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Donald Trump’s most significant military action since he returned to power — weekend air strikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis — will likely have far-reaching consequences for the wider Middle East and the oil market.

The attacks on the Houthis killed more than 50 people, according to the group, designated a terrorist organization by the US. Washington described the operation as successful, citing the deaths of several key leaders.

The Pentagon has vowed more strikes, saying they will be “unrelenting” until the Houthis cease attacking vessels around the southern Red Sea — one of the most important waterways for global trade.

A US fighter jet conducts operations against Yemen-based Houthis in a photo released yesterday. Source: US Central Command

The US says for now there’s no need to consider sending in ground troops.

Still, the Houthis control western parts of Yemen including the capital, Sana’a, and the crucial port of Hodeida. Past experience suggests it won’t be easy to stop them from the air alone.

They have been under bombardment of one form or another for much of the past decade — in 2015, a Saudi Arabia-led coalition started an aerial campaign to defeat them and, in the past year, the US, UK and Israel have all struck their positions.

Yet while they’ve been weakened — their attacks dropped off in recent months — they’re still far from being toppled and continue to prevent most Western shipping firms from taking the Suez Canal route when sailing between Asia and Europe.

Moreover, there’s a danger they could lash out against Trump by targeting oil-rich Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with drones and missiles.

That’s something they did regularly until a 2022 truce in the Yemeni civil war. Oil has reacted to the US strikes, with Brent crude rising today.

The Middle East will be watching the showdown to gauge how relentless Trump’s willing to be in backing his words with military action.— Paul Wallace

A US warship carries out precision airstrikes against Houthi targets across Yemen in this photo released yesterday. Source: US Central Command

Global Must Reads

Trump said he’ll speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow as the US presses for a ceasefire in Ukraine and European nations rush to bolster their support for Kyiv, including by tightening restrictions on Russia’s economy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kremlin forces are attempting to encircle his troops inside a region of Ukraine that directly borders Russia’s Kursk area.

Support for Shigeru Ishiba’s government slumped in polls in the wake of a controversy over shopping vouchers the Japanese prime minister handed out to junior lawmakers. The premier apologized today for actions that “were at odds with the sensibilities of the general public,” with surveys showing inflation among the top issues for voters ahead of upper-house elections this summer.

Shigeru Ishiba shakes hands with one of his Liberal Democratic Party’s candidates for the upper-house election, in Tokyo on March 9. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg

The Trump administration said it arrested and expelled hundreds of alleged members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador for imprisonment, even as a federal judge ordered a halt to some deportations. The US is paying the Central American nation to hold the Venezuelans under an agreement with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who said in a post on X that around 238 members of the gang were transferred to a terrorism confinement center.

Hundreds of thousands of people massed in downtown Belgrade on Saturday to protest against the Serbian government of President Aleksandar Vučić, the biggest public demonstration in the Balkan nation’s recent history. Protesters are demanding full accountability for an incident in Novi Sad in November, when a roof collapse at a railway station killed 15 people, and accuse Vučić and his allies of mismanagement and corruption.

Protesters at an anti-government demonstration in Belgrade on Saturday. Photographer: Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg

The demise of the US Agency for International Development is sapping billions of dollars of funding for health and social programs that will be difficult for the world to replace. But it’s also leaving behind a complicated legacy as a promoter of American values abroad.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to fire Ronen Bar, the head of the domestic security service Shin Bet, after disagreements over responsibility for the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, hostage negotiations and a probe into links to Qatar.

A delegation from the Thai government will visit China this week to check on the welfare of dozens of Uyghur refugees, after the US announced travel restrictions on Thai officials involved in their controversial deportation last month.

The UK government will abolish more regulators to reduce costs for business and scale back welfare spending as it seeks to ignite stagnant economic growth.

Indonesia is set to sign an agreement to lift its decade-long moratorium on sending citizens to Saudi Arabia as domestic workers and formal-sector employees, following assurances of stricter labor protections.

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Chart of the Day

China will take steps to revive consumption by boosting people’s incomes, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, as part of a plan that adds to government pledges to support demand in an economy threatened by Trump’s tariffs. Statistics released today showed Chinese consumption, investment and industrial production exceeded estimates at the start of the year, pointing to signs of resilience for an economy still in need of more stimulus as the duuties threaten growth.

And Finally

US drugmaker Eli Lilly is putting some $1.8 billion into its facilities in southern Ireland as part of its most ambitious manufacturing expansion to date, driven by the unprecedented demand for the active ingredient in its blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes medicines. Lilly is one of many US multinationals to have located in Ireland over recent decades, especially in the pharmaceutical and technology fields. But that success story has inflated Ireland’s trade surplus with the US and attracted Trump’s attention, prompting the Irish government to launch a St. Patrick’s Day offensive to leverage the annual access to US policymakers in a bid to head off any tariffs.

The Eli Lilly plant in Kinsale, Ireland. Photographer: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/Bloomberg

Thanks to the 41 people who answered the Friday quiz, and congratulations to Bill Peterson, who was first to correctly identify China as the country whose capital is introducing artificial intelligence courses to primary and secondary students.

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