Washington is in meltdown over Signal. But not because US is bombing Yemen
There is no doubt that Trump administration officials using a platform like Signal to discuss precise military targets and reveal names of CIA employees is unconventional and potentially a national security risk.
There is some doubt as to whether it compromises operational security, given that the White House insists none of the information shared was classified in the now-infamous Signal messages breach.
Where the most doubt lies appears to be in the number of casualties on the ground and in the human cost of bombing - yet again - one of the poorest countries on earth.
"The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified," The Atlantic noted in each of the two pieces it published on this story since Monday.
"At this point, Ansar Allah are the de facto governments in Yemen, and they have been for the past decade," Shireen al-Adeimi, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Middle East Eye, using the official name of the Houthi party.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
"And so it's just a completely disingenuous way to report what the harm is on the ground."
Anees Alasbahi, Yemen's health ministry spokesperson, regularly provides casualty updates on his X account. Just hours after the 15 March US air strikes discussed in the Signal messages, Alasbahi said the bombs fell on civilian and residential areas in the capital.
He said they struck Sanaa, Sa'ada Governorate, al-Bayda, and Rada'a, and that most of the dead and wounded - over 100 - were women and children.
'How does this benefit the average US citizen? Right? This doesn't bring us prosperity here'
- Shireen al-Adeimi, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
Yet the authors of The Atlantic piece released on Wednesday were mostly concerned that if anyone besides a respected journalist had been privy to the military targets 30 minutes before the attack, "the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds".
"The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic," they wrote.
It's unclear if any actors in the region possess the kind of precise air power needed to take down the US Air Force.
Since that first attack, there have been several rounds of US air strikes in Yemen. Earlier this week, a bomb fell on a cancer centre that was under construction in Sanaa, the national news agency Saba said.
President Donald Trump is carrying on a tradition that began this month, ten years ago, under Barack Obama, to attempt to eliminate the Houthis after they ousted the internationally recognised former Yemeni president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
Obama financially backed a Saudi-Emirati bombing campaign, which carried on through the first Trump administration until Joe Biden pledged to wind down support.
But by January 2024, in response to the Houthis imposing a naval blockade along a critical shipping route targeting Israeli-owned or Israel-bound vessels because of the war on Gaza, Biden restarted US air strikes.
"It was a very limited surgical campaign that technically never stopped until the [US] election," Thomas Juneau, a Middle East expert at the University of Ottawa, told MEE.
"The general consensus was that they were not succeeding, either in weakening the Houthis militarily, or in deterring them from continuing their attacks in the Red Sea," he explained.
"The logic that the Trump administration has used... is the Biden strikes were not working, which technically is not inaccurate, so they decided to significantly ramp up."
They were ramped up enough that the health ministry in Yemen this week ordered all hospitals to be ready to receive the wounded from the "American raids", the Saba news agency said.
"His supporters should really be confused because he was positioning himself as the president of peace," Adeimi said of Trump.
"How does this benefit the average US citizen? Right? This doesn't bring us prosperity here."
'Trump is a businessman'
Indeed, a large part of the discussion, which The Atlantic only partly revealed in screenshots, focused on Europe's prosperity and the Trump team's deep distaste for it.
Washington wants to protect the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a narrow but necessary shipping route between Yemen's west coast and Djibouti.
To the waterway's north is the Red Sea, which leads to the Suez Canal.
With insurance rates skyrocketing for vessels because of the threat of attack and the forced diversion of ships around the Horn of Africa, the cost of a trip can easily exceed $1m, a breakdown in The Economist showed.
In that Signal discussion, Vice President JD Vance expresses scepticism at the immediate need for US firepower, given that weakening the Houthis to the point where they give up on their naval blockade would benefit Europe, not the US, he points out.
"The shipping in the Red Sea represents 10 to 12 percent of global daily maritime trade," Juneau told MEE.
"And he was saying it's European trade that goes this way, not American trade. So they should be paying for this," he added.
Juneau adds that traditionally, both Republican and Democratic administrations would have agreed on using military force to protect one of the world's most critical shipping lanes.
There were more than 100 Houthi attacks on ships in 2024. More are being threatened now after Israel resumed a full-scale war on Gaza on 18 March.
But the Trump team is anything but globalist, so the decision to go ahead with the air strikes rather than wait a month - as Vance expressed - was notable.
"Trump is a businessman, and the reason he supported the war in Yemen when the Saudis and the UAE were bombing [it] during his first presidency... is because he was getting these large defence contracts from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and that was motivation enough for him to continue this war," Ademi told MEE.
"The Signal messages are hinting at similar kinds of financial investments," she said. "They're worried about the oil prices, given Saudi Arabia is right there [and] hoping to use this as leverage against the Europeans."
Celebration
Shortly after the 15 March air strike, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said they'd killed a senior Houthi leader, but to date, the administration has not released a name.
There was also no mention of the civilian casualties.
"The first target - their top missile guy - we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend's building and it's now collapsed," Waltz said in the Signal group chat.
After Vance responded, "Excellent," Waltz then sent a fist-bump emoji, an American flag emoji, and a fire emoji.
'You have most of the most senior members of the US government... discussing launching air strikes against another country, using emoticons, using childish language, bouncing jokes around'
- Thomas Juneau, University of Ottawa
Further down, after a series of verbal back-slapping and congratulatory messages, Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, responded with two prayer emojis, a bicep flex emoji, and two American flags.
"You have most of the most senior members of the American government, minus the president, who are discussing launching air strikes against another country, using emoticons, using childish language, bouncing jokes around and without using serious analysis," Juneau told MEE.
At one point, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth suggests the American public don't know who the Houthis are anyway, so the messaging to the American public would need to stay focused on "1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded," he wrote in the chat.
"These are things that are being used in order to essentially reduce a very complex situation into a good guys vs bad guys cartoon, in which the hope is that the American public - which by and large is not following this issue - would be okay with a decision like this," Trita Parsi, who founded both the Quincy Institute and the National Iranian American Council, told MEE.
"The humanity of the situation is completely eliminated from the narrative."
Juneau added that, ultimately, US firepower will not work in the long term.
"Even though ramping up will hurt the Houthis militarily more, obviously, it's still unlikely to work," he said.
Juneau says it would only continue to worsen an extraordinary humanitarian crisis without a political process in Yemen that could bring peace and stability to the region.
An assessment of Yemen by the UN office for humanitarian affairs, released in January, said some 19.5 million people in the country rely on humanitarian assistance and protection services. That's half of the population, and a decade of civil strife and bombing campaigns are making the situation worse.
"The main issue is you're killing other people. You're killing innocent people. You have no legal or moral right to do so," Adeimi said.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.
