TRUMP'S ROUGH RIDE: U.S. Spends $1B to 'Annihilate' Houthis for Defending Gazans from Genocide, Has Nothing to Show for it

China likely watched how the Houthis responded to attacks that launched from carriers

U.S. President Donald Trump said in March that the military campaign against the Houthis “isn’t even a fair fight, and never will be. They will be completely annihilated.”

But after weeks of near-daily bombing campaigns during Operation Rough Rider, the Houthis remain a force to be reckoned with, and the U.S. emerges weaker, unable to stop the Yemeni group from defending Gazans being slaughtered by Israel. (The group stopped attacking ships in the Red Sea when Israel signed a ceasefire with Hamas.)

Wolf-Christian Paes, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The Times of Israel: “We’re basically back to where we were four months ago, just with many lives lost in Yemen and after considerable expenses to the U.S. taxpayer.”

“The Houthis will use this as an opportunity to regroup and rearm, while the US is further weakened,” he said.

Two U.S. officials briefed on the cost of “Operation Rough Rider” told NBC News that the campaign against the Houthis cost the American taxpayer $1 billion, which includes the “thousands of bombs and missiles used in strikes, along with seven drones shot down and two fighter jets that sank.”

The report said:

Since March 15, when the Trump administration announced its current campaign against the Houthis, known as Operation Rough Rider, the Pentagon has expended roughly 2,000 bombs and missiles worth more than $775 million against the group, according to the two U.S. officials briefed on the cost. That includes hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs; which can cost $85,000 apiece; at least 75 Tomahawks, which run about $1.9 million apiece; at least 20 AGM 158 air-launched cruise missiles at about $1.5 million per missile; and many other munitions.

The report noted that the U.S. did not deal a “crippling blow” to the Houthis.

Trump announced Tuesday that he will end his punishment campaign against Yemeni civilians who have stood up to defend Gazans who are being massacred by Israel after he said the group “capitulated” and will stop its attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

U.S. Central Command said it struck over 1,000 targets and killed hundreds of Houthis since it started the campaign in March.

“U.S. airstrikes are appearing to kill and injure civilians in Yemen at an alarming rate over the past month under a Trump administration that has loosened policy constraints on the use of force and is seeking to marginalize Pentagon offices charged with mitigating civilian harm,” Niku Jafarnia, a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Monday.

The Trump administration, at least publicly, has called the strikes a booming success in crippling the Houthi infrastructure, but the White House has not been specific about what the strikes have accomplished.

TRENDPOST: Lawrence Wilkerson, retired U.S. Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, told “Dialogue Works” that the Houthis are proving to be a worthy adversary of the U.S. military and have fought a major carrier group (the USS Harry S Truman) to a standstill.

Wilkerson noted how politicians and bureaucrats in Washington look down on Yemenis as primitive and less-than-human, but other countries—namely China—are likely being emboldened by the Houthi effort.

“If a carrier strike group is struggling like the U.S. is right now to stop the flow of missiles, imagine what would happen if you put a carrier strike group off the coast of China,” he said. “China’s got some things that the Yemenis don’t have,” including satellites, a larger array of hypersonic missiles, aircraft that can launch bombs, and submarines.