The U.S. military has conducted strikes against Houthi militia targets in Yemen daily since March 15, but the Pentagon has not provided details about the attacks since March 17, when it said more than 30 Houthi targets had been hit on the first day.
The military’s Central Command posts images on social media of jets conducting missions against the Houthis, an Iranian-backed group, but it has refused to disclose how many targets have been struck so far or to identify the several Houthi commanders it says it has killed.
The strikes in Yemen are at the center of a debacle involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior members of the Trump administration, who discussed sensitive details about the planned mission in a group chat on a messaging app before it began.
On Monday, the editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote that he had been inadvertently included in the chat, the details of which could have endangered the lives of American fighter pilots.
Mr. Hegseth has sought to downplay the significance of the breach, saying on Monday that “nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
A Central Command spokesman said this week that the strikes had “destroyed command-and-controlled facilities, air defense systems, weapons manufacturing facilities and advanced weapons storage locations.”
“While the Houthis still maintain capability, it is largely because of the nearly 10 years of support provided by Iran,” the spokesman said.
The air and naval strikes President Trump ordered are intended to pressure the Houthis, whose attacks have disrupted international shipping lanes in the Red Sea for more than a year.
The Trump administration has not said why it thinks its campaign against the group, which has large underground weapons factories, will succeed after a yearlong effort by the Biden administration largely failed to deter the Houthi attacks.
The United States began the new offensive on March 15 in parts of northern Yemen controlled by the Houthis. Navy attack planes, off the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea, and Air Force fighter jets, flying from bases in the Middle East, have conducted strikes against Houthi targets each day since.
The initial strikes were the opening salvo in what senior American officials said was a new offensive against the militants and a message to Iran as Mr. Trump seeks a nuclear deal with its government.
Mr. Trump has delegated the authority to strike targets to regional and local commanders, allowing them to attack Houthi sites more quickly and efficiently, commanders say.
Yemeni officials say the strikes have hit residential areas and buildings in the heart Sana, Yemen’s capital, resulting in an undetermined number of civilian casualties. Central Command declined to comment on reports of civilians having been killed in the strikes.
On the first day of the new offensive, Mr. Trump said on social media that the Houthis “have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.”
Mr. Trump then pivoted to Iran’s rulers in Tehran: “To Iran: Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY! Do NOT threaten the American People, their President, who has received one of the largest mandates in Presidential History, or Worldwide shipping lanes. If you do, BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable.”
The Biden administration, often working with the British military, conducted several strikes against the Houthis but largely failed to restore stability to the region.
U.S. officials said that airstrikes against the Houthis’ arsenal, much of which is buried deep underground, could last for several weeks, intensifying in scope and scale depending on the militants’ reaction. U.S. intelligence agencies have struggled in the past to identify and locate Houthi weapons systems, which are produced in subterranean factories and smuggled in from Iran.
Vice Admiral Kevin M. Donegan, a retired F/A-18 pilot and commander of U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, expressed support for what he said was the Trump administration’s more comprehensive approach of destroying the Houthi network that is carrying out the strikes against shipping.
“Time will tell if this network approach will re-establish the free flow of commerce, but the metric of success is a simple one: commercial ship traffic through the Red Sea resumes or the Red Sea remains closed,” Admiral Donegan said in a phone interview.
Saeed Al-Batati contributed reporting from Al Mukalla, Yemen.
