The US should stay out of Saudi Arabia’s war — SkimNews
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- Saudi Arabia conducted over 250 air raids in Yemen last month, killing more than 150 civilians, according to the Yemen Data Project, reigniting conflict after a four-year truce.
- The Houthis launched drone and missile attacks targeting Saudi oil infrastructure and civilian airports, killing 14 people, as their influence expands despite prior U.S. and coalition efforts to weaken them.
- The U.S. has sent 200 military and intelligence advisors to assist Saudi Arabia but President Donald Trump has resisted Saudi requests to resume airstrikes, maintaining the truce he brokered in May 2025.
- Annelle Sheline, a Middle East research fellow at the Quincy Institute and former State Department human rights official, argues the U.S. should stay out of the war, citing the failure of past military interventions and the worsening humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
- The State Department’s human rights reports, which Sheline once helped produce, are routinely ignored when it comes to holding U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia accountable for alleged war crimes, despite funding for civil society groups working on those same issues.
Why it matters: The U.S. risks deepening complicity in Yemen’s humanitarian crisis by backing Saudi Arabia militarily while avoiding accountability for allied war crimes. With 200 advisors deployed and pressure to escalate, the decision to withhold airstrikes is a narrow restraint in a pattern of intervention that has failed to curb Houthi power or protect civilians.
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