The Houthis Seize Yemen's Red Sea Coast Up to the Bab el-Mandeb and Trump Calls Off U.S. Strikes With the Bombs Already on the Jets — "The Houthis Called Us and They Don't Want to Fight With Us," He Says, While Rick Scott Says "You've Got to Destroy Them" and Tim Kaine Calls It "a Very Predictable Consequence of the Iran War"
In September 2026, with the U.S. six months into its war with Iran, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis launched a lightning offensive that took the country's Red Sea port cities, Perim Island and the Hanish archipelago and carried them to the Bab el-Mandeb strait — a second shipping chokepoint alongside Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Drones fired from Iraq disabled a Saudi oil pipeline, the U.N. refugee agency counted more than 110,000 people displaced, and the State Department warned that the conflict "has the potential to escalate rapidly." Trump said on Sept. 12 that the Houthis had called Washington and did not want to fight the United States. After Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asked for U.S. help, Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare strikes — then, according to the New York Times and Axios, called them off around midday on Sunday, Sept. 20, after commanders had approved target lists and crews were loading bombs onto aircraft. Most of his advisers opposed opening another front while U.S. forces were stretched by the Iran war. Republican senators including Rick Scott, John Kennedy and Bill Hagerty said the Houthis had to be answered, mostly by the Saudis; Democrats Tim Kaine and Richard Blumenthal said the offensive was fallout from the Iran war. On Oct. 2, Axios reported that Saudi Arabia and Yemeni government forces were preparing a major counteroffensive and that U.S. officials said the U.S. would not take kinetic action for now.
“Everybody ought to work together to destroy the Houthis. It's not just the Trump administration, the Saudis have resources. They need to use all their resources to destroy them. You can't play games here. You've got to destroy them.”