US Airstrikes Aren't Stopping Houthi Attacks

The Red Sea is not part of the United States, and Yemen has the right to defend itself,

a Houthi spokesperson said on Thursday

The Trump administration has made it very clear that it will not stop attacking the Houthis in Yemen unless the Houthis basically stop attacking the shipping lanes in the Red Sea and we know that the Houthis won't stop unless there's a ceasefire in Gaza. It seems that the Trump administration wants to send a powerful message to Iran that what's happening in Yemen could happen to you, you have to come and sit down and talk about your nuclear program."

Fawaz Gerges, Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science

The United States is mobilizing its forces to protect terrorism in the Middle East and is draining billions of dollars from American taxpayers to fight against the people in order to protect terrorism. The United States should leave the region and leave Israel alone. Israel is an enemy of Islam and Muslims."

Yemen's Houthi Military Spokesperson Yahya Sarea

Airstrikes alone have not been enough to dislodge them, as they've adapted with asymmetric tactics, fortified defenses, and, most critically, sustained support from Iran,

said Andrew Borene, a member of the Atlantic Council's Counterterrorism Project

Washington must avoid acting in Yemen without at least coordinating with its regional allies in the Gulf, specifically the UAE and Saudi Arabia. At the very least, these two countries – who have experienced a failed war against the Houthis – understand what strategies do not work with the group and in Yemen overall,

Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Programme Fellows Farea Al-Muslimi and Thomas Juneau wrote

The genius of the Houthis' strategy is that their missiles do not have to hit anything or do much damage for the group to achieve its objective of disrupting shipping through the Red Sea,

Kavanagh said

On the contrary, we have been committed to promoting talks for peace and calling on the relevant parties to uphold security of waterways in the Red Sea,

Zhang said at the time

The United States doesn't really depend on trade through the Red Sea and cost increases for Americans have been small,

Kavanagh said

Then there is the rate at which they are burning through munitions, many of which cost millions a shot,

Sharpe said

The big issue here, and one that makes this current escalation a little surprising, is that the U.S. relies very little on this chokepoint,

Sharpe told Newsweek

Business sentiment and consumer confidence have also fallen meaningfully because of a belief that things will cost more, interest rates will be slower to come down and demand will ultimately weaken,

Colyar said

There always is an element of risk in this,

Votel said

The hard work of fixing Yemen nobody seems to want to do, not the Arabs on the Arabian Peninsula, certainly not the United States, with any type of administration, I don't think either side wants that,

the former official said

Geopolitical confrontation has increasingly taken the form of challenges to freedom of navigation and commercial shipping (Red Sea with the Houthis, Black Sea with Ukraine and Russia, and maybe one day disruption to shipping in Taiwan Strait if China invades),

Matt Colyar, an economist at Moody's Analytics, told Newsweek

The Houthis benefit from many elements, including geography,

Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni analyst serving as a research fellow at the Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Program, told Newsweek

It has been over a year since a U.S.-flagged commercial ship safely sailed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, or the Gulf of Aden,

the White House said

But today's conflicts are not the kinds of events that are materially impacting our view of trade and global economic growth anywhere near tariffs,

he added

I think the reason we're failing, or we are likely to fail, is that we're working on the symptomology. We're not really working on how we got to this problem,

the former official added

It's a waste."

One former U.S. government official, speaking to Newsweek on background, put it even more succinctly

The drones and missiles that they use are also often cheap and fairly easy to get and hide deep underground, but they are very expensive for the United States to counter,

she added