Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth acknowledged that the Houthis are “not completely destroyed” and noted the ceasefire agreement has allowed for the military to refocus back to its “core interests.”
The U.S. military conducted a significant bombardment of the Yemen-based Houthis from mid-March through early May, hitting more than 1,000 targets, according to military leaders. The U.S.-Houthi ceasefire was a narrow agreement that only ended the tit-for-tat attacks against U.S. forces in the Gulf of Aden, which were carrying out the U.S. operations.
“Now there are plenty of people that would like to see regime change in Yemen, and that would be wonderful in a perfect world, you got all the time, all the munitions, and all the time to focus on that,” Hegseth said on Fox News Monday afternoon.
President Donald Trump abruptly announced the ceasefire on May 6, saying the group agreed to stop attacking U.S. ships transiting the waterways off Yemen’s coast in exchange for the United States ending its military campaign against them. It had already become an expensive campaign for the U.S. as well.
The Houthis have also shot down seven U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones worth more than $200 million in total during the conflict, while the Navy lost two F/A-18 fighter aircraft at sea during a ten-day period. The first month of the military campaign exceeded a billion dollars, according to the New York Times.
The military’s mission was to get the Houthis to stop firing at U.S. ships and to restore the freedom of navigation for the waterways in the Middle East, according to Hegseth. He added that the U.S. campaign was “unrelenting” from “day one.”
“The President set a limited objective where we got the Houthis to cry uncle and say, we’re done, and now our ships can transit that Bab [al-Mandeb Strait] and the Red Sea freely. It’s not a perfect end state. They’re not completely destroyed,” Hegseth continued.
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“But we also have a lot of other things we need to focus on, like the Iranians, like the Chinese, and if we spend all of our time and effort investing in some sort of regime change war in Yemen, we’re not focusing on the core interests,” Hegseth said.
The Houthis have continued to attack Israel, which continues to target the Houthis despite the group’s ceasefire with the U.S.
