WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has redesignated Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a “specially designated global terrorist” group in a move meant to pressure the militants into ceasing their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
“We cannot sit idly by and watch what the Houthis are doing in the Red Sea and not recognize their actions for what they are,” said a senior administration official briefing reporters ahead of the announcement.
The official said the United States would consider lifting the designation if the Houthis halt their attacks in the Red Sea and nearby waters that have pushed up global shipping costs and forced companies to halt or reroute traffic around southern Africa. The designation is intended to make it harder for the group to access international financial systems to fund its maritime assaults.
With the new terror listing, the Biden administration is reversing course on an earlier foreign policy decision it said would help ease one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. In February 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally rescinded both the Houthis’ Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) and Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designations that the former Trump administration applied on the group shortly before leaving office.
Despite waivers put in place for humanitarian activity, aid agencies warned the FTO label in particular, which criminalized material support for the Houthis, would deter sanctions-averse banks and foreign companies from continuing to do business in Yemen.
They also warned that ensuring compliance with a confusing web of financial sanctions could complicate aid delivery to the Arab world’s poorest country, where the United Nations says more than 21 million people — two-thirds of the population — require humanitarian assistance to survive.
At the time, Blinken said the delistings were “a recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen.”
But as Houthi attacks escalated in December, the Biden administration held an interagency review of whether to reimpose the FTO designation, a source familiar with the deliberations told Al-Monitor. It settled for the SDGT penalties after the State Department, the US Agency for International Development and congressional Democrats voiced opposition to the harsher terror label.
The Houthis’ SDGT designation takes effect in 30 days. During that time, US officials will ensure exemptions and legal protections are in place to “minimize humanitarian consequences” on the impoverished country, an administration official said.
But Scott Paul, an associate director at the Oxfam America charity, warned the designation would nevertheless “add another level of uncertainty and threat for Yemenis still caught in one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.”
“The Biden administration is playing with fire and we call on them to rescind this designation immediately and prioritize the lives of Yemenis now,” Paul said in a statement.
The designation announced Wednesday comes as the Houthis, who say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, continue to launch drones and missiles at merchant vessels transiting the Red Sea. The Iran-backed Yemeni militia fired another anti-ship ballistic missile on Tuesday, damaging a Malta-flagged cargo ship hours after the US military carried out a third round of strikes on Houthi sites in Yemen.
Analysts say the Biden administration faced few good options in weighing its response to the Houthis’ escalation in the Red Sea, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. A major US military response would have risked jeopardizing Yemen’s war-ravaged population, but a more limited action may only embolden the Houthis while having a limited impact on their military capabilities.
The New York Times reported Saturday that US intelligence services believed last week's allied strikes only disabled roughly a quarter of the Houthis' offensive weapons stockpiles.
The barrage of American and British strikes in Yemen have so far failed to deter the militants, who have vowed to widen their list of targets to include US vessels. They made good on that threat Monday by firing a ballistic missile on a US-owned ship in the Gulf of Aden.
Before resorting to military action, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on the Houthis' financial intermediaries and backed a UN Security Council resolution that demanded an end to the group’s maritime assaults. The US military also assembled a 20-nation maritime coalition last month, known as Operation Prosperity Guardian, to counter the group’s threats to commercial shipping and Navy vessels.
Nadwa Al-Dawsari, a nonresident fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote on X that the newly imposed terror designation plays right into the Houthis’ hands.
“It feeds into their narrative that they are at war with America and that they are being punished for being the only Muslim group that took action to support Palestine,” she said.
The US move comes as the Houthis and neighboring Saudi Arabia are discussing a permanent cease-fire and the kingdom’s withdrawal from their nearly nine-year war. Experts have warned the tit-for-tat exchanges between the militants and the United States could upend what has been a period of relative calm in Yemen.
Fearing the Houthis could escalate with a cross-border attack, the Saudi Foreign Ministry reacted to the US and British strikes on Friday with a carefully worded statement that called for restraint and "avoiding escalation."
US redesignates Yemen’s Houthis as terror group amid Red Sea attacks
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17.01.2024
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has redesignated Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a “specially designated global terrorist” group in a move meant to pressure the militants into ceasing their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
“We cannot sit idly by and watch what the Houthis are doing in the Red Sea and not recognize their actions for what they are,” said a senior administration official briefing reporters ahead of the announcement.
The official said the United States would consider lifting the designation if the Houthis halt their attacks in the Red Sea and nearby waters that have pushed up global shipping costs and forced companies to halt or reroute traffic around southern Africa. The designation is intended to make it harder for the group to access international financial systems to fund its maritime assaults.
With the new terror listing, the Biden administration is reversing course on an earlier foreign policy decision it said would help ease one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. In February 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally rescinded both the Houthis’ Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) and Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designations that the former Trump administration applied on the group shortly before leaving office.
Despite waivers put in place for humanitarian activity, aid agencies warned the FTO........
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