On the same day that President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between the United States and Yemen’s Houthis, an F/A-18 Super Hornet crashed off the deck of an aircraft carrier. The fighter was landing on USS Harry S. Truman when the “arrestment failed, causing the aircraft to go overboard,” U.S. Central Command told The Intercept by email. After the $60 million jet’s tail hook failed to catch the wire that slows down the aircraft, it plummeted into the Red Sea. Two aviators ejected from the jet and were plucked from the water by a search and rescue helicopter. Both were injured, according to an unnamed CENTCOM official.
The injured aviators are the latest in a growing number of casualties in the Middle East that the Trump White House prefers to ignore. As The Intercept reported last week, CENTCOM, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the White House are keeping the total number of U.S. casualties from the war secret.
“The refusal to provide the casualty data for U.S. troops in the Middle East is another example of the gross incompetence of this administration,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., told The Intercept. “Transparency in the casualties sustained through every military operation should be a cornerstone of every administration. The refusal to provide the public with basic information should be deeply alarming to every American.”
Omar is the third lawmaker in the last week to call for accountability from the White House and the Pentagon, joining Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.
The total number of military personnel who have been killed or wounded in the broader U.S. campaign against the Houthis, which began under the Biden administration, is being withheld from the American people. But since last Monday, there have been at least three casualties. That day, a sailor was injured when a different F/A-18 Super Hornet was lost at sea, falling off the Truman after the ship made a sharp turn to evade a Houthi attack.
When The Intercept asked the Office of the Secretary of Defense last week for the number of casualties sustained by U.S. forces in the campaign against the Houthis, the Pentagon balked at providing a number and referred questions to Central Command, which referred questions to the White House. Repeated requests to White House assistant press secretary Taylor Rogers have gone unanswered for more than a week.
This is not standard operating procedure. Under the Biden administration, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and CENTCOM provided detailed data on attacks on military bases across the Middle East — including to this reporter. CENTCOM provided the total number of attacks, breakdowns by country, and the total number injured. The Pentagon offered even more granular data, providing individual synopses of attacks, including information on deaths and injuries not only to U.S. troops but even civilian contractors working on U.S. bases.
The Intercept found that U.S. troops in the Middle East have come under attack close to 400 times, at a minimum, since the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war. U.S. Navy vessels in the region have been the most frequent target, coming under attack 174 times since October 2023, according to Central Command. There have also been “about 200” attacks on U.S. bases in the region since the Gaza war began, according to Pentagon spokesperson Patricia Kreuzberger. This amounts to roughly one attack every 1.5 days, on average.
The strikes, predominantly by Iranian-backed militias and the Houthi government in Yemen, include a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and ballistic missiles. These groups ramped up attacks on U.S. targets in October 2023, in response to the U.S.-supported Israeli war on Gaza.
Despite Trump’s claims that the Houthis “capitulated” and “don’t want to fight anymore,” it remains unclear whether America’s billion-dollar, seven-week campaign of strikes that targeted civilian infrastructure and, according to local reports, killed scores of innocent people, has achieved its objective of stopping the Houthis from impeding international shipping.
“What happened now is that America announced the cessation of its aggression against Yemen after failing to achieve any of its goals.”
Nasruddin Amer, a Houthi spokesperson, dismissed Trump’s “fallacies and bravado” and directed The Intercept to a statement by Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who said that mediation by his country had “resulted in a ceasefire agreement” in which “neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait.” A senior Houthi leader had already told Drop Site in April that the group would cease attacks if the Trump administration halted bombings. Amer also told The Intercept that the Houthis will continue fighting Israel.
Houthi officials and supporters portrayed the ceasefire as a triumph over Trump and a U.S. defeat. “America attacked our country in service of Israel and in support of the continuation of the crimes of genocide in Gaza. We defended ourselves against the American aggression and continued our support for Gaza,” Amer told The Intercept by text message. “What happened now is that America announced the cessation of its aggression against Yemen after failing to achieve any of its goals.”
The White House did not reply to repeated requests for comment on the statement.
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