Middle East: Trump warns Houthi militia: “I will never forget”

Washington/Riyadh/Sanaa. US President Donald Trump has condemned the attacks by the Houthi militia in Yemen on neighboring Saudi Arabia and at the same time issued a warning. “The Houthis are behaving extremely badly,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “I thought they learned their lesson a year ago when we bombed them into the ground and stopped at their request.” Now they are probably active again at the behest of Iran and are attacking Saudi Arabia. They specifically tried to drive up oil prices, “probably before the US elections – NOT NICE,” Trump criticized.

With an eye on the important midterm elections taking place in three weeks, the US President said that someone should explain to the Houthi militia that he himself is not running in the elections - and then followed up with a warning: "But I will be there after the elections and I will never forget!"

The US is a key ally of Saudi Arabia and has troops stationed at an air base in the desert state. The kingdom itself is repeatedly coming under fire in the escalated war in Yemen and has also been confronted with attacks on its oil infrastructure. On Saturday, at least 13 people were killed and 300 others injured at Riyadh airport in the most devastating attack in Saudi Arabia in around ten years.

Trump has so far refrained from carrying out new US air strikes in Yemen. In 2024 and 2025, the US military repeatedly bombed Houthi targets there. At that time, it was primarily about protecting merchant ships in the Red Sea, which the militia attacked and sometimes sank or even kidnapped. Trump is unlikely to have any interest in new attacks in Yemen so close to the midterm elections - especially since his Iran war is also unpopular with many Americans.