As the war between Israel and Hamas threatens to draw in Yemen, the United States military’s little noted boots on the ground in the war-torn country raise the specter of deepening American involvement in the conflict.

“The best strategy to avoid getting sucked into another war in the Middle East is to not have troops unnecessarily in the region in the first place — and bring those who are there now home,” said Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank that advocates for a restrained foreign policy.

“United States military personnel are deployed to Yemen to conduct operations against al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS,” the White House disclosed in a previously unreported passage of its most recent War Powers Resolution report to Congress.

“One should be cautious about interpreting the missile attack as part of some grand strategy of an Iranian-led ‘axis of resistance,’” Paul Pillar, a nonresident senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, told The Intercept.

While the Defense Department has never formally acknowledged SOCCENT FWD Yemen or its mission — which are being reported here for the first time — clues of its existence and aims can be gleaned from scattered references, along with details provided to The Intercept by a military officer.

A senior military officer that served in SFY, granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, told The Intercept that, during the beginning of the Trump administration, he oversaw plans to train a 300-person Yemeni tribal fighting force in order to conduct long-term unconventional warfare and counterterror operations.

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