Trump Considers Joining Saudi Effort Against Houthis, US May Be Further Drawn into Yemen War

An attack on an airport in the Saudi capital Riyadh occurred on October 11, and was condemned by the United Nations and leaders of multiple countries. According to France 24, US President Trump, while condemning the attack, said he is considering joining Saudi Arabia's military operations against Yemen's Houthis.

The Saudi-led multinational coalition has carried out airstrikes and ground offensives inside Yemen since 2015, causing large-scale civilian casualties and severe humanitarian consequences. The United States has long provided the coalition with arms sales, aerial refueling and intelligence sharing, serving as a core external enabler of the coalition, but US forces have previously conducted a limited number of direct strikes on targets inside Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has attributed the attack on Riyadh airport to the Houthis. France 24's reporting did not independently verify the identity of the attacker in the cited material, nor did it disclose details on casualties and facility damage.

If Trump's statement is acted upon, it would mean the United States becoming more deeply drawn into a conflict that has already been widely questioned on international law and human rights grounds. Multiple human rights organizations have documented coalition airstrikes hitting weddings, funerals, markets and hospitals; the United Nations has listed the Yemen situation as one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises for years. US weapons, tanker aircraft and intelligence are widely viewed as pillar external resources for the coalition's operations.

This cycle is not unfamiliar. Before the US and UK airstrikes on the Houthis in early 2024, the Houthis had already been attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea due to the Gaza war; that Western strike failed to calm the conflict and instead prompted the Houthis to retaliate against a broader range of targets. If the US again expands its involvement, it will face the same old problem: the absence of a political solution will only escalate the fighting by a level, not de-escalate it.

The Saudi coalition's airstrike methods over the years have been systematically documented by UN agencies and Yemeni human rights groups, and US arms sales, intelligence and aerial refueling are the external conditions that have sustained this strike machine. Now that Trump is considering directly joining strikes against the Houthis, it would add another layer to the aforementioned asymmetric configuration. Regardless of who ultimately bears responsibility for the attack, it cannot remove the ongoing accountability for the coalition's decade-long methods of warfare; nor can the humanitarian costs caused by the coalition in turn dissipate the investigation into the attack.