Did the Deep-state win?

Forever wars, Forever lies. Bombs in Yemen suggest it's rotten to the core

I recently wrote a long article on the current state of Syria, and how the U.S. and Israel have destabilized the Middle East for the last ~70 years. I did not anticipate returning to this topic so quickly, but the Trump administration is wasting no time in the Middle East. On March 15th, Donald Trump ordered a Tomahawk Missile strike in Yemen targeting the Houthi terror group. Estimates coming out of Yemen claim ~100 civilian deaths, including children (Al Jazeera, March 16, 2025). It was also announced that any response from the Houthis would be attributed to Iran. So what the hell is going on?

Yemen was split into North and South Yemen until 1990. They were split on tribal lines going back hundreds of years, and these lines were dug deeper during the Cold War. North Yemen leaned U.S., and South aligned with the Soviets. Both sides of the country were impoverished and corrupted by foreign interests long before the Cold War was even an idea. When Israel was proposed in 1947, North Yemen opposed it immediately as a Western imperialist project. They sent ~300 fighters to assist in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 (UN Archives, 1948). South Yemen was under British colonial rule at the time and took no such position on Israel, prioritizing trade and stability in the area. The people of South Yemen, however, did not share those feelings.

North Yemen was thrust into an isolated civil war in 1962 when a violent coup overthrew Al-Badr in Sana’a. The coup, led by Colonel Abdullah al-Sallal, established North Yemen as the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). The YAR, known as the republicans, wanted to modernize Yemen and rejected Imamate (the belief that descendants of the Prophet Muhammad were divinely appointed as leaders). Egypt (backed by Soviets) sent 20,000 troops to fight for YAR (Ferris, 2013), and the Soviets directly provided weapons.

Their foe, the royalists, fought for a return to imamate and were made up of Zaidi tribes, including the forebears of the modern Houthi group. The Royalists were provided weapons and funding from Saudi Arabia. Jordan and Britain (via mercenaries) briefly joined as well.

The United States, under JFK at the time, tried to play both sides in the beginning. We recognized YAR initially, even sending $20 million in aid from 1963–64 to slow Soviet influence (USAID, 1964). Simultaneously, we also sent $300 million in arms to the Saudis and provided military advisors to the Royalist effort (SIPRI, 1965). There is speculation that Israel also funded the Royalists, but this remains unproven. Regardless, it is safe to say Israel was not complaining about infighting among their enemies. Note that at this point, the West was clearly aligned with the tribal group that develops into the Houthis. When did that change?

The civil war remained within North Yemen, fighting back and forth for control of cities throughout the 60s. The turning point came in 1967, when Israel declared war on Egypt and destroyed them (read my Syria article for more here). Egypt’s defeat forced a major pullout of Yemen in 1967, leaving the YAR vulnerable. Saudi was funding the royalists in an effort to weaken Egypt, who they saw as a threat under Nasser. By 1970, Saudi funding to the royalists was dwindling, as Saudi was preoccupied with the Arab-Israeli war, and they were satisfied with the beating Egypt took from Israel. The civil war was extremely destructive, and a stalemate had been reached in 1970 as funding dried on both sides. Underlying all of this, South Yemen was released from colonial rule in 1967 and became a Soviet-backed Marxist state: The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). Their direct Soviet backing was a bigger threat to Saudi Arabia, so they brokered a truce between the YAR and Royalists in 1970, and shifted focus to Israel. The truce ended imamate and integrated royalists into the republican government.

North Yemen continued to struggle through the 70s until Ali Abdullah Saleh rose to power via another violent coup. He took power through executions and exile of competitors and ruled Yemen in a similar manner. He was comfortably funded by the Saudis throughout his rule, as they saw Saleh as keeping Yemen suppressed for them. He was receiving ~$1 billion per year from the Saudis, which he used to bribe dissident tribes and fund conflict among resisting groups while skimming personal perks off the top the whole time (World Bank, 1980s estimates). The United States, now under Carter, joined in, providing $500 million to Saleh through the Saudis in an effort to curb Soviet influence (CRS, 1980s). Saleh’s violently oppressive regime, combined with Saudi and Western influence and blatant corruption, brewed resentment in Yemen. Out of this resentment, the Houthi terror group was formed in 1992.

South Yemen’s path was no easier. After establishing as the PDRY in 1967, they received $300 million in aid from the Soviets in the 1970s (IMF, 1970s). They faced coups and assassinations throughout the 1970s until Ali Nasser Muhammad took power in 1980. Factionalism devolved into a full-blown civil war in 1986, destroying the country and economy at the same time. Soviet money couldn’t come in fast enough, and by 1989, ~80% of food in PDRY was being imported (FAO, 1989). Famine loomed, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, they were out of options.

As the Soviet Union was weakening at the end of the 1980s, North Yemen was also facing economic collapse. Saudi funding was running low for the North, Soviet funding was disappearing for the South. Yemen reunified in 1990, as the North needed access to southern ports and taxation, and the South was facing starvation. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia swung in and offered $100 million and $400 million in aid respectively, pushing reunification (CRS, 1990; World Bank, 1990). The West rushed to patch up a mess they made over the Cold War, and the international community did not allow the people of Yemen to have input. Remember that Yemen is made up of a variety of Muslim tribes that have been conflicting for hundreds of years, and they didn’t appreciate Western countries redrawing lines on their maps.

The reunification promised a 50-50 split of power between the two governments, but it was clear by 1993 this was not the case. Saleh in the North maintained full control of the military, oil production, and government. By 1994, unemployment skyrocketed in South Yemen, and Saleh was embezzling oil profits. Saleh also rigged the election in 1993, leaving the South further underrepresented (Human Rights Watch, 1994). In April 1994, the Southern Yemen civil war kicked off. Saudi Arabia funneled $200 million to Saleh, who in turn crushed the southern rebellion (SIPRI, 1994). In 1991, the U.S. reduced aid to Yemen after Saleh supported Saddam in the 1991 Iraq war (CRS, 1991). However, after Saleh won the civil war in 1994, U.S. aid bumped back up to $20 million a year by 2000 (CRS, 2000).

Saleh continued to rig elections through the 1990s (1997, 1999) and governed like a true dictator. He centralized oil profits, stacked the military with loyalists, and sidelined any southern dissenters. His security forces jailed critics, tortured activists, and bombed his own citizens that resisted (Amnesty International, 1999). By the late 1990s, Yemen was starting to look like a failed state, and out of these conditions, the group Al-Qaeda (AQ) was formed. Tribal discontent was ignored by Saleh and inflamed by extremists, turning Yemen into a recruiting ground. When the USS Cole was bombed by AQ in 2000, Yemen was thrust onto the stage as a hub of terrorism (CNN, October 12, 2000). But why would AQ attack the U.S. instead of Saleh? When Yemen was declared a terror hub in response to the U.S.S. Cole bombing, the U.S. INCREASED aid to Yemen. Yes, read that again. Saleh “distanced himself” from the terrorist organizations that were being built and funded right under his nose. His “anti-terror” stance convinced the U.S. to contribute $20 million per year into counter-terrorism (CRS, 2000).

AQ rallied around resistance to Western influence. In their mind, Saleh was just a symptom of the disease called Western imperialism. We were fools to think that Saleh would betray the Arab community for Western backing while he was vocally anti-Israel. Saleh was truly a puppet, and he was used by everyone. Terror groups used his horrific governance as an example of Western influence, and Western leaders propped him up as a partner against terrorism and pumped more money into the country. He gave that money out to whoever benefitted him the most that day.

While the Houthis, and preceding tribes, had been in Yemen for centuries, the Houthi insurgency started in 2004. The Zaidi Shia community in Yemen was being utterly abused by Saleh, and the Houthis capitalized on the resulting anger. Led by Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, the group was founded on hatred for the West and countries that had submitted to its influence. When Saleh called for Hussein’s arrest in 2004, clashes erupted in the streets (Al Jazeera, June 2004). When Hussein was killed three months later, Saleh celebrated, but a martyr had been created (BBC, September 9, 2004).

His brother, Abdul-Malik, took the reins, and the Houthis began to take form. Guerrilla attacks against Saleh’s forces with smuggled rifles pushed Yemen even further into turmoil. Saleh faced 5 more wars (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) as Houthis attacked border towns and army posts (UN, 2010). The U.S. and Saudi Arabia flooded Saleh with funding, defending it as a counter-terrorism outpost. This only served to give the Houthis more ammo to recruit with, as their rebellion was being crushed by Western weapons and funding. Their entire claim was that Saleh was terrorizing Yemen on behalf of the U.S. and Israel.

The people of Yemen had finally had enough in 2011, marking the start of Yemen’s “Arab Spring”. A populist revolt against Saleh, with northern and southern tribes alike, marched on Sana’a (Al Jazeera, January 2011). Saleh attempted a violent crackdown, but the people were so unhappy with the state of their country they saw no other option (Human Rights Watch, March 2011). When the unrest grew to the point that the U.S. had to get involved, Saudi Arabia helped us broker a deal that removed Saleh from power. He received immunity from prosecution, and Yemen was handed to Hadi (GCC Agreement, November 23, 2011). We replaced one puppet with another, and Saudi Arabia flooded the new regime with $1 billion (World Bank, 2012). Saleh eventually returned from exile in 2015 and joined the Houthis (Reuters, August 2015). In 2017, he switched sides again, betraying the Houthis, who shot him in the head (Reuters, December 4, 2017). It is clear looking back that Saleh was a weak, corrupt man seeking influence and power, with no true loyalty.

Under Hadi, the country continued its fall into poverty, and in 2014, the Houthis revolted again (Al Jazeera, September 2014). The United States has been bombing terrorist targets in Yemen since 2002, and they continued under Bush, Obama, Trump1, Biden, and we just saw the most recent last week under Trump2 (New America, 2025). The Houthis we are fighting today cannot be explained without understanding the Saudi-led war on Yemen in 2015. The Saudis claimed they could not accept an Iran proxy on their border, and the U.S. jumped to back them.

The Obama administration’s position on this war was to “placate the Saudis”, meaning if we didn’t let Saudi Arabia ravage Yemen in 2015, they might turn on us (Foreign Policy, March 26, 2015). We needed the Saudis at the time because Obama was trying to pass the Iran nuclear deal: we remove sanctions from Iran and give them the withheld money, and they agree to stop pursuing a nuclear weapon (JCPOA, July 14, 2015). This plan ended up backfiring horribly, as Iran just used the released money to fund terror groups around the Middle East, but at the time it was championed as the key to peace in the Middle East (UN, 2018). Western leaders again failed to recognize that these Arab countries view the very founding of Israel as an unfair imperialistic endeavor. Pursuing nukes or not, sanctioned or not, these countries will never stop fighting until Palestine has a state.

By placating the Saudis, we funded one of the most brutal wars in recent history to the tune of $500 million per year (CRS, 2015–2025). Biden, Obama, and Trump all held the same policy towards Yemen, and it is clear that the people of Yemen are at the end of the list of considerations. The U.N. considered this war an international crime (UN Human Rights Council, 2018). Saudi Arabia, with U.S. jets and funding, killed 20,000 civilians from 2015–2025, and evidence shows schools, hospitals, and even weddings were targeted (Yemen Data Project, 2025). Saudi also employed a full blockade of Yemen, resulting in starvation, cholera, and lack of basic essentials killing millions more (OCHA, 2018). It has been considered the #1 humanitarian aid crisis in the world for ~5 years (OCHA, 2020–2025). Saudi claimed it was a war of precision against the Houthis, but we watched and funded them as they decimated the people of Yemen. Do you understand why the people of Yemen might lean into the Houthi claim? We funded Saleh to keep them beaten into the ground, and then we funded Saudi Arabia to keep going.

By 2023, 400,000 were dead from the conflict itself, the toll from humanitarian deaths incalculable (UN, 2023). Lockheed Martin made $110 billion by providing supplies to the Saudis, paid for by U.S. tax dollars (SIPRI, 2023). When Iran got their nuclear deal money, they immediately pumped funds to the Houthis in Yemen (UN, 2016). Iran’s funding of the Houthis goes back to 2009, but not because Iran loves Yemen (UN Panel of Experts, 2012). Iran’s leaders saw hate for Israel and the U.S. building in Yemen through the 90s and poured gas on the fire. Iran was willing to fund any group that was openly hostile and violent to Western forces. The Houthis started hating us for keeping Saleh in power for so long, and that was enough for Iran to back them. When the Houthis turned violent in 2006, Iran kept pushing it (UN, 2010).

The Houthis started to gain infamy around 2019, when they were targeting Saudi oil fields and attacking ships in the Red Sea (Reuters, September 14, 2019). Iran provided the missiles and ~$100 million per year throughout this time (UN, 2022 estimate), and the Houthis terrorized the Red Sea. They saw this as retaliation for the Saudi-led war. As time passed, the Houthis became more sympathetic to the people of Gaza, further aligning behind Iran’s anti-Israel stance. The Houthis also recognize that without Iran’s money, their country might collapse (UN, 2022). When Israel launched the war on Gaza in 2023, following October 7th, the Houthis escalated further with the Red Sea campaign (U.S. Navy, November 2023). Any ship in the Red Sea associated with Israel was now a target.

It’s no question that the Israel-Gaza situation for the last 18 months has been complex to say the least. But days before Trump took office, a ceasefire was implemented, and I foolishly had hopes that the death count would halt. The ceasefire stated as follows:

Phase 1: 42 days for Israel to withdraw troops from populated areas of Gaza, Hamas would release 33 hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian hostages, and humanitarian aid would be allowed into Gaza (UN Security Council, June 2024).

Phase 2: planned for March 2nd, allocated another 42 days for the release of the 24 remaining Israeli hostages, full withdrawal from Gaza, and a permanent ceasefire (UN Security Council, June 2024).

Phase3: TBD

Although he wasn’t in office, Donald Trump warned of hell to pay for Hamas if this deal was not signed. Now, on March 18th, Israel has resumed bombing Gaza. So what happened? On March 2nd, Netanyahu stopped allowing aid into Gaza because Hamas would not release the remainder of the hostages (Netanyahu’s Office, March 2, 2025). Hamas would not release the hostages because they claimed Israel never honored the ceasefire (Hamas Statement, March 1, 2025). Phase 2 talks were supposed to start in February; they didn’t. Not to mention that the IDF killed a pregnant Palestinian woman in the midst of the “ceasefire” on February 9th, 2025 (Palestinian Health Ministry, February 9, 2025). The IDF explanation is “She was looking suspiciously at the ground”, and there were no repercussions (IDF Statement, February 9, 2025). We also have to recognize that ever since Oslo fell apart in 1996, the Palestinians don’t trust the U.S. or Israel to keep their word. I would argue that Hamas had good reason to be skeptical of this ceasefire deal, as Palestinians were still being killed and there was no sign of further negotiating.

Hamas slowed the deal as it began to look like they were getting screwed again, and in response, Netanyahu reintroduced the blockade on Gaza on March 2nd. Whether the Houthis are motivated by solidarity with the Palestinian cause or because they are carrying out Iran’s wishes is debatable. However, when the ceasefire deal was struck and aid was entering Gaza, the Houthis promptly removed their blockade on Israel (Reuters, January 20, 2025). On March 2nd, when the aid stopped into Gaza, the Houthis returned two weeks later (U.S. Navy, March 12, 2025). Donald Trump treated the blockade as an attack on Israel and responded with the bombing attack we just saw on the 15th. We continued bombing Houthi targets in Yemen for days, and on March 17th, Israel continued its decimation of Gaza with rocket attacks in the middle of the night (Gaza Health Ministry, March 17, 2025). One could speculate that Israel is no longer trying to get their hostages back, as they bombed the entire tunnel network where the hostages were likely being kept.

Make no mistake, this attack on the Houthis in the capital city of Yemen is meant to elicit a retaliatory attack. Since Iran funds the Houthis, we are laying responsibility for Houthi actions at the feet of Iran. Is there precedent for that? We have sent the Saudis money for decades, are the people of the U.S. responsible for the atrocities they commit with our tax dollars? The Deep State has wanted war with Iran for 20+ years. This was revealed by General Wesley Clark, who was the supreme commander of NATO, who said in a 2007 interview that there were explicit memos going around just days after 9/11 calling for the toppling of 7 governments in 5 years (Democracy Now, March 2, 2007). Those countries were: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

If you have read any of my work, you know that I expect very little from governments all over the world. But Yemen specifically has taken an absolute beating as a result of Western foreign policy. We flatten their cities, starve them, overthrow their governments, and they still have not bent the knee to the West. How many more millions of innocents are we willing to kill to prove a point? Even bigger question: why isn’t the mainstream media jumping all over this mess in the Middle East and laying it at Trump’s feet?

Trump campaigned on no new wars, and I guess you can argue that since Obama and Biden were bombing Yemen, it’s not technically new. But come on, the energy around the campaign last year was the party of peace. Why doesn’t CNN hammer him for betraying campaign promises? It is such a layup, and his base is already pissed over the failure to release the Epstein documents. The media won’t criticize him for this because Donald Trump is finally carrying out the policy of the Deep State. If Donald Trump honored his base and refused to fund conflict anywhere on the globe, then you would see the media backlash we have come to expect every time Trump opens his mouth. For example, when Trump struck Syria in 2017, the media had wall-to-wall coverage, calling the actions war crimes and dangerous escalations (CNN, April 7, 2017). That attack killed 7, so why the lackluster response to 100s killed in Yemen?

Support for Israel has never been lower in the U.S., so why didn’t Kamala appeal to that voting block? Joe Biden got the massive majority of the Muslim-American vote; why didn’t he threaten to withhold aid to Israel until the attacks ceased? There are free political points on the ground right now, and no one in DC wants to pick them up. The Democrat Party and Republican Party have never been further apart, yet they both have the same position on empire engineering in the Middle East? None of this makes sense. No one in the U.S., that genuinely wants the U.S. to succeed, wants us to be involved in the Middle East at all. Or any foreign conflict for that matter. Unfortunately, every politician we get a chance to vote for has the exact same position on this issue: Israel is our greatest ally, surrounded by terrorist-supporting nations, and we need to give them whatever they need to stamp out resistance. How well has this worked out? Are we safer now than before 1990? Are we crushing it economically? Our country is completely falling apart, and no matter how loud the cries get, Israel will be funded and the Middle East will be destabilized.

I can confidently say that our actions in the Middle East today will reignite 20 years of war in the Middle East. We tried this with Saddam Hussein. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. We bomb terrorists every time they pop up. It is not working. We need to change strategy. I am no longer willing to make an enemy out of the entire world just to keep sending billions of dollars to Israel. Call me selfish, call me a terrorist sympathizer; I don’t care. Defend one action that we have taken in the Middle East that worked out positively for the U.S.. You can’t. And this disastrous approach to expanding our control in the Middle East has been engineered by Israel and our own corrupt government for years.

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