The United States and Houthis in Yemen reached an agreement to stop US air attacks against the group after the militants backed by Iranians agreed to stop American ships in the Red Sea, President Trump and Omani mediators said Tesday.
Trump gave the news of the duration of the truce at a meeting of the Oval Office not related to the Prime Minister of Canada, even surprising his own Pentagon officials.
“They just don’t want to fight,” Trump said. “And we will honor that and stop the bombings. They have capitulated, but most importantly, we will take their.
But despite his successful claim, it was not clear if the United States had achieved its goal of preventing hutis from preventing international shipping after a costly seven -week bombing campaign.
The Hutíes themselves did not stop to declare the full fire, saying that they would continue to fight against Israel. And Houthi’s officials and supporters quickly portrayed the agreement as a great victory for the militia and a failure for Trump, spreading a social media hashtag that said “Yemen defeats the United States.”
For more than a year, the Houthis have bone shooting projectiles and drone launch in commercial and military ships in the Red Sea in what the militia group has described as a sample of solidarity with the residents of Gaza and with Hamas, the militant group that controls the Palestas Palestas The Palestick Palesticks.
In mid -March, the United States, hitting hundreds of objectives to try to eliminate international shipping lanes. The campaign has cost well at $ 1 billion, Congress officials said they learned in closed information sessions with Pentagon officials last month. The ammunition rate used in the campaign has seized the concern among some US military strategists, who are concerned that they can undermine the preparation for a possible conflict with China.
After Trump unexpectedly announced the news of the agreement between the Hutis and the United States, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said his country had mediated the agreement.
“In the future, the Neinder side will go to the other, including US ships, in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and soft flow of international commercial shipments,” he said in a statement on social networks.
For his part, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior politician from Hutí, said that if the United States stopped their attacks against Yemen, the Hutis would stop attacks against a smaller group: “American military fleets and interests.”
However, Mr. Al-Bukhaiti said that the huurd continues military operations until Israel raised its siege in Gaza, “no matter the sacrifices, even we have to fight until the day of judgment.”
His statement was not clear if the Hutis would stop attacking other ships on the crucial shipping path. The hutis have said that they only point to ships with links to Israel or the United States, but the militia has in the past aimed at ships without an obvious link with either. In an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Al-Bukhaiti did not answer specific questions about whether the group would continue to attack ships linked to Israelis.
Mahdi Al-Mashat, another Houthi official, made it clear that the group intended to retaliate against Israel for its bombing of the main International Airport in Yemen on Tuesday. Mr. Al-Mashat said that the response of the hutis would be “hateful, painful and beyond the ability of the Israeli and American enemy to support.”
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the main member of the group, also described Mr. Trump’s announcement as a “victory” for the hutis, which implies in a publication on social networks that the Mean Agreement that the United States no longer supported Israel’s battle against the Hutis.
The United States Central Command, responsible for operations against Hutis, sent questions about the agreement to the White House. The White House refused to prepare the comments of Mr. Trump or respond to consultations about what the administration would do if the hutis continued attacked against Israeli ships.
Trump, who is prone to commenting outside the foreign policy, seemed to take their own offense department of defense. Three Pentagon officials said Tuesday afternoon that the military had not yet received news from the White House to end their offensive operations against the hutis. The officials were struggling to discover how Trump’s announcement had changed military policy.
The new American truce with the militants backed by Iranian occurs when US officials are working to negotiate an agreement to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and the agreement with the hutis could play a role in those Brader’s discussions.
Two Iranian officials said on Tuesday that Iran used their influence with the Hutis as part of Oman’s effort to negotiate the fire and make them stop shooting in the US ships. The officials, one in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and another with the revolutionary guards, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
The hutis receive weapons and funds from Iran, and are part of a network of what is known regionally as the resistance axis of Iran. A recent publication of the social networks of the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth threatened the action on Iran over the hutis attacks against US ships.
During the last weeks, Iranian officials have publicly distanced themselves from the hutis, saying that Iran have no control over the group and that their actions are an answer to the war in Gaza. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatolá Ali Khamenei, said in mid -March that “the hutis act independently depending on their own personal interests and points of view,” and denied that Iran had some militia of representation in the region.
Ahmad Zeidabadi, an outstanding reformist analyst, wrote on social networks that the news of Alto El Fuego between the United States and Houthis were “the best news for him” and the sausage news for hard lining in Iran that support the militias of power in the region.
Even so, national security experts showed doubts that an agreement would lead to a long -term cessation of attacks in the Red Sea. Mr. Trump’s announcement occurred only a few hours after the Hutíes issued a statement that said he was fighting a holy war in the aid of the Palestinian people in Gaza “and confront the enemy” Israeli-American-British “.
The hutis have described their attacks as an attempt to press Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, where more than two million Palestinians have fought to obtain food and water, a blockade of that speed.
The Palestinians in Gaza have been besieged by Israel since Hamas carried out a deadly attack in southern Israel in October 2023 and Tok hostages. Israeli and Hutí forces have also carried out attacks with each other.
“I would anticipate that the Hutis will continue to seek to attack Israel, as well as what the group calls ships ‘linked Israeli’ in the Red Sea,” said Gregory Johnsen, former member of the UN panel of the UN Security Council in Yemen. “If that happens, what does the United States do: restart strikes or let Israel deal with the hutis?”
He also expressed skepticism that the commercial shipping industry would return to the Red Sea and Masse, giving the Hutíes “the port have not been defeated or degraded to the point that these attacks cannot be carried out.”
“They only promised not to do it, and if the maritime transport industry is willing to take the word of Houthis because it remains to be seen,” he said.
Helene Cooper Pentagon contributed reports, Eric Schmitt from Washington, Flassihi New York and Shuaib Alamawa Of healthy, Yemen.
