country Yemen. It's a very poor country at the

southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. And yet they found a way to have a substantial impact on the region and even on international commerce with this campaign. So Greg, the Trump administration began bombing in March. What was the rationale for this campaign? So it was to reopen the Red Sea shipping lanes that have been sparsely populated by commercial shipping for the past 18 months or so. Now, the Biden administration was doing something similar, but on a smaller scale. I mean, basically after the Houthis began their campaign in October of 23,

the U.S. sent naval forces into the region. It was mostly a defensive effort to shoot down those Houthi missiles and drones that were going after the commercial ships or after the US Navy ships. They hit a couple of commercial ships, sank a couple of them, killed some people. President Trump came into office and ordered a much more aggressive campaign. The U.S. has been carrying out daily strikes basically since March 15, so nearly two months. We weren't hearing much about it. One of the strangest U.S. military campaigns I can recall, I mean most of what we heard was from that now infamous Signal group chat that emerged shortly after the campaign began in the middle of March. And the

goal has been either to defeat the Houthis entirely or at least get them to stop firing on ships in the Red Sea. Greg, as you noted, the administration didn't exactly hold a ton of briefings about this campaign. And then suddenly, Tam, earlier this week Trump just announced that there was a ceasefire. What did he say? So the White House has been describing this campaign in Yemen against the Houthis as a wild success all along. From day one, as soon as anybody asked about the Signal Gate situation, they said, don't look over there. Look at what we've done.

We are hitting the Houthis hard. So that's the context for this. President Trump then this week announced that there would be a ceasefire, that the Houthis would stop going after the ships and that the U.S. would back down. He was asked about it yesterday in the Oval Office and he described it as a very good outcome. He said that the U.S. dealt with other countries that were close with the Houthis and their surrogates. And he said that, hopefully, it's over. He seemed to really want to be done with this.

And then he went on to more or less praise the Houthis. It was, you know, we hit them very hard. They had a great capacity to withstand punishment. They took tremendous punishment. And you know, you could say there's a lot of bravery there. It was amazing what they took. But we honor their commitment and their word. They gave us their word that they wouldn't be shooting ships anymore.

And we honor that. I mean, in some ways, it's kind of surprising to hear the president of the United... To a lot of your enemies, yeah. Yeah. Say, oh, we're gonna...we'll take their word for it. And Greg, I think it's worth noting, I mean, the Houthis may not be the most reliable source in the story either, but it also appears in media reports that senior Houthi officials dispute Trump's characterization of what occurred. Right.

So, we'll get some evidence pretty quickly, I think, one way or the other. Now, the Houthis are saying they're not stopping their attacks against Israel, which they say they're doing in support of the Palestinians. So Israel could still come under attack, and the Houthis fired a missile that hit very close to Israel's main airport outside Tel Aviv on Sunday. So that part of the campaign could still carry on. And the Houthis have also had this very broad definition of what an Israeli ship is in the Red Sea, and they fired on a lot of commercial ships and claimed that these were linked to Israel in some way, that they were going to Israel or had an Israeli owner. A lot of the time, that did not seem to be true. So the evidence we'll

get pretty quickly is, are the Houthis continuing to fire on commercial ships in the Red Sea, and will that Red Sea traffic pick up again? Soterios Johnson Greg, the Houthis are an Iranian-backed affiliate. And I wonder if there is potentially broader conclusions here or questions to raise about the US interests entangling with Iran considering the fight that even the president acknowledges the Houthis were willing to put up. Oh, absolutely. I mean you do need to see this in the broader regional context. Iran has supported these proxy groups for decades and they include the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon. So if the Houthis do in fact

stop or at least scale back their attacks, that improves the overall atmosphere in the region and the Trump administration is trying to negotiate a deal with Iran on nuclear weapons. So if Iran is telling the Houthis to stop or stop supplying them weapons and does seem interested in this nuclear deal, this absolutely could have both a tangible real impact in terms of tamping down tensions in the region and just in terms of the overall atmospherics. So there are potential real gains if in fact all this is true, that the US has stopped attacks and the Houthis have stopped attacks.

All right, let's take a quick break. More in a moment. On the Indicator from Planet Money podcast, we're here to help you make sense of the economic news from Trump's tariffs. It's called in game theory a trigger strategy, or sometimes called grim trigger, which sort of has a cowboy-esque ring to it. To what exactly a sovereign wealth fund is. For insight every weekday, listen to NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. Support for NPR and the following message come from Yarle and Pamela Mohn, thanking

the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen. And we're back. And, Tam, President Trump campaigned on and has long said he wants less foreign conflict. So how do you square this bombing campaign with the broader foreign policy agenda of America first? Yeah, in fact, he said that he would end the wars on day one, that the conflict in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, it would just all end because he was there. He continues to repeat that if he had been president, none of these things would have happened. The reality is American presidents don't get to choose their world. They don't get to

choose the conflicts that exist. And so there isn't sort of a shortcut around many of these conflicts that the US would like to not see happening. As for the Houthis, you know, President Trump stands behind the decision to have this lengthy bombing campaign, but you could also tell in the way he talked about it yesterday that he wants all of these things to be done. He may just not get that choice. Meanwhile, you know, we saw conflict break out between two nuclear-armed neighbors in India and Pakistan. So the world is not getting less complicated.

Greg, the president is also planning what I think is fair to call a pretty high-profile trip to the Middle East. What do we know about what Trump's broader foreign policy agenda is in that region? Well, I think much like his first term when he helped oversee the Abraham Accords, these deals between the US and Israel and a number of Arab countries, that he's looking to do more of that or build on those. He's going to Saudi Arabia. Saudi is very critical in Trump's mind in terms of how the US should interact with the Middle East. He wants to do big business deals with the Saudis. He would like the Saudis to formally recognize and have normal diplomatic relations with Israel.

That's not going to happen right now because of the war in Gaza. The Saudis have held back on that, but they'll still probably do business with the US. Not clear if there's a big deal in the works. business with the US, not clear if there's a big deal in the works. He's also going to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Those are countries where the US is very deeply involved economically and has a military interest as well. So he's building on what are already strong relations with the oil and gas-rich countries of the region. He sees that as the way to build the U.S. relationship in the Middle East. He is less concerned about the conflicts in the region, the Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza, what's going on in Syria, which is still trying to emerge from a half-century of dictatorship. So he's looking at it again through his business lens and I think that's what he's hoping

to achieve there. He is and has always been very transactional and that is definitely something that is characterizing his travel. He in fact has boasted that he's going to get a trillion dollars in deals for US companies with Saudi Arabia and that he says is why he went to Saudi Arabia first because he Said he would go there first if they would do big deals Before we go. I also think it's worth noting a tonal shift coming from the White House in a separate foreign policy engagement Which is the Russia-Ukraine war Tim. How would you explain that tonal shift? you know, I think that the

the shift is essentially that President Trump has always somehow seemed a bit more favorable towards Russia than towards Ukraine, and he has shown this in a lot of ways, saying things like, you know, Ukraine wouldn't even still be in this war if not for us. There was the very spicy Oval Office meeting where Vice President JD Vance scolded President Zelensky for not showing enough respect or gratitude to President Trump and to the Americans for what they've done to help. But there's been this shift where President Trump and now also JD.D. Vance are getting the sense that Vladimir Putin may not be that eager to make a deal to find his way out of this. Vice President

Vance said yesterday that the Russians are asking for too much and that they are uninterested in bringing this thing to a resolution. That is a real change. The sort of negativity about Putin and Russia has been creeping in and it is very clearly there now. I don't know what that means, whether that just means that the US decides to disengage entirely, throw up their hands, say, we can't do this, or whether they more actively support Ukraine, though I will note that, and Greg can probably explain this better, but some Patriot missile systems were sent to Ukraine, which would seem to indicate that the US is siding a little bit with Ukraine these days.

Yeah, Tam, to pick up on that, it looks like the US is trying to send another Patriot missile battery to Ukraine. They have about eight of them right now, this one, it looks like the US is trying to send another Patriot missile battery to Ukraine. They have about eight of them right now. This one, it looks like, would come from Israel. We don't know when it will get there. It's not going to be a major game changer, but every little bit helps as Ukraine tries to fend off these Russian air attacks, and that's really the place where it's most vulnerable. So it is a sign that the US is trying still to assist Ukraine,

but we are reaching the point where this big military aid package from last year is starting to run down. There's been some stuff in the pipeline, but it's going to run out at some point this year, and what will the Trump administration do? We're still not seeing any signs that they're going to push for additional assistance to Ukraine. Ukraine's not going to collapse. Europe is providing more. The Ukrainians are building more of their own war material, drones in particular. But both in the practical level and the psychological level, if this USAID does peter out and end at some point in the coming months, that's going to put Ukraine in a much more difficult position.

All right. We're going to leave it there for today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Greg Meyry. I cover national security. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. podcast.