US elections 2024: Can the next US president roll back the Houthis' power in the Red Sea?
"This war has to end," US President Joe Biden declared in 2021, when he suspended US offensive military support for Saudi Arabia's war against the Houthis in Yemen.
The war in Yemen subsided when Saudi Arabia’s Yemeni allies agreed to a UN-brokered truce with the Houthis in April 2022. No sooner were Houthi officials visiting Riyadh to talk about a permanent settlement to the war when they started attacking international shipping vessels in the Red Sea. Those attacks, in response to Israel’s war on Gaza, sparked an even thornier Yemeni conflict, drawing the US more deeply into the fractured country than ever before.
In October 2024, US B-2 bombers pummelled weapons storage facilities in areas of Yemen controlled by the Houthis. The strikes underscored the US’s deepening involvement in Yemen since the Houthis began attacking Israel and vessels in the Red Sea after the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.
Sanam Vakil, director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa programme, told Middle East Eye that the Biden administration was stuck trying to thread the needle between two opposing goals.
“Ending the war in Yemen and protecting freedom of navigation is somewhat contradictory because truly ending the war will further institutionalise the Houthis,” Vakil said.
Yemen was an early fault line in Biden's approach to the Middle East.
US support for Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen, going back to the time of the Obama administration, angered progressive Democrats. In a tight 2020 presidential race with former President Donald Trump, Biden made ending the war a campaign objective.
But when Biden arrived at the White House, his criticism of Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign irked Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
The US decision to suspend offensive arms transfers to its oil-rich partner and pull air defence systems out of the kingdom when it was still under Houthi attack fuelled Saudi Arabia's suspicion of US commitment to its security.
The UN brokered a ceasefire to the Yemen war in April 2022 and the Biden administration spent the next two years patching up ties with Saudi Arabia.
One way the White House rekindled ties was starting negotiations to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Analysts and diplomats say those talks so unnerved Hamas that it contributed to the group's decision to launch the 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel.
"Biden's Yemen policy actually set the course for much of America's actions in the Middle East the last four years," a former senior Arab official told Middle East Eye. "Everyone's eyes will be on how the next administration tackles the Houthis".
The Houthis are one member of the so-called "axis of resistance", which Tehran has cultivated to challenge Israeli and US adventurism in the Middle East. Tehran has varying degrees of influence over this network, and not all of its members are equal in power and prestige.
Hamas, a Sunni Islamist and Palestinian nationalist movement, receives support from Tehran. Other groups, like Shia militias in Iraq, coordinate closely with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp.
Lebanon's Hezbollah is its premier power.
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Hezbollah's boots on the ground - along with Russian air support - helped turn the tide of Syria's civil war in favour of President Bashar al-Assad.
Hezbollah's leaders openly boasted about the funds Iran lavished on them, helping the group set up a sprawling patronage and social services system in Lebanon. The children of senior Hezbollah leaders even intermarried with the families of Iranian powerbrokers. The son of Hezbollah's now slain second-in-command was married to the daughter of assassinated Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani.
'What Russia and Iran can do with the Houthis is create an alternative sanctions regime'
- Senior US official
Each member of the axis of resistance began attacking Israel after 7 October 2023, in what they said was support for besieged Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll from Israel's offensive now tops 43,000, the majority of whom are women and children.
Israel is far from achieving its aim of "total victory" against the informal alliance, and October was the bloodiest month for Israeli troops fighting in Gaza and Lebanon since the war began.
At the same time, Iran and its axis of resistance have been dealt several blows. Israel has achieved what analysts call "escalation dominance" by striking Tehran and Beirut, without Tel Aviv or Jerusalem paying a reciprocal price.
Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut in September. In late October, Israel disabled much of Iran's sophisticated air defence systems when it launched what it called retaliatory strikes.
The Houthis, however, have been untouched by the type of high-profile assassinations inflicted on other members of the axis of resistance. They are expanding their power in a way that challenges the US in a vital trade corridor.
Analysts say rolling back the Houthis is going to be high on the list of the next US administration.
Dealing with the Houthi threat has split the US foreign policy establishment, and the US from its Arab partners.
Late last year, the US began escorting vessels in the Red Sea. In January, the White House authorised strikes against the Houthis.
When the Biden administration went looking for local partners to join its mission, dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian, only Bahrain signed up.
'If Trump returns to the White House, he would support more powerful strikes and reinstate the FTO designation'
- Mohammed al-Basha, Yemen expert
The next US president is likely to face pressure from defence officials to expand operations against the Houthis.
Frank Mckenzie, the former commander of US Central Command, told MEE that the Houthis checkmated the Biden administration because it lacked the "political will" to use heavier firepower against them.
"The Houthis have prevailed. We have failed. They control the Bab el-Mandeb,” McKenzie said, referring to the strait south of the Red Sea between Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
"Sooner or later, they will get lucky and kill American service members."
But other officials are sceptical about expanding the conflict.
Gerald Feierstein, former US ambassador to Yemen under the Obama administration, told MEE that the most direct way for the US to stop the Houthi attacks is to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.
“If that war ends, the casus belli goes away. It will be harder for the Houthis to justify their attacks” Feierstein, told MEE.
Feierstein noted that during a brief truce between Hamas and Israel in November, when hostages in Gaza were released, Houthi attacks all but subsided.
He says a ceasefire would make it easier for the US to convince partners like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to impose financial sanctions on the group, in addition to coordinating efforts to stop the flow of arms to the group which transits the Red Sea and Oman, western and US officials say.
In January, Biden partially reversed his decision to lift a terrorist designation on the Houthis. In response to their maritime attacks, he named the group a "specially designated global terrorist", but stopped short of bringing back the Trump-era "foreign terrorist organisation label", which is more stringent. That label would make it harder to facilitate humanitarian aid to war-ravaged Yemen.
"If Trump returns to the White House, he will come in and support the anti-Houthi coalition in both the US and the Middle East. He would support more powerful strikes and reinstate the FTO designation," Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemeni expert, told MEE.
Basha said a Harris administration would likely fall in the "pragmatic camp" of "gradual escalation" with the Houthis. A Harris administration is likely to be staffed with more cautious actors who are sceptical of the efficacy of strikes and FTO designations.
"These pragmatists say we have had a decade of sanctions, strikes and ground operations and the Houthis just keep growing stronger."
"An FTO would just stop trading companies from importing food and you will not really hurt the Houthis because the Houthis have established their own parallel financial structures and network not connected to the western world," Basha said.
That line of thinking will resonate with Harris's foreign policy team, according to one former US official in touch with her campaign.
Phillip Gordon, Harris’s national security advisor, is the author of, Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East, a book that questions the US's ability to shape changes in foreign capitals.
But a future Trump administration would also be split between Iran hawks like former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and “America First” sceptics of Middle Eastern entanglements, and led by Trump's vice presidential candidate, JD Vance.
The Biden administration has justified its military action against the Houthis with Article II of the US Constitution, which allows the president to use military force without congressional approval. Some members of Congress have slammed that line of reasoning. Although the lawmakers have done little to rein in US operations, either new administration could face scrutiny if it expands strikes.
The US's Gulf partners are also wary of joining any new war in Yemen.
Analysts say Saudi Arabia and the UAE's experience in Yemen made them doubtful of the Biden administration's approach to Yemen from the very beginning.
“The US’s partners in the region - namely, the Gulf monarchies - had discouraged a military-only response, and especially a response that would not be short, assertive and decisive but rather tactical,” Cinzia Bianco, a Gulf expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told MEE.
"Their argument was that such a [limited] campaign would not deter the Houthis but embolden them without degrading their capabilities once and for all. This has been true," she said.
Basha, the Yemeni analyst, said Saudi Arabia's approach to Yemen is unlikely to change with either administration.
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The war tarnished Saudi Arabia's public image, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is trying to ensure that his Vision 2030 programme, designed to attract foreign investment and tourists, is not derailed by low oil prices or foreign wars.
Since 7 October 2023, the truce between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis has been tested and it has held. When Israel bombed the Houthis in July in retaliation for a drone strike on Tel Aviv, Saudi Arabia distanced itself from the attack, which likely crossed its airspace.
The cornerstone of Saudi Arabia's disengagement from Yemen was its decision to restore ties with Iran in 2023, in a deal brokered by China.
“Saudi Arabia believes they have bought themselves time by placating the Houthis, but that is contingent on Saudi-Iranian relations which could blow up at any time. For example, if Saudi Arabia normalises with Israel or signs a defence treaty with the US," Bilal Saab, a former Pentagon official, told MEE.
Saudi Arabia and Iran conducted joint military exercises last month, as Riyadh tried to distance itself from Israel's attack on Iran.
Saudi Arabia's reluctance to get involved in Israel's conflict with Iran is in part motivated by concerns that the Houthis could resume missile and drone strikes on the kingdom, analysts say.
In that sense, the Houthis have helped Iran dent the lustre of the US security umbrella. Washington has been trying to foster closer military ties with Israel and its Arab Gulf partners.
However, going forward, local events in Yemen could drive the calculations of the US and its Arab partners.
Having bested the US for supremacy on the Red Sea, Saab believes the Houthis will not be satisfied with the territory they control now. "The Houthis want all of Yemen.”
There are signs that the Houthis are feeling empowered.
In July, the Houthis accused Saudi Arabia and the US of trying to impose new financial restrictions on their territory. They threatened a "war on Riyadh” unless the Saudis backed down. The Saudi-backed government in Yemen responded by relaxing banking restrictions and resuming flights to Yemen.
Yemeni forces backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE control about 20 percent of Yemeni territory. The two Gulf states were one-time allies in Yemen, but are now competing for influence. Their proxies have often clashed in the country's south. A UAE-backed force now controls the southwest corner of Yemen.
"There are almost daily skirmishes now. The Houthis only control 200 miles of the Red Sea coast. They want to control the territory around Bab el-Mandeb," Basha said.