🔴 Website 👉 https://u-s-news.com/
Telegram 👉 https://t.me/usnewscom_channel
Take a moment to savor President Trump’s shocking announcement that the Houthis waved the white flag and the US agreed to stop its devastating bombing campaign of the Yemeni terrorists.
“They just don’t want to fight,” Trump told reporters Tuesday.
“We will stop the bombings and they have capitulated. They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore.”
He suggested there was an informal promise the Houthis would not target American ships in the Red Sea, adding, “We will take their word.”
Chalk one up for peace through strength and the crushing impact of American weaponry.
And note the unmistakable message to Iran: We mean business and you’re next unless you drop the nuke program.
Tick tock, tick tock.
Strong horse
That the cease-fire happens just before Trump is scheduled to visit the region next week, starting in Saudi Arabia, boosts his leadership credibility among both allies and foes.
Once again, America is the strong horse.
The Houthis, financed and directed by Tehran, have suffered heavy losses, with both Israel and the US hitting numerous targets over the last year, especially in recent days.
After a Houthi ballistic missile landed near Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport Sunday, the Jewish state responded with a massive two-day attack.
The first round obliterated a major port, and the second destroyed the international airport in the capital of Sanaa.
The American attacks have been going on for more than six weeks and were aimed at weapons systems and military storage facilities.
Although former President Joe Biden occasionally bombed the group as a warning when it fired on American ships, the Trump salvos that began in mid-March have been far larger and involved near-daily attacks.
Some included 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs, the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in America’s arsenal.
The relentless pounding made it clear the new sheriff in town wasn’t playing Biden’s game of tit-for-tat. The rain of bombs would fall until the Houthis stopped their attacks.
The tragedy for the Yemeni people is that the terrorists waited so long before they wised up and said “No mas.”
Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not know in advance of Trump’s plan to stop our attacks.
In addition, Houthi leaders said the pledge to America did not include Israel, and that it was still fair game.
Of course, all the Mideast trouble starts with Iran, which is further weakened now that its third proxy has been diminished.
Plans to finish the job
Israel crippled Hezbollah in Lebanon and has all-but eliminated Hamas’ firepower in Gaza, and now has a plan to finish the job.
The fall of the Assad regime in Syria also deprived Iran of a military foothold next to Israel.
The big picture is that the Iranian mother ship is more exposed than it’s been in decades.
All the more so because Israel stripped the mullahs of their air defense system last year, making them a relatively soft target for the US or Israel — or both in a joint attack.
Indeed, the Israeli attacks on Yemen are a sign that Trump “is moving closer towards approving Israel strikes against Iran,” says Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence officer and government official.
He calls it an “orange alert” signal to Iran that the US won’t stop Israel from attacking nuclear facilities, so it, too, better make a deal with Trump.
It’s surely not a mere coincidence that at about the same time the US began bombing the Houthis in March, Trump wrote to the ayatollah with an invitation to begin talks on eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, which now enriches uranium to a level far beyond any peaceful use.
The president put a deadline of two months on any talks, a period that started March 12, when the ayatollah got Trump’s letter from an Arab diplomat.
Tick tock, tick tock.
Change of heart
The Supreme Leader initially rebuffed Trump’s offer, then quickly agreed after being warned by aides that rejecting talks would almost certainly lead Trump to bomb the nuclear sites, which could trigger the collapse of the unpopular regime.
Again, peace through strength creates opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
And so the ayatollah said yes.
The oppressive regime already has been severely weakened by Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of heavy sanctions on its banks and oil exports.
Iran is also reportedly having trouble providing electricity and clean water, and its currency was near collapse until the talks started, which modestly lifted its value against the dollar.
So far, three meetings have been held about the nuke facilities, but a fourth, scheduled for last weekend, was canceled.
Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, Trump expects to gather up pledges for hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in America and weapons deals with our Arab allies.
There also could be quiet progress on Saudi normalization with Israel, but no final deals are likely until the situation in Gaza is more settled.
That could be far into the future.
On Monday, Israel’s government adopted a plan to seize and hold territory in Gaza until Hamas is completely defeated and all the hostages, dead and alive, are released.
Beyond the legal and logistical complications, an occupation will inflame most Palestinians and make it less likely the Saudis and other Muslim states can publicly move closer to Israel, lest it suggest to their own populations they approve of the occupation.
Secretly, they probably do approve because an Israeli occupation would let them off the hook to take in displaced Gazans.
But publicly the “Arab street” will force most Gulf leaders to denounce Israel.
Mideast tour
After his Saudi stop, the president is scheduled to travel to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Hopefully, the trip will resolve a riddle about what exactly the president is seeking with Iran.
He has said privately that if the regime didn’t agree to destroy its nuclear facilities, the US and Israel would do it for them.
Publicly, he has spoken in more general terms, saying several times that if Iran won’t make a deal, “there will be bombing.
It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.”
But his envoy, Steven Witkoff, added another layer of confusion about the American position.
At one point, he talked optimistically about a deal involving inspections and limiting nuclear enrichment, which sounded like a bad replay of the doomed Obama deal in 2015 that Trump denounced and withdrew from.
Witkoff quickly walked that back, but the goal has not been clarified.
Still, there’s no denying that America is now clearly in the driver’s seat while Iran is more vulnerable than ever.
Tick tock, tick tock.