Why is the US bombing Yemen in the first place?

A photo taken with a cellphone on March 19, 2025, shows smoke and fire rising from a neighborhood following an airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen. | Str/Xinhua via Getty Images

Washington has been convulsed over the past week by the question of how a prominent journalist was invited into a private Signal chat between senior Trump administration officials over an impending military action and why that conversation was happening on Signal at all.

But the actual topic that these officials were discussing ...