The violent Yemeni militant group that keeps attacking commercial ships—including American vessels—in the Red Sea and Suez Canal was removed from the U.S. terrorist list by President Biden at the request of the famously corrupt United Nations and other leftist humanitarian groups.
The revocation, announced on February 12, 2021, of the terrorist designation stood even after the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned two key militants of the group, which lately is best known as Houthis but is also officially identified as Ansarallah or Partisans of God. OFAC identified the men as Mansur Al-Sa’adi and Ahmad ‘Ali Ahsan al-Hamzi and revealed that they were responsible for orchestrating attacks by Houthi forces impacting Yemeni civilians, bordering nations, and commercial vessels in international waters.
The agency also revealed in its March 2021 sanction document that the Houthis have waged a bloody war against the internationally recognized Yemeni government using ballistic missiles, explosives, naval mines, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to attack bases, population centers, infrastructure, and nearby commercial shipping.
Predictably, the Houthis continue to commit terrorist attacks because it is what they do. Nothing has really changed there, though the high-profile nature of the Islamic group’s recent activities has captured global attention that shines a light on the Biden administration’s controversial decision to remove it from the government’s official terrorist list. Since the middle of November, the Houthis have hijacked a commercial ship and launched dozens of attacks with drones, missiles and speed boats on other vessels transporting goods through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, a critical passage that sees around 12% of the world’s trade. The attacks are forcing ships to take a much lengthier route around southern Africa and the U.S. as well as Britain and other allies have struck Houthi targets in Yemen with missiles. This week the U.S. Central Command announced that it struck and destroyed four Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles prepared to launch from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and presented an imminent threat to both merchant and U.S. Navy ships in the region.
The recent attacks are receiving lots of global media coverage, but no outlet has pressed the Biden administration for answers regarding its outrageous decision to revoke the Houthis’ terrorist designation. Afterall, Yemen is a hotbed of terrorism that serves as the headquarters of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has appeared on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations since 2010. Nevertheless, the international community and its leftist allies strongly opposed the Trump administration’s classification of the Houthis as a specially designated global terrorist entity asserting that it would come with repercussions for humanitarian operations.
President Trump did not cave in and properly classified the Houthis/Ansarallah a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group, writing in a Federal Register bulletin that the group has committed or has attempted to commit, or poses a significant risk of committing, or has participated in training to commit, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.
When Biden became president, the left squeezed the administration to remove the Houthis’ terrorist designation and it was not long before the U.S. obliged. Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken explained that the decision was a recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen.
“We have listened to warnings from the United Nations, humanitarian groups, and bipartisan members of Congress, among others, that the designations could have a devastating impact on Yemenis’ access to basic commodities like food and fuel,” Blinken said at the time without offering details to back up the claim. A year later the administration laughably denounced the Houthis “acts of terrorism” against “civil infrastructure” after it launched drones and missiles at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, including energy and water facilities. Blinken strongly condemned the multiple attacks and Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that the unprovoked incidents were indeed acts of terrorism.