President Donald Trump urged Iran to stop offering financial and political aid to Yemen’s Ansarullah terrorist organization on Wednesday or face the wrath of the U.S. military, predicting that, with or without Iranian help, the Houthis “will be completely annihilated!”
The Houthis, whose official name is Ansarullah, is a Shiite jihadist terrorist organization with close ties to the Iranian proxy terrorist network. Its official slogan is “Allahu akbar, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, and victory for Islam.” The group has controlled Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, since it launched an attack on the legitimate government, with which it has been in a state of civil war since 2014. The Yemeni government has since relocated to the southern port city of Aden and has lost physical control of most of the country’s territory.
The Yemeni civil war remained a regional conflict for many years but the Houthis, with the support of Iran, elevated themselves to become a global threat following the Hamas attack on the Israeli homeland in October 2023, in which Hamas jihadists committed a variety of acts of savagery against Israeli civilians, including killing over 1,000 of them, abducting families, torturing their victims, and incidents of gang-rape and rape-executions.
In solidarity with Hamas, the Houthis declared war on Israel and launched a campaign of terrorism against commercial ships attempting to transit in the Red Sea and around Yemen. The campaign has caused ship traffic through the Suez Canal to plummet and severely disrupted global shipping by forcing ships to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. While Houthi leaders have claimed the campaign is only targeting ships associated with Israel, they have not spared ships carrying cargoes or otherwise associated with regimes friendly to their terrorist organization, including some affiliated with Russia, China, and Iran.
Houthi shipping attacks had ceased for some time since January, after Israel and Hamas began negotiations towards a ceasefire. On March 12, however, Houthi leaders announced that they would resume their acts of maritime piracy. By the 15th, President Donald Trump, in defense of global commerce, announced a series of airstrikes against Houthi military targets in Yemen. He has since repeatedly urged Iran to cut its ties to Ansarullah or face significant commercial, and potentially military, consequences.
Trump repeated his warning to Iran in a statement published to his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday, adding his intent to destroy the Houthi terrorist group.
“Reports are coming in that while Iran has lessened its intensity on Military Equipment and General Support to the Houthis, they are still sending large levels of Supplies,” Trump wrote. “Iran must stop the sending of these Supplies IMMEDIATELY. Let the Houthis fight it out themselves. Either way they lose, but this way they lose quickly.”
“Tremendous damage has been inflicted upon the Houthi barbarians, and watch how it will get progressively worse — It’s not even a fair fight, and never will be. They will be completely annihilated!” the president promised.
The Houthis claimed that they were on the receiving end of a new series of American airstrikes in the overnight hours between Tuesday and Wednesday. According to the pro-Hezbollah propaganda outlet Al Mayadeen, the Houthis claimed that the alleged American airstrikes targeted Sana’a as well as the Houthi-controlled provinces of Saada and al-Bayda.
The Emirati newspaper the National described Saada as an area “which houses weapons storage and training sites” and “one of the group’s most important and heavily fortified military strongholds.”
Conversely, the Houthis claimed to target Israel with a new missile strike on Wednesday. The Houthis, who regularly target Israel confirmed that it had identified a missile aimed towards its territory from Yemen but stated that the missile at no point entered Israeli territory.
“A missile launched from Yemen was intercepted by the IAF [Israeli Air Force] prior to crossing into Israeli territory. Sirens were sounded in accordance with protocol,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Houthi terrorist spokesmen similarly alleged this week that they had successfully targeted the USS Harry Truman, an American aircraft carrier present in the Red Sea region to respond to the Houthi terrorism campaign. Pentagon officials denied that any such attack had succeeded and described the Houthis as so “incompetent” that it took some time for them to confirm the Houthis had targeted the carrier due to the degree by which they missed.
“Quite frankly, it’s hard to tell because while we’re executing precision strikes, they missed by over 100 miles,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich told reporters on Monday. “I would question anything that they claim to the press that they’re doing or not doing. It’s very hard to tell … just based on the level of incompetence they’ve demonstrated.”
In multiple social media messages addressing the situation, Trump has asserted that the objective of his campaign against the Houthis is to restore peace to global shipping in the Middle East and that it is in Iran’s best interests to no longer sponsor the Houthis.
“Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,” Trump wrote in a message this weekend. “Any further attack or retaliation by the ‘Houthis’ will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there.”
“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!” he promised.
