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Trump's Looming War for a Key Trade Route Will Be Costly

Based on factual reporting, incorporates the expertise of the journalist and may offer interpretations and conclusions.

As President Donald Trump seeks to assert U.S. influence across the globe by implementing stiff tariffs and threatening to seize the Panama Canal, his first economically motivated hot war looms in the turbulent seas off Yemen.

While promising to oversee a more peaceful era for the Middle East, Trump, just two months in office, has already embarked on the most intensive military campaign of his second term, targeting Yemen's Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi movement, a formidable faction of the Iran-aligned Axis of Resistance. The strikes come amid a new, dangerous cycle of escalation in the Middle East in which Ansar Allah has resumed its long-range offensive against Israel and ships navigating the Red Sea and surrounding waters.

With Trump now threatening Iran directly over its Yemeni ally's actions, the conditions for the kind of conflict that the U.S. leader had vowed to avoid appear to be ripe. But it's not a war that's inevitable, nor, according to some observers, advisable, considering the level of resources it may expend for an uncertain outcome.

"In my view, this is not an operation the United States needs to be involved in," Jennifer Kavanagh, former RAND Corporation senior political scientist