Saudi Arabia has initiated a bombing campaign over Yemen. The move follows a massive offensive by the North Yemeni Ansarallah movement, popularly known as the Houthis.
The offensive put Ansarallah in control of numerous Red Sea sites south of the territory of North Yemen that they’ve been administering for most of the Yemeni Civil War, such as Mocha and the island of Perim.
Experts believe that the territories newly claimed by the Houthis give the movement strong control over ship traffic through the Strait of Bab al-Mandab.
The latest offensive follows a decade-long civil war that started when the Houthis seized control of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.
The seizure of Sanaa caused the previous government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to retreat to the southwest Yemeni city of Aden. The fighting that ensued between Hadi’s forces and Ansarallah grew into a full-blown war.
U.S. backs Saudi Arabia
While the conflict between Ansarallah and the Aden government is popularly known as the “Yemeni Civil War,” geopolitical analysts have long recognized that both sides of the conflict are receiving foreign support. The Strait of Bab al-Mandab serves as a chokepoint between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, giving whoever controls the strait the ability to regulate cargo that passes through. While Iran backed Ansarallah, Saudi Arabia organized a coalition supporting the government in Aden. One of the backers of the Saudi coalition is the United States of America.
Saudi Arabia’s tactics have included numerous bombing campaigns and a blockade controlling the transit of people and humanitarian aid to and from Yemen.
In 2018, Human Rights Watch criticized the Saudi efforts as causing large amounts of “death and destruction” from the large numbers of civilians targeted and the lack of aid for epidemics of cholera that afflicted Yemeni territory. Video footage of a strike on a market next to the Yemeni coast indicates that Saudi Arabia is continuing similar bombing tactics.
That same HRW report highlights that as soon as the former President Barack Obama administration’s involvement with the war in his second term, the U.S. provided “intelligence, refueling, and logistical assistance” to the Saudi bombing campaign, as well as “diplomatic cover” at the United Nations.
The U.S. under the second term of the Trump administration also directly bombed Yemen, although Oman brokered negotiations that established a ceasefire between the U.S. and Ansarallah in May 2025
Despite the ceasefire, reporting from CNN indicates that the Trump administration has already dispatched 100 military advisors to provide intelligence and targeting support to Saudi Arabia in their current bombing campaign.
The U.S.’s interest in Yemeni territory reflects a long-standing interest in controlling strategic sea lanes and straits around the globe. This trend continues under the Trump administration’s emphasis on preventing adversaries from controlling “chokepoints” through which Middle East oil supplies flow in its national security strategy.
The current Trump administration’s participation in this stage of the fight between Saudi Arabia and Yemen follows a record-breaking spike in bombings of Yemen’s southerly neighbor, Somalia, and a war in Iran for the Strait of Hormuz.
Reactions to Yemen crisis
The Communist Party of Turkey released a statement condemning Saudi Arabia and the United States while urging their government to not join the bombing campaign as part of the Mecca Alliance, exclaiming that Turkey must not be made “complicit in the crimes committed in Yemen by Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States.”
Other parties outside of Yemen, such as the South African Communist Party, expressed “unwavering solidarity” with the Yemeni people “against imperialist aggression” in a statement following the 13th plenary of its 15th congress. The statement emphasized that “Yemen has endured one of the most devastating humanitarian crises of our time” because of the bombing campaigns and blockade that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia inflict on the country.
In the United States, Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) condemned the Trump administration for pushing a $5 billion arms sale for Saudi Arabia. She reiterated that “the Senate must block this sale.”
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