US President Donald Trump has said he’s ordering a halt to nearly two months of air strikes on Yemen’s Houthis, saying the Iran-backed rebels have indicated that “they don’t want to fight anymore” and have pledged to stop attacking shipping in the Red Sea.
“We’re going to stop the bombing of the Houthis, effective immediately,” Trump said at the start of his Oval Office meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Trump said the Houthis had “capitulated but, more importantly, we will take their word that they say they will not be blowing up ships anymore. And that’s what the purpose of what we were doing.”
“I think that’s very positive,” Trump added. “They were knocking out a lot of ships.”
The Houthi rebels began targeting ships in the Red Sea they believed had links to Israel shortly after the war in Gaza started in October 2023, in strikes they said were in solidarity with the Palestinians.
From November 2023 until January 2025, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two and killing four sailors.
That halved the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion (€882 billion) of goods move through it annually.
Asked how the Houthis had communicated that they were looking to stop being targeted by the US, Trump gave few details, saying only that the information came from a “very good source.”
Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, confirmed that the US aerial campaign was ending, posting on X that discussions involving the Washington and Muscat, as well as negotiators in Yemen, “have resulted in a ceasefire agreement between the two sides.”
“In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping,” he wrote.
In a statement, the Houthis said that its position toward Gaza hadn’t changed and its “initial understanding” with the US would not impact its support for the Palestinians.
It wasn’t clear in the statement whether it was on board with the agreement with the US.
The intensified US campaign of air strikes began in March, when Trump promised to use “overwhelming lethal force” after the Houthis said they would resume attacks on Israeli vessels sailing off Yemen in response to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
At the time, they described the warning as affecting the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Arabian Sea.
The White House announcement came on the same day that the Israeli military launched strikes against the Houthis that it said had fully disabled the international airport in the capital, Sanaa.
Israel’s attacks were its second round of air strikes on targets in Yemen in retaliation for a Houthi missile strike on Sunday near Israel’s main airport.
Cost of the US operation
The costs of the US munitions used against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen in daily attacks since 15 March have totalled more than $750 million (€660 million), one US official said.
The Trump administration has dropped more than 2,000 munitions on more than 1,000 targets, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details about the strikes.
The total is only a fraction of the total costs of the operation. It doesn’t account for the costs of operating two aircraft carriers, their accompanying warships or the flight hours of the aircraft.
It also doesn’t include the Houthis destroying seven US MQ-9 Reaper drones, at a cost of more than $30 million (€26 million) each, or the loss of an F/A-18 fighter jet and tug from the carrier USS Harry S. Truman when it manoeuvred to avoid a Houthi missile and the jet fell off the carrier.
Despite Trump’s framing of the deal as a way to reopen the Red Sea to commercial shipping without fear of Houthi attack, “the Houthis have not fired on a commercial ship since December,” Gregory Brew, a senior analyst with the Eurasia Group risk-analysis firm, said on X.
“They are likely, however, to continue shooting at Israel,” Brew noted.
