US designates Houthis a terrorist organization
The Trump administration on Tuesday re-designated the Houthi militant group in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, reversing a decision made by President Joe Biden in 2021, after more than a year of attacks on U.S. Navy and commercial vessels at sea.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that he was fulfilling one of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises after hundreds of Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The Houthis have described their campaign of violence as an act of solidarity with Hamas, the militant group whose attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered a war in Gaza that has upended security across the region.
“Today’s action taken by the State Department demonstrates the Trump Administration’s commitment to protecting our national security interests, the safety of the American people, and the security of the United States,” Rubio said. “Terrorist designations play a critical role in our fight against terrorism and are an effective way to curtail support for terrorist activities.”
Rubio also warned China and other countries that may seek to maintain ties with the Houthis, noting that a recent attack “spared Chinese-flagged ships while targeting American and allied vessels.” The United States, Rubio declared, “will not tolerate any country engaging with terrorist organizations like the Houthis in the name of practicing legitimate international business.”
The group, formally known as Ansar Allah, was already the subject of earlier U.S. sanctions and other punitive measures, but the foreign terrorist designation makes it a crime for people or entities such as banks to offer “material support or resources” to the Houthis and bars its members from the United States.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department said it is offering up to $15 million for information leading to the disruption of the Houthis’ finances.
The Houthis, a rebel group that seized the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in 2014, function as the de facto government across a wide swath of Yemen, including in many of its most populous areas. Relying heavily on weapons provided by Iran, the Houthis have aligned themselves with other regional militant groups and positioned themselves as a leader of the armed opposition to Israel and the United States.
Shortly before departing office in January 2021, the first Trump administration designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization, citing cross-border violence into Saudi Arabia and an attack on an airport in Aden, a southern Yemeni city. The Biden administration undid that designation the following month, citing the limitations it placed on delivering humanitarian aid to Yemen, where a decade of civil conflict has fueled severe poverty and malnutrition.
In the aftermath of the Hamas attack in October 2023, Houthi leaders said they would attack ships associated with Israel. The campaign that followed was often indiscriminate, however, with vessels from a variety of countries targeted and at least a couple that were sunk.
The Biden administration responded by recruiting partners and allies to join a multinational naval task force to protect shipping and eventually launching airstrikes at the Houthis. Biden administration officials also sought to curtail weapons smuggling from Iran to Yemen, but officials familiar with the issue said that effort was difficult.
The U.S. military increased its tempo of strikes on Houthi targets in the final weeks of the Biden administration in response to what former U.S. officials said was an increasingly aggressive campaign to strike both Israeli and U.S. assets in the region.
On Tuesday, Houthi authorities announced they had shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone over Yemeni airspace in Hodeida governate, in what they said was the 15th downing of enemy aircraft since Hamas’s October 2023 attack.
A U.S. defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the U.S. military had lost contact with an MQ-9 over the Red Sea on Monday. “We are actively assessing the incident to determine the cause and follow-on actions,” the official said.
Former officials said the Biden administration developed a proposal that would have re-designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization late last year, but officials ultimately decided to leave that decision to the incoming Trump administration.
U.S. officials have said that while Iran has provided significant support to the Houthis, they see the group as an independent actor that might not necessarily respond to Tehran’s instructions to stand down its maritime attacks. The Houthis have also established their own substantial, independent weapons production capability.
Mohammed Al-Basha, a Yemen analyst, said the designation may result in additional U.S. steps to isolate the Houthis financially and logistically, such as cutting off the access of Yemeni banks from the global banking system. But he also noted that the group could attempt to evade the measures by working with Russia or other actors to obtain fuel or other imports.
The Houthis have largely halted their attacks on commercial and naval vessels following Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Al-Basha said, but Houthi officials have warned they will resume drone and missile strikes should the deal break down.
Aid groups have warned about the humanitarian impact of a re-designation. In a January statement following the Trump administration’s announcement that it intended to target the Houthis, Oxfam America said that Trump’s previous designation had damaging impacts on imports and commerce even before it took effect.
“We know that humanitarian exemptions weren’t enough to stop the immediate impacts,” Scott Paul, the group’s peace and security director, said in January. “Even with those caveats, exporters canceled contracts, banks prepared to scale back, and humanitarian organizations began to plan for a dramatic escalation with even fewer resources and more constraints.”
Source » msn
