The U.S. War Against the Houthis Is the Real ‘Signalgate’ Scandal
A week ago, U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security team inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in a Signal group chat to discuss operational planning for strikes on the Yemen-based Houthi rebels. Since then, coverage has focused on the security implications of using a commercial messaging app for such a highly sensitive matter; the incompetence of texting strike plans to a journalist; the flippant, emoji-strewn celebration in the wake of killing civilians; and even the lack of a legal basis for attacking Yemen under the U.S. Constitution.
Lost in the uproar is the true scandal of the entire episode: the misguided decision to attack the Houthis in the first place.
According to the subsequently published transcript of the group chat, the logic behind the U.S. attacks was to safeguard freedom of navigation for commercial shipping in the Red Sea, which the Houthis have targeted with missile and drone strikes since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in October 2023. The group paused those attacks during the recent ceasefire in Gaza but recently threatened to restart them now that Israel has resumed its military operations there.
The Trump administration’s decision to attack the Houthis is misguided for three reasons. First, the risks of bombing the group badly outweigh the purported benefits. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping inflict only minor costs that are borne primarily by countries besides the United States. Second, the U.S. campaign will almost certainly fail to halt Houthi attacks, and by failing, it will create a dilemma for the Trump administration, forcing it to choose between an embarrassing retreat or a pointless escalation. And third, the rush to bomb the Houthis sidestepped efforts toward diplomatic solutions that are not only more likely to achieve the goal of halting the group’s attacks but also objectives the U.S. should pursue for their own sake: namely, to try to restore the ceasefire in Gaza—something the Trump administration itself has pushed for—and in the meantime to pressure Israel to allow humanitarian aid to once again enter Gaza, which is the Houthis’ core demand.
To be clear, the U.S. war against the Houthis did not begin last week. It is an outgrowth of Israel’s war in Gaza, with roots that go even further back to Yemen’s civil war, when the Houthis first began launching intermittent attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Those had largely ceased in recent years, but after Israel’s invasion of Gaza in late 2023, the Houthis sought to intervene in the conflict in support of the Palestinians there. From the beginning, the group stated it would cease its attacks once a ceasefire had been reached in Gaza.
By promising to quiet Houthi attacks with a limited war likely to fail, the Trump administration may be setting itself up for a rough choice: cut bait or escalate.
After initial efforts to hit Israel directly with missiles and drones failed, the Houthis turned their attention to shipping, first targeting what they claimed were Israeli ships and then expanding their attacks to all commercial shipping. The fact that 7 percent of global maritime trade passes through the Bab al-Mandab strait off Yemen’s coast—which connects the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and Suez Canal beyond—makes the route an attractive target that the Houthis quickly tried to leverage. By some measures, they have launched nearly 130 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since 2023.
The administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden responded militarily in December 2023, first leading an effort to protect shipping with naval defenses before shifting in January 2024 to bombing the Houthis directly in an attempt to degrade their capabilities. Those airstrikes failed to stop Houthi attacks, just as Biden had predicted with baffling candor at the campaign’s onset. The Houthis continued their offensive until the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire early this year, when, as promised, they ceased their attacks.
The Trump administration decision to strike the Houthis, who had threatened but not yet resumed Red Sea attacks, was neither urgent nor inevitable. As Vice President JD Vance and others acknowledged in the Signal chat, they could have waited—someone mentioned a delay of a month—without it making much of a difference.
In fact, war on the Houthis isn’t necessary at all. In global economic terms, the Houthis are little more than a nuisance. Their potent ballistic missiles are inaccurate, as they lack guidance capabilities and almost always miss, while their accurate drones are impotent, mere pinpricks to the massive container ships they strike.
Still, ever since the attacks began, shippers and their insurers have avoided the Red Sea, partly due to risk aversion and partly due to profit motive. The costs of diverting around Africa are so low that shippers actually earn a premium for the longer voyage. Shipping giants Maersk and Cosco both enjoyed “windfall” profits in 2024, so they are in no rush to return to the Suez route.
Nor have Houthi attacks significantly worsened U.S. inflation, which has eased since the Red Sea campaign began in late 2023. At that time, overcapacity in the shipping industry had put rates at “rock-bottom” levels, with companies struggling to fill their cargos. Rerouting around Africa removed that slack and normalized the market, with little cost passed on to consumers.
The diversions did cause disruptions last year in Europe, the destination for most Red Sea shipping, but the effect on consumers was mild and temporary. In sum, the Houthi attacks are underwhelming and their costs are not borne by the United States. Far from being a war of self-defense for the U.S., it is one fought for the marginal benefit of other countries.
In any case, bombing the Houthis won’t work. The weapons they use to attack ships are hard to locate and destroy from the air but easy for them to replenish, with Iran’s assistance.
The Trump administration has upped the intensity of the airstrikes compared to the Biden team in hopes of making them more effective, and they seemingly now include “decapitation” attacks targeting Houthi leadership. But the Houthis endured brutal airstrikes by Saudi Arabia for years during the civil war and were not cowed. Besides, decapitation attacks have a poor record, often elevating more extreme elements of targeted groups and heightening their desire to resist.
What’s more, the airstrikes play into the hands of the Houthis, who practice a kind of resistance politics by which becoming a target of the U.S. military is a badge of honor. They are unlikely to fold under increased bombing. And the poor history of strategic airpower to bring victory suggests that the Trump administration’s bravado about the success of their strikes will prove embarrassing.
The cost of the war, meanwhile, is significant. As Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, put it last year while he was still serving as a representative in Congress and opposed to the war, “We are burning readiness to the tune of tens of billions of dollars for what really amounts to a ragtag bunch of terrorists.” Waltz exaggerated the cost—by one estimate the U.S. spent nearly $5 billion responding to Houthi attacks by last October—but the reduction in readiness is real: The U.S. Navy fired hundreds of SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6 interceptor missiles at Houthi drones and missiles, substantially reducing arsenals and expending weapons worth millions of dollars against drones worth maybe $2,000 apiece. The cost of bomber flights and munitions against land-based targets only worsens this atrocious cost exchange ratio.
And bigger trouble looms. By promising to quiet Houthi attacks with a limited war likely to fail, the Trump administration may be setting itself up for a rough choice: cut bait or escalate. Succeeding in the task they have set for themselves could require deploying ground forces and possibly even defeating the Houthis decisively. That would make the current needless bombing seem cheap by comparison.
But what makes the campaign against the Houthis particularly egregious is that it might have been avoided. At least before the Trump administration attacked them, the Houthis said the price of peace was resumed humanitarian aid to Gaza, which is something the U.S. should support on its own merits. Previously they asked for a Gaza ceasefire, which Trump also favored. These are not steps the U.S. can unilaterally deliver, but they coincide with U.S. interests, and Washington can pursue them without crediting the Houthis for the idea.
The Signal chat fiasco as well as the war its participants discussed recall Talleyrand’s famous line: “It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake.” Going forward, it is essential that Trump’s team not compound it. The sooner the U.S. walks away from a losing strategy, the less the embarrassment it will suffer.
Benjamin H. Friedman is policy director at Defense Priorities.
Rose Kelanic is director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities.