What The Hell America!

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Washington’s military campaign against Yemen’s Houthis, a U.S. threat to abandon Russia-Ukraine peace talks, and the European Central Bank cutting interest rates.

U.S. Targets Houthi Oil Facilities

U.S. airstrikes hit Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Ras Isa oil port along the Red Sea late Thursday, killing at least 74 people and injuring 171 others. The incident marks the deadliest-known U.S. attack on Houthi rebels since U.S. President Donald Trump accelerated his military campaign against the group on March 15.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Washington’s military campaign against Yemen’s Houthis, a U.S. threat to abandon Russia-Ukraine peace talks, and the European Central Bank cutting interest rates.

U.S. Targets Houthi Oil Facilities

U.S. airstrikes hit Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Ras Isa oil port along the Red Sea late Thursday, killing at least 74 people and injuring 171 others. The incident marks the deadliest-known U.S. attack on Houthi rebels since U.S. President Donald Trump accelerated his military campaign against the group on March 15.

This was the first time that a U.S. strike targeted oil facilities in Yemen since Trump’s latest offensive began; Ras Isa has a storage capacity of 3 million barrels, much of which is used to produce gasoline, diesel, and liquefied petroleum for Houthi militants. Satellite imagery obtained by The Associated Press on Friday appeared to show some of the port’s oil leaking into the Red Sea.

Yemen’s Houthi-led government said on Friday that the U.S. attack constituted a “war crime,” claiming that the terminal was a civilian facility. And Iran’s foreign ministry, which supports the militant group, condemned the operation as “barbaric.” However, U.S. Central Command maintained on X that the assault was necessary to “eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years.”

“This strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen, who rightly want to throw off the yoke of Houthi subjugation and live peacefully,” CENTCOM added; it did not acknowledge any casualties or damage from the attack. The Trump administration designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization in March, and on April 9, the U.S. State Department warned that it will “not tolerate any country or commercial entity” that provides the Houthis with support, including in the form of oil shipments.

The United States’ offensive has not stopped the Houthis from continuing their war on Israel. Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, the Yemeni rebel group vowed to target Israel and its allies in solidarity with Hamas, another Iranian proxy group. This sparked a slew of Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea as well as strikes targeting Israeli territory. Following Thursday’s oil port attack, Israeli officials accused Houthi militants of launching a missile at Israel that triggered siren warnings in Tel Aviv.

The U.S. assault comes just days before Washington is set to hold a second round of negotiations with Iran over Tehran’s advancing nuclear program. However, regional experts are not optimistic. “First, let’s be clear: There are no great deals, good options, or Hollywood endings when negotiating with Iran on the nuclear issue,” Aaron David Miller and Lauren Morganbesser, both at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued in Foreign Policy.

Today’s Most Read

What We’re Following

“It’s not our war.” The United States may “move on” from trying to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace deal if no progress is made in the coming days, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said following a meeting with European and Ukrainian officials in Paris. “We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not. Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”

The Trump administration has worked to negotiate a lasting cease-fire agreement, with the U.S. president holding several separate phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate a 30-day pause on energy infrastructure strikes. Efforts to widen the truce deal, though, have failed.

Rubio’s comments represent a shift in the Trump team’s priorities; prior to taking office, Trump repeatedly claimed that he would solve the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours. However, a series of diplomatic missteps, Trump’s parroting of Kremlin talking points, and Washington’s growing animosity toward Europe have since soured the administration’s efforts. And it now appears that the White House wants to place further responsibility for ending the conflict on its NATO allies in Europe.

“It’s not our war,” Rubio added on Friday. “We have other priorities to focus on.”

Speaking in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump declined to put a deadline on reaching a deal but said he wanted to get it done “quickly.” “If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’” Trump said, “and we’re going to just take a pass. But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”

Financial woes. The European Central Bank cut interest rates by a quarter point on Thursday in an effort to grapple with Trump’s sweeping tariffs on the European Union. This was the bloc’s seventh consecutive decrease since June, as the EU aims to address high costs of living and stock market turmoil.

In recent weeks, Trump has issued steep duties on European auto imports as well as steel and aluminum; U.S. “reciprocal tariffs” have been set at 10 percent while the White House uses a 90-day pause on even higher tariffs to negotiate new trade deals. On Thursday, Trump met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to begin talks to reduce the EU’s trade surplus, and on Friday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance continued those negotiations in Rome.

But economists still worry that the financial fallout could be severe. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Thursday that surging U.S. tariffs will weaken the global economy, slow international growth, and increase inflation. However, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva added that sweeping duties will likely not cause a worldwide recession, as previously feared.

Abrego Garcia’s status. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen met on Thursday with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a U.S. resident whom the Trump administration admitted it wrongfully deported to El Salvador last month but has since refused to help bring back. Van Hollen, a Democrat, was initially denied entry to San Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center before being allowed to meet Abrego Garcia outside of the mega-prison.

“Our purpose today was very straightforward,” Van Hollen said on Thursday. “It was simply to be able to go see if Kilmar Abrego Garcia is doing OK. I mean, nobody has heard anything about his condition since he was illegally abducted from the United States.”

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. And on Thursday, a U.S. appellate court condemned the White House for “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”

However, both Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have pushed back against any efforts to return Abrego Garcia to his home in Maryland. “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody,” Bukele wrote on X after Van Hollen’s visit.

What in the World?

Gabon’s military coup leader won a presidential election on Saturday with more than 90 percent of the vote. When was the last election held in Gabon?

A. 2023
B. 2016
C. 2004
D. 1998

Odds and Ends

Four smugglers appeared before a court in Kenya on Tuesday who were trying to transport thousands of live ants out of Kenya to exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia. Two of the suspects, both 19-year-olds from Belgium, told the magistrate that they were collecting the insects for fun and did not know that their actions were illegal. All four individuals, including one from Kenya and one from Vietnam, have pleaded guilty to illegal possession and trafficking of live wildlife. “We did not come here to break any laws,” one of the Belgian smugglers said. But “by accident and stupidity, we did.”

And the Answer Is…

A. 2023

Brice Oligui Nguema’s landslide victory is unlikely to bring about significant change due to his connections to Gabon’s recently deposed ruling family, FP’s Nosmot Gbadamosi reports in Africa Brief.

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