{"id":858683,"date":"2026-09-24T07:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T07:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/858683\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T07:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T07:16:13","slug":"yemen-says-it-asked-trump-for-u-s-military-support-in-fight-against-houthis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/858683\/","title":{"rendered":"Yemen says it asked Trump for U.S. military support in fight against Houthis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government of Yemen<\/a> is seeking U.S. military support in its fight against the Houthis<\/a>, a senior Yemeni official said Wednesday, as the Iranian-backed rebels rapidly expand their control of Yemen\u2019s Red Sea coast<\/a> and threaten another critical Middle East waterway for global energy supplies.<\/p>\n

Yemen\u2019s president, Rashad al-Alimi, conveyed the request for U.S. assistance to President Donald Trump<\/a> in a call this week, Abdullah Al-Alimi Bawazir, vice president of the Yemeni Leadership Council, told reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked about a report this week<\/a> by Reuters, which cited one Yemeni and one Western source as saying Trump made no direct pledge of military support during the call, Bawazir said he was unaware that the request had been rejected.<\/p>\n

He said that Trump understands the danger of the Houthis and that \u201cwe hope and expect more support for the Yemeni government in the face of the Houthi militias.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment overnight.<\/p>\n

01:14<\/p>\n

Houthis claim attack on Saudi capital<\/p>\n

00:0000:00<\/p>\n

Bawazir did not say whether U.S. support should extend to direct military strikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not ask the American soldiers to actually go into war on our behalf,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we don\u2019t really request that they do nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yemen does look forward to \u201cmutual coordination on the intel and security fields,\u201d according to Bawazir, who requested that the U.S. enhance the Yemeni government\u2019s own military capacity to take on the threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe aerial campaigns are important,\u201d he said. \u201cBut supporting the Yemeni government and forces on the ground is indeed a guarantor to end the danger of those militias.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yemen has been embroiled in various states of conflict since 2014, when the Houthis drove the internationally recognized government out of the capital city, Sanaa, and ignited a regional proxy war, with Saudi Arabia supporting the exiled government against the Iranian-backed rebels. <\/p>\n

In their latest military campaign, the Houthis have advanced along Yemen\u2019s Red Sea coastline with the aim of cutting off the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which has become a critical waterway for Saudi Arabia to transport oil after Iran effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia, a critical U.S. ally in the Middle East, including in the U.S. war with Iran, has urged the U.S.<\/a> to take military action against the Houthis, who further escalated their actions over the weekend by launching an attack on the Saudi capital, Riyadh<\/a>. So far U.S. support has been limited to providing intelligence and targeting data. <\/p>\n

Trump, who announced a ceasefire with the Houthis<\/a> last year after weeks of punishing strikes against the militant group, went so far as to order strikes against the Houthis on Sunday, NBC News has reported<\/a>, but the order was canceled hours later. <\/p>\n

Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a> said Wednesday that the U.S. has made commitments to the Saudis and is living up to them, adding that \u201cobviously, the president has many options available to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump said this month that the Houthis, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization, don\u2019t want to fight the U.S. and \u201cthey don\u2019t want us to go after them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve called and they\u2019ve talked to us, and they don\u2019t want us to,\u201d Trump told reporters while he was in Ireland. \u201cThey would much prefer not having us involved, and they\u2019re letting most ships go through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mohamed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthis\u2019 political bureau, told The Associated Press<\/a> on Sunday that it was the U.S. that had reached out to the rebel group after its advancement toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe confirmed that we are not targeting the United States, or any other nation, in the strait, with the sole exception of the Saudi enemy,\u201d al-Bukhaiti said. \u201cAnd that remains the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bawazir warned it would be a mistake to accept assurances from a group that is \u201cconnected to a deviant state in the region,\u201d referring to Iran, as it may be seen as legitimizing the Houthis. But he said Yemen was comfortable with the U.S. position. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe do indeed discuss this particular issue very, very deeply,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government of Yemen is seeking U.S. military support in its fight against the Houthis, a senior Yemeni…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":858684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-858683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}