Multiple American corporate media outlets reported Tuesday that leftist President Joe Biden is considering adding Ansarullah, the Yemeni terrorist organization commonly known as the Houthis, to the list of specially designated global terrorist (SDGT) groups.
The designation would limit some funding to the Houthis but would not restore them to the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), which would block both direct funding and sanction individuals and entities who provide “material support” to the terrorists. The FTO designation would also block members of Ansarullah from immigrating to America.
The SDGT designation would have some limited impact on the Houthis’ financing and empowers the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to add them to its list of “Specially Designated Nationals.” It stops short of the full sanctions tied to the FTO list that the Houthis were subject to prior to Biden’s inauguration.
Despite this, several American news organizations described Biden as considering “restoring” or “renewing” the Houthis to “the terror list,” without specifying in their headlines which designation the Biden administration is considering. On Tuesday, White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told reporters there was “nothing to update yet on the FTO designation” and that the administration was “still in the process of renewing it.”
Ansarullah is an Iran-backed Shiite jihadist organization whose slogan is “Allahu Akbar, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.” It has risen to become an international cause of concern after declaring war against Israel in October – in support of the atrocities committed against Israeli civilians that month by the fellow Iran proxy Hamas – and engaging in attacks on commercial ships attempting to transit the Red Sea. Reports indicate that Houthi attacks have increased global shipping prices by over 300 percent and caused a 90-percent decline in shipping traffic in the region between January 2023 and January 2024.
This photo released by the Houthi Media Center shows Houthi forces boarding the cargo ship Galaxy Leader on Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. (Houthi Media Center via AP)
Biden’s largest policy response to the Houthi attacks has been the establishment of “Operation Prosperity Guardian,” a coalition allegedly consisting of over 12 countries organized to protect commercial shipping in the region. The “operation” has failed to attract support from some of the most influential and directly affected nations in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and other such as India have deployed naval assets to protect their ships while explicitly rejecting participation in Biden’s operation.
The Associated Press was the first to report on Tuesday that Biden sought to add the Houthis to the SDGT list.
“The specially designated global terrorists label to be reimposed on the Houthis does not include sanctions for providing ‘material support,'” the AP noted, “and it does not come with travel bans that are also imposed with the foreign terrorist organization label, steps intended to help prevent the U.S. move from harming ordinary Yemenis.”
Not good. https://t.co/zqapy5crkR
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 15, 2024
The New York Times nonetheless reported that Biden “plans to designate Yemen’s Houthi militia as a terrorist organization, crediting Biden with allegedly seeking “to strike a balance, one that protects the flow of desperately needed humanitarian aid to the people of Yemen.” Similarly, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Biden “plans to put the Houthi rebel group back on one of its lists of terrorist organizations.” Fox News claimed “it wasn’t clear” what list Biden would put the Houthis on, though Kirby had dismissed any imminent announcement regarding the FTO list. The Hill did not mention the SDGT list in its coverage of the news, stating only, “the Biden administration may relabel the Houthis in Yemen a foreign terrorist organization.”
The news broke less than a week after Biden told reporters that whether his administration designates the Houthis as terrorists or not is “irrelevant.” He also stated that he considered the Houthis terrorists, despite removing them from the FTO list.
Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed the Houthi movement from the FTO list in February 2021, one of Biden’s first acts in office. At the time, Blinken said the move was necessary to allow humanitarian aid into Yemen, which had entered its sixth year of civil war after the Houthis attempted to overthrow the legitimate government of the country in 2014.
Blinken conceded that the Houthis continued to engage in terrorist activities and had done nothing to deserve no longer being considered terrorists.
File/Fighters loyal to Yemen’s Houthi rebels raise their fists and chant slogans as they visit the grave of slain Huthi political leader Saleh al-Sammad at al-Sabeen square in the capital Sanaa, on January 11, 2021. (MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP via Getty Images)
“The United States remains clear-eyed about Ansarallah’s malign actions, and aggression, including taking control of large areas of Yemen by force,” Blinken said in a statement at the time, “attacking U.S. partners in the Gulf, kidnapping and torturing citizens of the United States and many of our allies, [and] diverting humanitarian aid.”
The Houthis’ history of “diverting humanitarian aid” did not stop the Biden administration from facilitating the flow of “humanitarian aid” to the Houthis. By March of that year, the State Department conceded to Breitbart News that the Houthis were continuing to block or steal aid meant for Yemeni civilians.
“We call on all parties to provide unhindered access for humanitarian actors to deliver assistance to those who need it most,” a State Department spokesperson told Breitbart News in March 2021. “Ongoing interference in international aid operations by the Houthis in Yemen has prevented millions of people from receiving the assistance they need to survive.”
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