Trump says US will stop bombing campaign against Houthis in Yemen

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States would halt its strike campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, claiming the Iran-backed faction had “capitulated.”

“The Houthis have announced — to us, at least — that they don't want to fight anymore. They just don't want to fight, and we will honor that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“We will stop the bombings,” Trump said. “They have capitulated.” He specified that the halt would be “effective immediately.”

A source briefed on the matter claimed to Al-Monitor that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, brokered the halt in US strikes in Yemen via mediators in Oman.

In a statement released on X, Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, said the mediation had “resulted in a ceasefire agreement between the two sides.”

“In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab strait,” Albusaidi’s post read.

An X account bearing the name of senior Houthi political official Muhammad al-Bukhaiti posted that the group’s attacks in response to Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza would not stop until the siege is lifted.

“As for our attacks on the US, they fall within the context of the right to self-defense. If [the US] halts its attacks on it, we will halt our attacks on it. This position also applies to Britain,” the post read, referencing strikes last week by UK warplanes.

Another X account attributed to a top rebel official, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, said that Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire “will be evaluated on the ground first.”

Al-Houthi called the arrangement “a victory” in separating the US campaign in Yemen from Washington’s defense of Israel amid the Gaza war.

State Deptartment spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters she could not confirm whether Trump administration officials had notified their Israeli counterparts of the decision ahead of the president’s announcement.

Trump’s statement came just hours after Israeli warplanes struck Sanaa in retaliation for a Houthi missile strike that landed near Israel's main international airport over the weekend.

Israel’s military said on Tuesday that it had fully disabled Yemen’s international airport at Sanaa in the airstrikes.

The Trump administration resumed and intensified a previously paused US military strike campaign in Yemen that had been initiated by the Biden administration in late 2023.

White House officials said the new regime of air and naval strikes against Houthi military infrastructure and officials aimed to shut down their ability to target US military and international commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

The reinvigorated campaign has been met with setbacks as the Houthis continued to fire at US ships off Yemen’s coast. China last year cut a side deal with the Houthis to allow their ships to pass through the Red Sea unharmed, but commercial shipping has not returned to pre-Oct. 7 levels, as the Houthis and the United States have continued to duke it out over the strait.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon and for US Central Command were not immediately available to respond to Al-Monitor’s request for comment.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Daniel Caine were in Tampa for a visit to US Central Command headquarters on Thursday when Trump announced the halt to the campaign.

This developing story has been updated since initial publication.