Thread by @Aldanmarki

Jaw-dropping NYT piece exposing the full scandal behind Trump’s Yemen campaign.

Highlights below 👇

👉Trump ordered a status report after the first month of engagements, which concluded that the US had failed to achieve air superiority over Yemen, that drones were shot down at an unprecedented rate, and that the US had burned through a billion dollars in that first month alone

👉Omani officials had relayed to ME envoy Steve Witkoff that Trump could be offered an offramp on the condition that he entered into direct negotiations with the Ansarallah - negotiations that would not, and did not include Israel. Trump agreed to it.

👉CENTCOM Commander Michael Kurilla had proposed an eight- to 10-month campaign which would focus on knocking out Yemeni air-defenses, and go after leading Ansarallah figures in a bombing campaign modeled after Israeli strikes on Hezbollah leadership.

👉Saudi Arabia had secretly backed Gen. Kurilla's plan by providing targeting data on senior Ansar leadership, while the UAE was more reluctant to engage forcefully. Kurilla's plan was given a month, but yielded no apparent result.

F-16s and F-35s were nearly shot down.

👉Trump's Yemen campaign blew through precision munitions at an unprecedented scale, leading to rising concerns among Pentagon contingency planners. CENTCOM in a report admitted that their strikes had only had limited effect, and that the Ansarallah could easily reconstitute.

👉Hegseth, in video call with Saudi and Emirati officials, discussed a way forward for the campaign that could boost its effectiveness, including a proposed ground offensive by Yemeni proxy forces, but the parties in the video call were unable to reach consensus.