Yemeni knot

Trump foreign policy: American military increasingly involved in Yemen civil war

In 2015, the United States closed its embassy in Yemen as a civil war tore the country apart. The U.S. Marines guarding the embassy had to ditch some of their weapons before boarding a chartered commercial airliner with embassy staff as Iranian-backed forces stormed the capital city of Sanaa and helped themselves to abandoned embassy vehicles as well as the compound itself.

US special operations forces who had been hunting Al-Qaeda in Yemen were also withdrawn when the Iranian-backed group known as the Houthis seized the capital.

But despite the forced departures, the American military now finds itself increasingly involved in Yemen's civil war - and there are fears it could be open-ended.