What's Really at Stake for America in Yemen's Conflict

What the hell is going on in Yemen?

That’s a question a lot of people have been asking themselves ever since a Navy SEAL was lost in a raid on al-Qaeda in Yemen and the Trump administration authorized a furious barrage of strikes against targets there. Now, The Washington Post reports, the Trump administration is considering further escalating U.S. involvement in the country even as the United States weighs whether additional intervention in Syria is warranted.

Because there are actually three conflicts playing out in Yemen—all of which grew out of a civil war that began in 2015—it’s easy to get confused by what the administration may be doing. First, there is the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, now in its third bloody year. Partially nested within this first conflict is the Iranian campaign in Yemen, which, according to the U.S. military, has led to the introduction of anti-ship weaponry that imperils global trade and freedom of commerce through the Bab al-Mandeb strait—which separates the Arabian peninsula from the Horn of Africa—and threatens to internationalize an already terrible situation. Finally, there is the U.S.-led campaign against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which began to ramp up again in the last year of the Obama administration and which has gathered momentum in the first few months of the Trump administration.

I’ll spend some time on each conflict, but let me cut to the chase: I assess the Trump administration is trying to intensify its efforts to counter al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula the Houthi maritime threat because those efforts are in the interests of the United States. But the Trump administration will try