According to a Jan. 29 article for Al Jazeera, President Joe Biden is considering re-designating the Yemen Houthi movement as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) at the request of the United Arab Emirates. The request by the U.A.E. followed a Jan. 17 missile and drone attack by the Houthis on Abu Dhabi, which killed three people. A Jan. 24 tweet by Yousef Al Otaiba, U.A.E. ambassador to the United States, says “Close U.A.E.-U.S. cooperation helped repel another round of Houthi terror attacks this morning in the U.A.E.. Next step is to shut off financial and arms flows from their backers. U.S. should move now to put the Houthis back on the terrorist list.” At a Jan. 19 press conference Biden said this was “under consideration.”
As background, President Donald Trump designated the Houthis as an FTO on Jan. 19, 2021, one day before leaving office, as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, accusing the Houthis of being an Iranian proxy. At the time, humanitarian groups decried the move given the threat of sanctions to humanitarian aid for the millions of war-ravaged Yemeni people, the majority of whom were living in areas under Houthi control. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden pledged to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition waging war against the Houthis. In February 2021 he announced that support was ending and delisted the Houthis as an FTO. However, other than some vacuous statements by Brett McGurk, NSC coordinator for the Middle East, there have been no serious attempts to end support for the Saudi coalition, which includes the Emirates. Biden recently signed off on a $650 million arms sale to Saudi Arabia which, according to a State Department spokesman, ensures that “Saudi Arabia has the means to defend itself from Iranian-backed Houthi air attacks.”
