Target lists were approved. Bombs were being loaded into warplanes.
But moments before US troops could launch an attack on Houthi hideouts in Yemen, President Donald Trump decided to back out of the mission, despite ally Saudi Arabia’s urgent call for help, according to a report by The New York Times.
The issue came to a head last week after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi’s de facto leader and a major ally in the Iran war, called Trump to implore him, again, to step in to help blunt the rapidly advancing group, NYT reported, citing US officials. The US president had been wavering on Saudi’s appeals for US military assistance in fighting the Yemeni militia’s steadily expanding control over the strategically important territory near the Red Sea.
Trump changed his plans at the eleventh hour as commanders had “approved target lists, troops were loading bombs onto US warplanes selected for the missions and the wave of attacks was just about to begin.”, according to the report .
The Houthis have also staged a rapid offensive inside Yemen, seizing swaths of territory from the internationally recognised government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia.
So far, the White House has not issued any official statement on Trump changing stance, but a senior official maintained that “the US has a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia, and we will always defend our allies. The network’s reporter Trey Yingst, who often talks to Trump, cited the president saying that Washington is “in constant communication with the Houthis and that they’ve agreed not to fight the United States.
Another senior official told the publication that most of the president’s inner circle is either “deeply skeptical or outright opposed to joining the Saudi fight against the Houthis , especially given the existing strains facing the US military in the war with Iran. Trump, meanwhile, told Fox News that Houthis have agreed not to attack the United States , despite the Iran-allied group stepping up its war against US ally Saudi Arabia. “The Houthis called us and they don’t want to fight with us,” Trump said during a visit to Ireland on September 12. “They don’t want us to go after them.”
