SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
At the beginning of the year, warring sides and several Middle East conflicts had agreed to truces - bot only Israel and Hamas, but the Houthis in Yemen. President Trump, who is just beginning his second term, said he wanted the U.S. to be less active in the region, but the Mideast is heating up again. The U.S. is now very involved. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre joins us. Greg, thanks so much for being with us.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Good to be here, Scott.
SIMON: How did we get from the relative quiet in January to this renewal of hostilities?
MYRE: Yeah. There was some real reason for optimism when Israel and Hamas began a ceasefire on January 19, the day before President Trump was sworn into office. Trump's envoy helped broker that agreement, and it was a shaky deal, but it did hold for six weeks. And during this period, the Houthis in Yemen also abided by the truce. They'd been firing on commercial ships and the U.S. Navy in the Red Sea for more than a year. They said they were an - attacking in solidarity with the Palestinians, but they held their fire while the Gaza truce was in place. So there's this very clear linkage between these two conflicts.
SIMON: The ceasefire seemed to be working to mutual benefit. Why did they break down?
MYRE: Well, at the beginning of March, Israel and Hamas couldn't agree to extend the truce or negotiate a second phase of the ceasefire. Many issues were unresolved. Israel wanted its hostages returned. The Palestinians wanted more prisoners released. So Israel began blocking food and medicine going into Gaza. And then the Houthis resumed their attacks in Yemen and shot down a U.S. Reaper drone on March 3. The U.S. then prepared a new bombing campaign against the Houthis, and this began on March 15. And the day it started, U.S. national security officials were taking part in that now infamous group chat on Signal. And then just three days later on March 18, Israel unleashed a major offensive against Hamas, and this completely collapsed the Gaza ceasefire. So now both these conflicts are reignited, and tensions are also rising elsewhere, in Syria and Lebanon.
SIMON: Greg, the Signal group chat certainly got a lot of attention, but how is the actual U.S. military operation in Yemen going?
MYRE: Yeah. We haven't heard much about it. It's a substantial operation, much larger than the one carried out last year under former President Biden, and we're just getting very few details from the Pentagon. As best we can piece it together, and talking to some military analysts, they say the U.S. is hitting several targets a day with dozens of bombs. But it's not clear whether this is substantially weakening the Houthis. The Houthis say they downed two more U.S. Reaper drones this week. They're firing missiles and drones at the USS Harry S. Truman, the aircraft carrier group that's launching the U.S. strikes. I spoke with Gregory Johnsen of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He says the Houthis have been fighting various enemies nonstop for almost 20 years, and they've been taking a lot of blows, yet they feel they're winning just by staying in power.
GREGORY JOHNSEN: And now they're involved in what they would call an international war against the United States and Israel, and the Houthis believe that they can win this war as well. And to win this war, the Houthis simply have to survive and present a threat to commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
SIMON: Greg, is it fair to say President Trump, so far, has been expanding, not shrinking U.S. presence in the Middle East?
MYRE: Yes, absolutely, and we saw more evidence this week, Scott. First, the U.S. is sending another aircraft carrier group to the region. Second, the U.S. has moved six B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean. Now, it's highly unusual to concentrate this many B-2s in one place. They carry the most powerful U.S. bombs. They could be used against the Houthis, but this also seems to be a message to Iran, which supports the Houthis.
Michael Knights is with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
MICHAEL KNIGHTS: We have a two-headed crisis - one part where President Trump is saying Iran has to reenter nuclear negotiations directly with the U.S. and another part where President Trump is saying the Houthis need to stop attacking shipping. And the major U.S. military presence in the Middle East seems to be supporting both sets of objectives at the moment.
MYRE: So Trump says he's open to a nuclear agreement with Iran, though Iran's president recently rejected direct negotiations with the U.S. So these recent U.S. military moves may be intended to pressure Iran into negotiations, but they could also lead to military escalation.
SIMON: NPR's Greg Myre. Thanks so much.
MYRE: Sure thing, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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