Yemenis celebrate as they follow a convoy of freed prisoners from Mokha to Sana’a – AP Photo

The Trump administration came perilously close to launching another bombing campaign against Yemen this weekend. According to a September 20 New York Times report, US commanders had approved their targets, American troops were loading bombs onto warplanes, and an attack on Yemen’s Ansar Allah forces was about to begin when President Trump abruptly reversed course.

For two weeks, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been pleading with Trump to intervene as Ansar Allah (Houthi) forces swept through Saudi-backed forces’ positions along Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Trump initially resisted, but after another urgent call from the Saudi crown prince, he instructed the Pentagon to prepare for airstrikes. By Sunday, he had changed his mind again, at least temporarily.

The New York Times reported that many of Trump’s closest advisers opposed joining the Saudi war. U.S. military officials also questioned whether renewed bombing would accomplish anything, given that Ansar Allah had withstood more than 1,000 U.S. strikes during a seven-week campaign in 2025. That operation consumed roughly $1 billion in munitions and other military resources in its first month alone.

Meanwhile, Ansar Allah has assured Washington that it does not intend to attack American ships. U.S. officials recently met Ansar Allah representatives in Oman in an effort to preserve that agreement. A new American bombing campaign could undo those diplomatic gains and threaten shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait just as the Strait of Hormuz remains severely disrupted.

The crisis spawned by the US war on Iran spread to this dangerous new front on July 13, when the 2022 ceasefire between Saudi Arabia and the de facto Ansar Allah government in Yemen was shattered by a Saudi missile strike on the airport in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital.

The Saudi attack was designed to prevent the landing of an Iranian Mahan Air civilian plane carrying passengers returning from the funeral of Iran’s assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran. The flight was forced to divert to Hodeidah, 140 miles away on the Red Sea coast.

Yemen’s Ansar Allah forces retaliated by attacking the Saudi airport at Abha, near the Yemeni border, with missiles and drones. Since then, hostilities have escalated dramatically.

Ansar Allah forces have captured the strategic port city of Mocha and the remainder of the Red Sea coast from Saudi-backed forces. They are still fighting to consolidate control of the Kahbub mountains that overlook the approaches to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but........

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