The government of Yemen is seeking U.S.military support in its fight against the Houthis, a senior Yemeni official said Wednesday, as the Iranian-backed rebels rapidly expand their control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and threaten another critical Middle East waterway for global energy supplies.Yemen’s president, Rashad al-Alimi, conveyed the request for U.S.
assistance to President Donald Trump in a call earlier this week, Abdullah Al-Alimi Bawazir, vice president of the Yemeni Leadership Council, told reporters on the sidelines of the U.N.General Assembly.Asked about a report this week by Reuters, which cited one Yemeni and one Western source as saying that Trump had made no direct pledge of military support to Yemen during the call, Bawazir said he was unaware that the request had been rejected.He said Trump understands the danger of the Houthis, and that “we hope and expect more support for the Yemeni government in the face of the Houthi militias.”The White House did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment overnight.01:14Houthis claim attack on Saudi capital00:0000:00Bawazir did not say whether U.S.
support should extend to direct military strikes.“We do not ask the American soldiers to actually go into war on our behalf,” he said.“And we don’t really request that they do nothing.”Yemen does look forward to “mutual coordination on the intel and security fields,” according to Bawazir, who requested that the U.S.
enhance the Yemeni government’s own military capacity to take on the threat.“The aerial campaigns are important,” he said.“But supporting the Yemeni government and forces on the ground is indeed a guarantor to end the danger of those militias.”Yemen has been embroiled in various states of conflict since 2014, when the Houthis drove the internationally recognized government out of the capital city of Sanaa and ignited a regional proxy war, with Saudi Arabia supporting the exiled government against the Irani...