By Cary Springfield, International Banker
“Yemen defeats America.” That was one of the triumphant messages doing the rounds on social media, as officials of Ansar Allah (Houthis) claimed victory over the United States after it ceased its bombing campaign against Yemen on May 6, having failed to achieve its military goals. With this ill-advised campaign proving decidedly expensive, both in terms of the US’ financial outlay and the extent of precious political capital it used up in the region, moreover, the overall cost of this offensive could well resonate for some time to come.
One of the poorest countries in the world, Yemen has been beleaguered by massive economic and humanitarian crises since the outbreak of war against a West-backed, Saudi Arabia-led coalition approximately 10 years ago. It has once again been at the forefront of hostilities in Western Asia as it seeks to bring an end to the hugely destructive war waged by Israel in the Gaza Strip. But with the US having stepped up its strikes against the country in recent weeks, alongside the United Kingdom, any hopes of a sustained improvement in living standards have been put on the back burner for the time being.
“Yemen lost its unenviable status as ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,’ not due to any improvements in Yemen itself but simply because at least two other crises have overtaken it in horror and inhumanity: the Gaza genocide and the Sudanese wars,” Helen Lackner, the author of Yemen in Crisis: The Road to War (2019) and Yemen: Poverty and Conflict (2022), explained in a recent article for the US political publication Jacobin. “Two-thirds of Yemenis are in need of humanitarian assistance, including seventeen million who are lacking food.”
The catastrophic situation in Gaza, which has seen more than 53,000 Palestinian civilians killed, initially motivated Ansar Allah—also known colloquially as the Houthis—to launch its own military offensive beginning in November 2023, specifically by targeting ships bound for Israel passing through the Red Sea from the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean via the narrow Bab-el-Mandab Strait that separates Yemen from Djibouti and the Gulf of Aden. To avoid the blockade, vessels have been forced to sail around the African continent, which has significantly raised shipping costs.
The US and UK became involved in the conflict in January 2024 by initiating bombing campaigns on Ansar Allah targets in Yemen, with President Joe Biden explaining the actions as being in direct response to Ansar Allah’s attacks on Red Sea ships, which “jeopardised trade and threatened freedom of navigation”. The Yemeni group, which controls a significant portion of northern Yemen, including the capital city Sanaa and its surrounding areas, much of the northern highlands and the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, then halted its operations after a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel was reached in mid-January 2025. It also released a shipping crew it had detained over a year earlier.
After the collapse of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal in mid-March, however, Ansar Allah resurrected its attacks on shipping in the region. And with Tel Aviv having ramped up its military assault on the Gaza Strip since then, alongside an intensification of its siege of Gaza that has elicited widespread condemnation over the emergence of starvation conditions in the territory, the Yemeni response only intensified during the ensuing weeks.
Once again, however, the US demonstrated its support for Israel when, on March 15, President Donald Trump launched Operation Rough Rider, a bombing campaign against Yemen that he hoped would force Ansar Allah to cease its attacks. By the end of April, the US military’s central command alleged that 800 key targets had been struck during the operation, including “multiple command-and-control facilities, air defense systems, advanced weapons manufacturing facilities and advanced weapons storage locations”, as well as the deaths of “hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders”. That said, the military did not disclose any of the names of those it claimed it had killed.
According to Ansar Allah, however, the waves of US strikes claimed the lives of scores of civilians, most notably 68 people killed in late April at a detention centre holding African migrants in Saada in the northwest of Yemen and 80 civilians killed during an attack on the port of Ras Isa on April 18. “Our position is directed against the Israeli enemy and the Americans, who have openly declared war on our country,” the group’s leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, reaffirmed in an early-April televised speech, adding that his group’s fight “is for Palestine to prevent the displacement of its people and pressure for an end to their genocide”.
Abdul-Malik al-Houthi further confirmed that Ansar Allah would “continue confronting the Americans, who are complicit with the Israeli enemy, supporting, protecting, and joining them in their aggression against Palestine and the peoples of our nation”. He also observed that the “American airstrikes and attacks (in Yemen) sometimes exceed 90 raids per day” and accused Washington of “committing crimes and waging aggression against our country without any justification”, as reported by the Turkish state-run media outlet Anadolu Ajansı (AA).
Ultimately, Washington’s campaign proved unsuccessful, with several reports confirming that the US failed to achieve air superiority over Ansar Allah. But it is perhaps the hefty financial cost in exchange for very little gain that the US will rue the most. In closed-door briefings given to Congress in early April, Pentagon officials reportedly confirmed they had used up $200 million of munitions in just the first three weeks. Adding in the costs for personnel and naval-ship deployments, the campaign had cost US taxpayers “more than $1 billion in the first month”, congressional officials confirmed, as reported by the New York Times.
A report from NBC News, moreover, detailed the US’ bill for bombing Yemen since mid-March, which included “hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs; which can cost $85,000 apiece; at least 75 Tomahawks, which run about $1.9 million apiece; at least 20 AGM 158 air-launched cruise missiles at about $1.5 million per missile; and many other munitions,” the US news outlet confirmed on May 9. “After this article was initially published, a Defense Department official told NBC News that these munitions cost figures are inaccurate and overstated, saying they’re closer to $400 million. But other defense officials disputed that.”
“Despite the US burning through finite munitions supplies at a cost of $1 billion to bomb at least 800 sites since March 15, the Houthis are undeterred, and the volume of Red Sea shipping remains as depressed as ever. Houthi attacks on US ships and Israel continue. A Houthi missile narrowly missed Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport on May 4,” Charles William Walldorf, a professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University and a senior fellow at think-tank Defense Priorities, wrote in a May 5 article for The Conversation. “In fact, the direct attacks on the Houthis and the rapidly growing casualty count among Yemeni civilians from the Trump administration’s bombing campaign appear to be strengthening the Houthis’ political position in Yemen.”
Ansar Allah also inflicted considerable financial damage on sophisticated American military equipment, including the downing of seven MQ-9 drones, each with a price tag of some $30 million, on top of the estimated 15 MQ-9 drones taken out in the earlier conflict. The US also lost two F-18 fighter jets, each worth $67 million, when they reportedly fell off a US aircraft carrier, the most recent loss being reported on May 6.
It was at that point that, according to the New York Times, “Mr. Trump had had enough”, and as such, the White House issued an order to United States Central Command on May 5 to “pause” offensive operations. An Omani-brokered ceasefire ultimately proved crucial in bringing about an end to the hostilities, with the US agreeing to halt its airstrikes in exchange for Ansar Allah’s stopping its attacks on American ships in the Red Sea. “We hit them very hard, and they had a great ability to withstand punishment,” Mr. Trump said. “You could say there was a lot of bravery there…they gave us their word that they wouldn’t be shooting at ships anymore, and we honor that.”
Crucially, however, no deal was agreed for the Yemeni side to stop targeting shipping that it regarded as being helpful to Israel. “The Houthis will stop shooting at US ships for some period of time. But they will not stop firing missiles at Israel, commercial shipping will not return, and nothing will change in the Yemen civil war,” Dana Stroul, research director at the pro-Israel American think tank Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told NBC News.