Ahead of his first term in the White House, President Donald Trump campaigned on “bombing the hell” out of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. At that time, the terror group was surging, causing turmoil in the Middle East and beyond.
Now, roughly a decade later and a few months into his second term, the president is back to bombing terror groups.
The US military has noticeably increased the number of airstrikes that it has carried out against ISIS in Somalia under Trump compared to his predecessor, Joe Biden, according to publicly available information on these operations.
And across the Gulf of Aden, a body of water that separates the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the US has been heavily bombing the Houthi rebels in Yemen nonstop for more than a month in a bid to get them to stop their Red Sea attacks. Trump’s new bombing campaign against the group appears much more aggressive than the Biden administration’s operations.
Bombing ISIS and others
Trump’s campaign pledges in 2015 and 2016 to “bomb the hell” out of ISIS preceded an intense air campaign against the terror group. The White House later announced the US military had defeated ISIS.
Its once-sweeping caliphate in Iraq and Syria crumbled under international pressure, but the threat persisted. The US intelligence community still considers ISIS to be a major threat, and it is not limited to the old caliphate.
Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images
During the first three months of the new Trump administration, US Africa Command has disclosed at least eight rounds of airstrikes against ISIS in Somalia. It’s a major jump from previous years under Biden.
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Last year, the US military carried out one airstrike on ISIS in Somalia, according to publicly available statements from Africom. And in 2023, American forces carried out a lone assault operation against the terror group in the country. In 2022 and 2021, there were no publicly reported missions.
ISIS-Somalia has doubled in size over the past year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote in a March report on global threats. Africom regularly says that the terror group “has proved both its will and capability” to attack American and partner forces and calls these efforts a threat to US national security interests.
The US military is also conducting operations against al-Shabaab, which ODNI refers to as Al Qaeda’s largest and wealthiest affiliate group. It has long been active in Somalia.
The US averaged more than 10 rounds of airstrikes against the group each year that Biden was in office, with a peak of 15 in 2023. So far, there have been at least five rounds of US airstrikes against al-Shabaab this year, the latest of which occurred overnight Wednesday.
US Air Force Photo by Airman 1st Class Mitchell Corley
The strikes come amid reports that the White House was considering eliminating Africom and closing diplomatic posts in Africa, which could hurt counterterrorism efforts. The airstrikes also appear to reflect the president’s move to give US commanders more authority over strikes and operations.
A US defense official told Business Insider on Thursday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is “focused on persistent malign influence” by ISIS, al-Shabaab, and similar groups in the area, adding that “we’re working closely with the Somali government to degrade and destroy those malign actors.”
The official said Hegseth has “empowered” combatant commanders to take the necessary steps to identify and eliminate threats to the US and its interests.
The US is still hunting down ISIS in the Middle East. In March, for instance, the military killed the terror group’s second-in-command in Iraq. Other operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria that have been publicly acknowledged by the Trump administration have been carried out by local partner forces and “enabled” by American troops.
The Houthis
Between late 2023 and the end of last year, US warships and aircraft have been tasked with intercepting Houthi missiles and drones targeting ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. American forces have also carried out airstrikes to wipe out rebel weaponry and assets in Yemen.
US Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Gerald R. Willis
This year started out with relative calm in the Houthi conflict, but on March 15, the Trump administration started a new campaign of strikes in Yemen to get the rebels to permanently stop their maritime attacks. Since then, the US has moved a second aircraft carrier into the Middle East and has deployed B-2 stealth bombers to a base in the Indian Ocean in a major show of force.
Top officials, including the president, have said that the large-scale bombing will be “unrelenting,” and the US military frequently touts the “24/7” operations on social media.
However, experts and analysts have cast doubt that the intense campaign, now in its second month, will completely annihilate the Houthis, as Trump has threatened.
It’s unclear how much of the Houthi network the US has affected. Air Force Lt. Gen Alexus Grynkewich, director of operations for the Joint Staff, told reporters on March 17, days after the campaign began, that strikes hit training sites, drone infrastructure, command centers, and weapons storage facilities.
Details since then have been scarce, but US Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, said Thursday that American forces struck a port in Yemen that the Houthis used to import fuel.
