Michael Knights is the Jill and Jay Bernstein Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute and cofounder of the Militia Spotlight platform, which offers in-depth analysis of developments related to Iran-backed militias.
Elizabeth Dent is a Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where she focuses on U.S. foreign and defense policy toward the Gulf states, Iraq, and Syria.
Brief Analysis
How does the new U.S. campaign differ from previous attacks on Yemen's Houthis, and can it resolve the threat without broader American policy efforts? Join us for a live webcast as experts explore these questions. Watch live starting at 11:00 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Thursday, March 27, 2025.
Following renewed Houthi pledges to target Israeli and Western vessels once the Gaza ceasefire expired, the Trump administration initiated another U.S. military campaign against the Yemeni group. With Red Sea transits declining sharply since 2023, Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted that the administration was “doing the entire world a favor by getting rid of these guys and their ability to strike global shipping,” while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated, “We don’t want a long, limited war in the Middle East. We don’t care what happens in the Yemeni civil war. This is about stopping the shooting at assets in that critical waterway to reopen freedom of navigation.”
How does the new campaign differ from previous U.S. attacks on the Houthis? Can it remove the threat, or are broader U.S. policy efforts in Yemen necessary? And how will the international community, the global shipping industry, and the Houthis' chief patrons in Iran respond to Trump’s approach?
Watch a live webcast of this event starting at 11:00 a.n. EDT (1500 GMT) on Thursday, March 27, 2025
To answer these questions, The Washington Institute is pleased to host a virtual Policy Forum with the following panelists, moderated by Taube Senior Fellow David Schenker:
Michael Knights, the Institute’s Bernstein Senior Fellow and co-creator of its Militia Spotlight platform, which offers in-depth analysis of Iran-backed militias.
Noam Raydan, a senior fellow at the Institute and co-creator of its interactive maritime attack tracker and Maritime Spotlight platform, which provide comprehensive details and analysis on incidents in the Red Sea and other regional waterways.
Elizabeth Dent, a senior fellow at the Institute, former director for the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula at the Pentagon, and former policy advisor to the State Department’s special presidential envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.
The Policy Forum series is made possible through the generosity of the Florence and Robert Kaufman Family.
