US Stays Out of Yemens Offensive but Supplies the Targets
by: Marcus Webb

U.S. Stays Out of Yemen’s Offensive, but Supplies the Targets

In a televised address on Sunday, Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council, announced “the start of military operations to retake the remaining territory of the republic.” The offensive is aimed at the Iran-backed Houthis, who seized the Bab el-Mandeb strait and about 150 kilometers of Red Sea coast in a surprise push last month, Reuters reported.

Yemeni government troops are doing the fighting on the ground, with Saudi Arabia leading from the air, according to regional and Western officials who spoke to Reuters before the announcement. The United States has said publicly that it is not joining. Several reports, all based on unnamed officials, say it is already helping in a quieter way.

Everything short of combat

On Friday, Axios reported that the U.S. had turned down Saudi requests to carry out airstrikes for the second time in recent weeks. A U.S. official told the outlet that Washington “is not going to take kinetic action for now.” Trump came close to ordering a strike on the Houthis in late September, after a request from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but held off, according to Axios.

The same report said the U.S. military is helping the Saudis with everything short of direct combat, mainly intelligence and targeting data. One U.S. official told Axios that over the previous two weeks the U.S. had given the Saudis more than 200 Houthi targets to strike. No other outlet has reported that figure.

The broader support has been reported for weeks. On Sept. 10, CNN reported, citing five sources, that more than 100 U.S. military advisers were in Saudi Arabia providing intelligence and targeting support, and that the U.S. had helped the Saudis use a real-time targeting tool one official compared to the Pentagon’s Maven system. The next day, two U.S. officials told ABC News the administration was offering “significant intelligence and targeting assistance” but had no plans for direct strikes. Reuters, citing six people familiar with the preparations, reported that the U.S. is already providing intelligence to support Riyadh’s operations in Yemen.

Central Command declined to comment to ABC News. U.S. officials told Axios that the decision against strikes could change if the offensive runs into trouble.

Congress has argued about this kind of help before

Intelligence and targeting help for a Saudi campaign in Yemen is not new, and the last time it was debated in Congress, the outcome left this exact category of support untouched.

In 2019, Congress passed S.J.Res. 7, a War Powers resolution directing the president to remove U.S. forces “from hostilities in or affecting the Republic of Yemen” within 30 days. Its findings stated that since March 2015, U.S. forces had provided the Saudi-led coalition with “aerial targeting assistance, intelligence sharing, and mid-flight aerial refueling,” and that the U.S. had set up a Joint Combined Planning Cell with Saudi Arabia to help with aerial targeting.

But the resolution’s operative definition of hostilities named only one of those activities, in-flight refueling. A separate section, titled “Rule of construction regarding intelligence sharing,” said nothing in the resolution could disrupt the collection, analysis or sharing of intelligence with any coalition partner if the president found it appropriate.

The Senate passed the resolution 54–46 on March 13, 2019, and the House followed 247–175 on April 4. President Trump vetoed it on April 16. In his veto message he described U.S. help to the coalition as “limited support,” including intelligence sharing and logistics, and argued it did not amount to hostilities, Brookings noted in its analysis of the veto. On May 2, the Senate voted 53–45 to override, short of the two-thirds required, the Arms Control Association reported.

So the only time both chambers passed a measure to end U.S. involvement in Yemen’s war, it expressly left intelligence sharing alone, and it still did not become law. Supplying targets for someone else’s airstrikes falls in the space that fight never settled.

What both sides claim on the ground

Much of what is known about the first day comes from the combatants themselves and has not been independently verified.

The government’s armed forces spokesman said its forces carried out 257 “precision targeting operations” against Houthi positions on Saturday, Al Jazeera and Asharq Al-Awsat reported, with the main focus on the fronts around Taiz. The Saudi-led coalition said it carried out 97 strikes and other operations against Houthi reinforcements early Sunday, according to Al Jazeera.

The Houthis said they fired ballistic missiles and drones at two Saudi Aramco sites, one in Riyadh and one in the Khurais area, and claimed both caused large fires, CNN, Al Jazeera and Reuters reported. Saudi Arabia had not commented as of Sunday. The Houthis also claimed to have taken a highway linking Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, with the government’s seat in Aden, CNN reported.

The fighting has already displaced tens of thousands of people. Three in four families in parts of Yemen are going hungry because of the surge in fighting, the World Food Programme said last week, according to Reuters and CNN.

Why the strait is the prize

The Bab el-Mandeb is the narrow southern entrance to the Red Sea, and Axios called it a vital artery for global trade and Saudi oil exports. After taking the coast that overlooks it, the Houthis said Saudi shipping using the strait would be targeted, CNN reported. Retaking that coast is one of the offensive’s central goals.

It is the same chokepoint Iran’s parliament speaker wrote into his “Straits Taylor Rule” last month, alongside the Strait of Hormuz, as a lever on U.S. interest rates. We looked at that equation in Iran Wrote a Formula to Move the Fed.

This story is developing. Front lines and both sides’ claims were changing through Sunday.

Sources

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