Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman placed two calls to Trump on Thursday, pressing him to order direct American military strikes on Houthi positions as the group pushed toward a critical Red Sea passage, Axios reported, citing two US officials. Trump turned him down, with officials making clear direct military involvement isn’t on the table right now.
Tensions between the two first flared up again in July, when Saudi authorities turned away an Iranian aircraft attempting to bring senior Houthi officials back into Sanaa following a funeral for Iran’s late Supreme Leader. MBS had sought only Trump’s political support for a strike on Sanaa’s airport back then, explicitly saying Saudi forces didn’t need American muscle.
Now, with Houthi forces having just seized the coastal city of Mokha and pushing toward the Bab al-Mandab Strait, Riyadh is asking for American firepower instead.
Iran is already consuming significant US attention and resources, Hormuz traffic remains snarled, and crude prices have pushed well beyond the $100 mark. A fresh US military commitment in Yemen could knit those separate crises into one larger, harder-to-manage conflict.
CENTCOM chief Adm. Brad Cooper flew to Riyadh on Thursday for urgent talks aimed at coordinating next steps, with an estimated 200 American troops already on the ground there in an intelligence and targeting capacity, not a combat one. The US ran weeks of strikes against the Houthis as recently as March 2025, only to declare a ceasefire two months later after the group “capitulated.”
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Flashback: Trump Announces End to US Airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthis
Al Jazeera reported Friday that Houthi fighters had overrun the final government-controlled section of Yemen’s Red Sea coast in less than a day, giving the group control of the coastline in its entirety, a claim other outlets have independently corroborated.
Houthi naval units then moved offshore and captured Mayyun Island, sitting in the middle of the strait itself, with a Yemeni official telling AFP the group had “completed their takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb area and Mayyun Island.”
