Trump says US to stop bombing Yemen’s Houthis after rebels pledge to end shipping attacks

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was ordering a halt to nearly two months of US air strikes on Yemen’s Houthis, saying the Iran-backed rebels have indicated that “they don’t want to fight any more” and have pledged to stop attacking ships along a vital global trade route. “We’re going to stop the bombing of the Houthis, effective immediately,” Trump said at the start of his Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. That likely means an abrupt end to a campaign of air strikes that began in March, when Trump promised to use “overwhelming lethal force” after the Houthis said they would resume attacks on Israeli vessels sailing off Yemen in response to Israel’s mounting another blockade on the Gaza Strip. At the time, they described the warning as affecting the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Arabian Sea. Trump said the Houthis had indicated to US officials that “they don’t want to fight any more. They just don’t want to fight. And we will honour that, and we will stop the bombings”. His announcement came the same day that Israel’s military launched air strikes against the Houthis that it said fully disabled the international airport in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. Israel’s attacks were its second round of air strikes on targets in Yemen in retaliation for a Houthi missile strike Sunday on Israel’s international airport. A US official said the administration had not notified Israel of the agreement with the Houthis before Trump talked about it publicly. Israel, according to this official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic talks, was irked by the unexpected news – particularly because the Houthis have continued to launch attacks on Israel proper and other Israeli targets. Appearing before reporters again later Tuesday, this time for the swearing-in of senior adviser and special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump was asked about the possibility that the Houthis would continue to attack Israel and responded: “I don’t know about that, frankly”. “But I know one thing, they want nothing to do with us,” Trump said. “And they’ve let that be known through all of their surrogates and very strongly.” In his comments during the earlier meeting with Carney, Trump said the Houthis had “capitulated but, more importantly, we will take their word that they say they will not be blowing up ships any more. And that’s what the purpose of what we were doing.” “I think that’s very positive,” Trump added. “They were knocking out a lot of ships.” Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, confirmed that the US bombing campaign was ending, posting on X that discussions involving the US and Oman, as well as negotiators in Yemen, “have resulted in a ceasefire agreement between the two sides”. “In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping,” he wrote, calling the agreement a “welcome outcome”. Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam told the rebels’ Al-Masirah television channel that any US action would garner a response. “If the American enemy resumes its attacks, we will resume our strikes,” he said. Mashat said attacks on Israel, the United States’ main ally in the region, “will continue” and go “beyond what the Israeli enemy can withstand”. The costs of the US munitions used against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen in daily attacks since March 15 have totalled more than US$750 million, another US official said. The Trump administration has dropped more than 2,000 munitions on more than 1,000 targets, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details on the strikes. The total is only a fraction of the total costs of the operation. It does not account for the costs of operating two aircraft carriers, their accompanying warships or the flight hours of the aircraft. It also does not include the Houthis destroying seven US MQ-9 Reaper drones, at a cost of more than US$30 million apiece, or the loss of two F/A-18 fighter jets falling overboard from the carrier USS Harry S. Truman. Despite Trump’s framing of the deal as a way to reopen the Red Sea to commercial shipping without fear of Houthi attack, “the Houthis have not fired on a commercial ship since December,” Gregory Brew, a senior analyst with the Eurasia Group risk-analysis firm, said on X. “They are likely, however, to continue shooting at Israel,” Brew noted. “As to the Houthis continuing to attack Israel – they do so at Iran’s own peril,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on social media. The Houthis had been waging persistent missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group’s leadership has described as an effort to end Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. From November 2023 until January 2025, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors. That has greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees US$1 trillion of goods move through it annually. The Houthis paused attacks in a self-imposed ceasefire until the US launched a broad assault against the rebels in mid-March. Those strikes Trump had ordered were similar to ones carried out against the Houthis multiple times by the administration of his predecessor, Democratic President Joe Biden. The Trump administration actions gained a higher profile in the public consciousness when The Atlantic revealed that Hegseth had texted sensitive plans for a military strike against the Houthis on a group chat in the messaging app Signal that mistakenly included the magazine’s editor-in-chief. Trump stood by Hegseth and played down the breach as a “glitch”. But national security adviser Mike Waltz, who created the group chat on Signal, left his post last week and has been nominated by Trump to be the US ambassador to the United Nations. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

Trump says US to stop bombing Yemen’s Houthis after rebels pledge to end shipping attacks

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Ceasefire deal between Yemen’s Houthis and the US does not include sparing Israel, the group said

Ceasefire deal between Yemen’s Houthis and the US does not include sparing Israel, the group said