Trump is hands-off on Houthis and the Saudis aren’t happy

Trump is hands-off on Houthis and the Saudis aren’t happy

President Trump is taking a notably hands-off approach as Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen rapidly gain ground in their bid to secure a Red Sea choke point.

© Abdulnasser Alseddik, Associated Press

The Houthis’ advances could further roil global energy markets and box in Saudi Arabia, but Trump has reportedly rebuffed a request from Riyadh to launch strikes on the group. The U.S. has instead sent advisers to support the kingdom, which also saw key energy pipelines attacked in recent days.

Vice President Vance said Monday that while the U.S. has been “keeping pretty close tabs” on the situation, officials are “ going to keep on monitoring it , and making sure that America’s best interests are represented.”

On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee insisted the fighting is “ really not a big expansion ” of the larger U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, noting the Houthis have refrained from hitting American targets.

“In this case I don’t think it’s quite that bad,” Huckabee said of the Houthis’ actions on Newsmax. “What we do have is a for sure skirmish between Saudi Arabia and Yemen , but it has not really gone across the region. … That’s the good news.”

The approach marks a stark contrast to the early days of the Trump administration, when the president in March 2025 ordered strikes on the Houthis in response to attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea — plans that were famously shared by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on a Signal chat that included The Atlantic’s editor in chief.

But the U.S. is reluctant to step into the fray this time around, given its insistence that Washington has all but wrapped up its fighting with Tehran, a narrative to be further called into question should a new battleground open up, according to analysts.

“War with the Houthis right now would counter [Trump’s] narrative that this conflict is essentially over,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

“It would be inconvenient to the reality he’s trying to project that there’s nothing to see there anymore, that the war is basically over. It’d be hard to sustain that narrative if you’re suddenly opening a second front,” he told The Hill.

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