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WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to halt the war in Yemen, a move diplomats and U.S. officials said is fueled by concern over the humanitarian toll and by eroding support in Congress for Saudi Arabia heightened by the slaying of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis issued coordinated calls this week for a cease-fire in Yemen, where conflict between a Saudi-led coalition and Iran-allied Houthi militants has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
The new administration push reflects simmering frustrations over the three-year-old war. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been unable to deliver a crippling battlefield blow to Houthi insurgents, but have provoked international condemnation with operations such as the August airstrike on a bus filled with schoolchildren on a field trip. More than 40 students were killed.
Those frustrations were compounded by the Oct. 2 killing of Mr. Khashoggi by Saudi agents in the country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, bringing widespread calls for a re-evaluation of U.S. ties to Riyadh.
Messrs. Mattis and Pompeo are pressing Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to help jump start United Nations-brokered peace talks in coming weeks.
“We’ve got to move toward a peace effort here. And we can’t say we’re going to do it sometime in the future. We need to be doing this in the next 30 days,” Mr. Mattis said on Tuesday at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.
Martin Griffiths, the special U.N. envoy on Yemen, has been working closely with the Trump administration to kick-start peace talks.
Behind the scenes, top U.S. military officials and diplomats privately have been warning Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. that rising bipartisan outrage in Congress over the war is making it increasingly difficult for President Trump to back Saudi Arabia, a senior diplomat said.
The U.S. officials also have warned that Democrats could take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in midterm elections Tuesday, a move that could make it easier for Congress to scale back U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., the diplomat said.
“The congressional pressure—that’s the heart of the matter,” the diplomat said.
Washington has significant interests in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil producer and a major buyer of U.S. weapons. Mr. Trump is working closely with Saudi Arabia to contain Iran’s influence in the Middle East, a key U.S. priority, and on a new plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The U.S. provides the Saudi-led coalition with limited military support for the war in Yemen. American jets refuel Saudi and U.A.E. warplanes carry out airstrikes in Yemen that the U.N. says have killed thousands of civilians. The U.S. provides the Gulf allies with limited battlefield intelligence and precision guided weapons.
U.S. lawmakers have tried without success to cut off American support for the war in Yemen. That tentative Saudi support in Congress suffered a new blow with Mr. Khashoggi’s death.
Mr. Trump has denounced Mr. Khashoggi’s killing and called for a full investigation. But he has also said he would try to protect aspects of U.S.-Saudi relations, particularly billions of dollars in arms sales linked to U.S. manufacturing jobs.
By contrast, some lawmakers have threatened to limit or halt Saudi arms sales, efforts which have been voted down in the past. Five Republican senators wrote to Mr. Trump on Wednesday, asking him to indefinitely suspend talks with the Saudis on civilian nuclear power in light of the Khashoggi affair.
In September, Mr. Pompeo backed continued U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia over the objections of staff members after being warned by aides that a cutoff could jeopardize more than $2 billion in weapons sales to America’s Gulf allies.
Mr. Pompeo reinforced that point on Wednesday.
“We truly have a responsibility to America, to the American people, to ensure that we have a good relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Pompeo said in an interview on Fox News Radio.
But in his statement on Yemen, issued late Tuesday, Mr. Pompeo said, “The time is now for the cessation of hostilities.”
Asked on Wednesday whether Mr. Khashoggi’s death gives the U.S. more leverage to address problems such as the war in Yemen, State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said “the two are unrelated.”
Stephen Seche, who served as U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 2007 to 2010, agreed that “a lot of external factors” are influencing the White House’s more activist approach to Yemen.
He cited sentiment in Congress, potential changes following the U.S. elections, and Mr. Khashoggi’s killing.
Mr. Seche, now at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, welcomed the Pompeo and Mattis statements, but quickly added: “I could argue that I wished I’d seen it earlier in this 3½-year war.”
Supporting Mr. Griffiths’ effort to end the conflict will take more than statements, he said. “That’s going to take some skin in the game on our part.”
In Yemen, the U.N. warned on Oct. 23, half the country’s population, or about 14 million people, face prefamine conditions. The conflict, which began in March 2015 after a Saudi offensive in response to the Houthis’ seizure of the capital San’a, has killed more than 10,000 people, many of them civilians.
Write to Dion Nissenbaum at [email protected]
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