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 — a strike on the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that controls Yemen’s capital and much of its territory — has gotten somewhat lost.

There’s been remarkably little discussion about why an administration that pledged to reduce US military commitments is now conducting nearly daily airstrikes on a country in the Middle East and what these strikes might accomplish.

Here’s how we got here.

The Houthis have been carrying out missile and drone attacks on shipping through the Red Sea since shortly after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. This has had a disruptive effect on international shipping, forcing container ships to make the long trip around the Southern tip of Africa rather than the much shorter voyage through the Suez Canal. However, the shipping industry has largely adapted to the change.

In response, the US, under the Biden administration, along with several European countries, launched a military operation to protect shipping and, at the beginning of last year, began direct airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen. This did not stop the attacks.

The Houthis only scaled back their attacks on shipping after an Israel-Hamas ceasefire went into effect this January, but shipping companies have been cautious about returning to........

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