The United States and Houthis in Yemen have entered into an agreement to stop the American air strikes against the group after activists supported by Iran agreed to stop attacks against American ships in the Red Sea, President Trump and Omanai said on Tuesday.
Trump announced the news of the truce at an independent oval office meeting with the Prime Minister of Canada, even surprising his own Pentagon officials.
“They just don’t want to fight,” Trump said. “And we are going to honor this and we will stop the attacks. They have capitulated, but more importantly, we will say each other. They say they will no longer explode ships. ”
But despite its claim for success, it is not clear if the United States had achieved its objective of preventing Houthis from preventing it from transporting international after an expensive seven-week bombing campaign.
The Houthis themselves have ceased to declare a complete ceasefire, saying that they would continue to fight Israel. And the officials and supporters Houthi quickly depicted the agreement as a major victory for the militia and a failure for Mr. Trump, broadcasting a hashtag of social media who read “Yemen beats in America”.
For more than a year, the Houthis have drawn projectiles and launched drones in commercial and military ships in the Red Sea in what the militia group described as a demonstration of solidarity with the residents of Gaza and with Hamas, the militant group controlling Palestinian territory.
In mid-March, the United States began to reach hundreds of targets to try to reopen international navigation routes. The campaign cost more than $ 1 billion, Congress officials said they had learned during closed -door information sessions with Pentagon officials last month. The rate of ammunition used in the campaign has aroused concerns among certain American military strategists, which fear that this will undermine the preparation for a potential conflict with China.
After Mr. Trump unexpectedly announced the news of the agreement between the Houthis and the United States, Oman’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Badr Albusaidi said his country had mediated the agreement.
“In the future, none of the parties will target the other, including American ships, in the Red Sea and the Strait of Bab Al-Mandab, guaranteeing freedom of navigation and the fluid flow of international commercial shipment,” he said in a press release on social networks.
For his part, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a Houthis politician, said that if the United States prohibited its attacks on Yemen, the Houthis would stop its attacks on a smaller group: “American Flows and Military Interests”.
However, Mr. Al-Bukhaiti said that the Houthis would continue military operations until Israel raised his seat in Gaza, “no matter the sacrifices, even if we have to fight until the day of judgment.”
His statement was not clear if the Houthis would stop attacking other ships in the crucial shipping route. The Houthis said they only targeted ships with Israel or the United States, but the militia targeted targeted ships without any obvious link. In an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Al-Bukhaiti did not answer specific questions as to whether the group would continue to attack ships related to Israel.
Mahdi Al-Mashat, another senior Houthi official, clearly said that the group intended to retaliate against Israel for its bombing of the main international airport in Yemen on Tuesday. Al-Mashat said that the Houthi’s response would be “overwhelming, painful and beyond the ability of the Israeli and American enemy to wear”.
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a main member of the group, also described the announcement of Trump as a “victory” for the Houthis, which implies in an article on social networks that the agreement meant that the United States no longer supported the Battle of Israel against the Houthis.
The US central command, responsible for operations against the Houthis, referred questions about the agreement to the White House. The White House refused to develop Mr. Trump’s remarks or respond to requests for information on what the administration would make if the Houthis continued strikes against Israeli ships.
Trump, who is inclined to make disabled remarks that can upset foreign policy, seemed to take his own defense ministry. Three Pentagon officials said on Tuesday afternoon that the soldiers had not yet received a word from the White House to end his offensive operations against the Houthis. The officials rushed to understand how Mr. Trump’s announcement had changed military policy.
The new American truce with activists supported by Iran occurs while US officials strive to negotiate an agreement to slow down the nuclear ambitions of Tehran, and the agreement with the Houthis could play a role in these broader discussions.
Two Iranian officials said on Tuesday that Iran used its influence on the Houthis as part of Oman’s efforts to negotiate a ceasefire and get them to stop shooting American ships. The civil servants, one in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and one with the Revolutionary Guards, spoke of the state of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
The Houthis receive weapons and funding from Iran and are part of a network of what is known regionally under the name of Iranian resistance axis. A recent social media post by the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, threatened the action on Iran on Houthi attacks against American ships.
In recent weeks, Iranian officials have publicly moved from Houthis, saying that Iran has no control over the group and that their actions are a response to the war in Gaza. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in mid-March that “the Houthi law independently based on their own personal interests and opinions”, and denied that Iran had proxy militias in the region.
Ahmad Zeidabadi, an eminent reformist analyst, wrote on social networks that the news of ceasefire between the United States and the Houthis were “the best news for him” and the worst news for Hard-Liners in Iran who support the proxy militias in the region.
However, national security experts have questioned that an agreement would result in long -term cessation of attacks in the Red Sea. Trump’s announcement intervened just a few hours after the Houthis published a statement that said that he was fighting a “sacred war for the benefit of the Palestinian people in Gaza” and confronted an enemy “Israeli-American-British”.
The Houthis have described their attacks as an attempted pressure on Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian aid in Gaza, where more than two million Palestinians had trouble obtaining food and water – a blockade that only acts recently.
The Palestinians of Gaza have been besieged by Israel since Hamas led a deadly attack in southern Israel in October 2023 and took hostages. The Israeli and Houthi forces have also made strikes against each other.
“I foresee that the Houthis will continue to seek to strike Israel, as well as what the group calls ships” linked to Israelis “in the Red Sea,” said Gregory Johnsen, former member of the Yemen’s Panel of the United Nations Security Council. “If this happens, what does the United States do: restart the strikes or let Israel take care of the Houthis?”
He also expressed skepticism that the commercial transport industry returns to the Red Red Sea, since the Houthis “have not been defeated or degraded to the point that they cannot carry out these attacks”.
“They only promised not to do it, and whether the maritime transport industry is ready or not to take the word of the Houthis because it remains to be seen,” he said.
Helene Cooper The reports contributed to the Pentagon, Eric Schmitt from Washington, Farnaz Fassihi from New York and Shuaiah Almosawa de Sana, Yemen.
