While meeting with his Canadian counterpart, newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney, on Tuesday, President Donald Trump made a welcome announcement. The president claimed that he had just received word from the Houthi rebels in Yemen that they would discontinue their attacks on U.S.-flagged ships passing within range of their increasingly lethal missiles. This is a much-needed development for the United States and international shipping.

The deal was brokered by Oman and coordinated with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy and unofficial negotiations czar. And it is cause for celebration, seeing as the Houthis had been holding their own against the might of the United States Navy for years. A reprieve was needed. 

Sadly, however, that is all this is—a reprieve. It is certainly not victory—or at least not a real military victory as most Americans envision. Indeed, the Houthis announced shortly after Trump’s comments that they would continue to target vessels linked to Israel—the reason that the United States initiated its anti-Houthi operations in the first place. Instead, the ceasefire was borne out of the fact that the U.S. Navy simply could not defeat the Houthis, regardless of however many targets it blasted from the air in Yemen.

Just as with Afghanistan, the Americans have been unable to defeat what is basically a Zaydi Shiite liberation front in Yemen. As America saw with the Taliban of Afghanistan—which was itself a

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