Houthi Havoc

The U.S. has launched over 400 percent more strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebel group in March 2025 than in the previous three months, according to an analysis by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a hawkish Washington think tank.

The U.S. military has launched 89 strikes against the group since Saturday — the most since the Biden administration first started a campaign against the Iran-backed group in February 2024.

But former top U.S. military officials warn the Houthis have more sophisticated capabilities than other terror groups the country has faced in the Red Sea.

“It’s similar to the Somali pirate problem,” with the ongoing threat from Somali raiders to commercial shipping off the Horn of Africa, said Thomas Bergeson, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who served as the deputy head of U.S. Central Command until 2020. “The Somali pirates didn’t have surface to surface missiles and under sea capabilities to go after shipping. So it’s much more dangerous.”

Originally published in POLITICO.