Here’s How Trump’s Houthi Headache Could Turn Into Full-Blown Migraine

At the request of Iran, the Houthi rebels in Yemen have begun attacking ships in the Red Sea, but can the U.S. military wrest control of the key shipping lane?

The Houthi rebels first flexed their military might in 2023 when they attacked shipping in the Red Sea. The U.S. military once attempted to bomb the rebels into submission in 2025; however, the Houthis walked away from that campaign intact, and are now attacking ships on the Red Sea once more.

The Houthi rebels attacked U.S. warships over 170 times and commercial vessels 145 times between 2023 and 2025, former Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said during a press conference on March 17, 2025. The U.S. military launched precision airstrikes that aimed to decapitate the leadership of the rebel group on March 15, Parnell said.

These strikes were followed by over 1000 airstrikes on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Pentagon reported on April 29, 2025.

“American military might has not been able to do much more than put a dent in the Houthis, who control the Bab el-Mandeb Strait,” Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “For context, 10% of the U.S. Navy’s total commissioned fleet participated in combat operations against the Houthis. And what did that accomplish? It shut down the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.”

President Donald Trump’s 2025 bombing campaign against the Houthis cost roughly $1 billion in its first month but failed to establish air superiority or stop attacks on U.S. warships, The New York Times reported on May 12, 2025. The Houthis also downed several MQ-9 Reaper drones, while two F/A-18 Super Hornets were lost in carrier accidents, according to the outlet.

The administration halted the campaign on May 6, 2025 under an Oman-brokered deal requiring the Houthis to stop targeting American ships, but not other commercial vessels, according to the Times.

The face-off has now resumed after a successful Houthi strike on a Saudi oil tanker late on Wednesday night, igniting the cargo, resulting in a massive fire, according to videos posted on X. After the strike, President Donald Trump promised “major military punishment” for the Houthis and Iran in a Truth Social post.

“The aspect most reporting is missing, the really big story, is that the U.S.-Iran war is becoming a much wider, regional conflict. The key implication of this is that countries like the U.A.E, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, will be drawn in to engage more forcefully, going beyond trying to shoot down incoming drones and missiles, but striking back against the aggressor — Iran,” J.D. Foster, a former senior fellow on the economics of fiscal policy at The Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “So far, these other countries have stayed on defense, letting the United States carry the burden of the offense. All of them, equipped mostly with high-end U.S. gear, are quite capable of going on the offense themselves and will soon be forced to do so, individually at first, and then coordinated, likely with U.S. advisors in the background.”

“We do not comment on intelligence matters or hypothetical situations,” a Department of War spokesperson told the DCNF. “The Department of War stands ready to execute the Command[er]-in-Chief’s orders whenever and wherever called upon.”

The Houthi rebels’ proximity to the Red Sea combined with highly-defensible mountainous terrain makes them a formidable opponent for both shipping from the Suez Canal and the U.S. military.

Before the Houthis began attacking commercial vessels in late 2023, approximately 15% of global maritime trade and 30% of global container trade passed through the Suez Canal, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“A year ago, we were unable to militarily defeat the Houthis … Northwestern Yemen is incredibly mountainous terrain, with peaks and valleys that run parallel to the Bab Al-Mandeb & Red Sea—a critical but very narrow passageway,” former director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent said in an X post on Thursday. “This combination gives the Houthis a tactical advantage—by positioning themselves on higher ground, they’re able to easily fire down into the Red Sea and monitor & defend their airspace. In the valleys, they’re able to disperse their missiles/drones & other critical military equipment, hiding it in caves and tunnel systems capable of withstanding our bombs. “

Not all experts agreed with Foster’s position on the Houthi involvement in the Iran War.

“This attack [will] add very little,” Heritage Foundation Visiting Fellow and former Pentagon official Steven Bucci told the DCNF. “We knew they [the Houthi rebels] were not 100% out of the game, but [they] are greatly degraded. They get all their capability from Iran.”

“Bomb the heck out of the Houthis. Hard and sustained,” Bucci told the DCNF.

The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

“The threat of Houthi hostile actions against Saudi Arabia … has begun to have an overall effect on tanker activity,” Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing a note from ship broker Clarksons. “There are reports of several tankers, having loaded in Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port ​in the Red Sea, that have shifted course towards the Suez Canal rather than sail south towards the Bab el-Mandeb strait, while others are holding their positions waiting for ​further instruction.”

It appears that the Houthi rebels have decided that Chinese ships are allowed to bypass their blockade, according to an X post made by MarineTraffic on Thursday.

“Before the transit, both vessels updated their AIS destination fields to “CHINA CREW & OWNER”, replacing previously listed Chinese discharge ports,” according to the X post from MarineTraffic. “They are now sailing east through the Gulf of Aden, with Xin Long Yang underway at around 13.3 knots and Cosnew Lake at 12 knots.”

A sustained Houthi military campaign would push shipping out of the Suez Canal and around Africa.

“Shipowners are either demanding a premium to enter the danger zone in the Red Sea or avoiding it altogether. Avoiding the Red Sea altogether means sailing around the Cape of Good Hope,” Hanke told the DCNF. “That adds time, fuel costs, and pressure on current tanker fleets. In short, a sustained Houthi campaign would mean higher insurance premiums, fewer tankers available to move each barrel of oil, and longer transit times. The result would be higher shipping costs, with a premium embedded in the price of oil.”

Saudi Arabia has been locked into a years-long battle against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Saudi government reportedly enforced a blockade on Yemen for over 30 months between 2015 and 2017 that starved the country’s citizens, Reuters and The Guardian reported.

“An official source at the Transport General Authority (TGA) stated that the vessel ENCELIA, owned by a Saudi company, was targeted while sailing in the Red Sea, resulting in a fire at the bow of the vessel,” the Saudi Press Agency reported on Wednesday. “The source confirmed the safety of all crew members and that all relevant authorities have taken the necessary measures to secure the vessel and its crew and protect the marine environment.”

United States Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) referred to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). CENTCOM declined to comment.

A second ship, the Saudi-flagged Layla, was reportedly hit, according to an announcement from Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree on X; however, this remains unconfirmed.

The Saudi Transport General Authority, Bihar International Co. and Red Sea Marine Services LLC did not respond to a request for comment.

“A year ago the United States of America attacked, very powerfully, the Houthis, for their interference with commerce and trade, by shooting at ships. Since that time, and during our conflict with Iran, they have acted very responsibly,” Trump said in his Truth Social post on Thursday. “Unfortunately, now they are starting up again, shooting at two Saudi Arabian ships last night. Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if they do this again, the U.S. will hold Iran responsible, in that the Houthis are a Surrogate and/or Proxy of Iran, and major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran and, of course, the Houthis, themselves, who I am very disappointed with in that they have, until now, acted very professionally and smart.”

The State Department and the White House referred to Trump’s Truth Social post and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks to the press on Thursday.

“I hope that will de-escalate, because I think the Houthis frankly got snookered into this thing by the Iranians,” Rubio said to reporters in the Philippines on Thursday. “And they were smart to stay out of it, and they should stay out of it, and they should stop. We’ll see what happens there. Obviously, it’s not a positive development. We’ll see what happens.”

The strike on shipping vessels in the Red Sea is not entirely a surprise. Iran telegraphed this move on Saturday, saying that it would call upon the Houthis to commit such attacks if the U.S. continued to strike civilian infrastructure in Iran.

The Islamic Republic’s leadership sent the request to the Yemeni Houthis, Reuters reported on July 16, citing two senior Iranian ‌sources and a regional source who spoke anonymously.

“It is also … essentially a certainty that Iran at least encouraged this action,” Bucci told the DCNF. “It is cloaked in Houthi interests (anti-Saudi), but assists Iran’s efforts to keep the Straits route as essential.”

One expert told the DCNF that this is only a small piece of a grander collage of events that will drive up global energy prices.

“In isolation, the effect on oil prices would be moderate, while the effect on shipping costs would likely be minor as shippers simply won’t allow their vessels to transit Houthi-linked seas,” Foster told the DCNF. “But this development shouldn’t be viewed in isolation. It is part of an ad hoc pattern including the dueling blockades of the Strait of Hormuz and the increasingly effective efforts of the Ukrainians to shut down Russian oil exports by sinking Russian tankers and hitting Russian oil transfer facilities. Combined, and over time, these three developments could push oil prices up far beyond recent experience.”

This new strike happened as the U.S. energy reserves are already in a weakened position.

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been drained by nearly 25% over the last 17 weeks, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data, declining from 415.4 million barrels on March 20, 2026, to 311.4 million barrels on July 17, 2026.

The Biden administration broke the record for the largest drawdown from the SPR during its time in office, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). The Trump administration is now releasing even more oil from the SPR after it only added roughly 20 million barrels in 2025, according to the EIA, which brought total stocks to 413 million barrels at the beginning of 2026.

While the U.S. economy will likely survive, U.S. consumers will feel this burden, Foster told the DCNF.

“Some countries’ economies will be hit hard by a substantial rise in oil prices, but the global economy overall will weather the shock, as it has in the past,” Foster told the DCNF. “Fortunately, the U.S. economy is fairly well inoculated, though the U.S. consumer is not.”

Energy public policy analyst David Blackmon warned that $5 a gallon for regular unleaded gasoline could become a reality sooner than consumers might expect, and for longer than experts anticipated, in an article on Forbes.

“If no one stops them, it would be a problem eventually,” Bucci told the DCNF. “I am pretty sure you will see a response from Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and Israel shortly.”

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