US designates Houthis as global terrorist group

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Biden administration on Wednesday designated Yemen’s Houthis as a global terrorist group in response to their continued attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea.

The decision takes effect Feb. 16, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken said gives the State Department time to coordinate continued humanitarian assistance through aid organizations. Officials pledged to reevaluate the designation if the attacks stop.

“The Houthis must be held accountable for their actions, but it should not be at the expense of Yemeni civilians,” Blinken said in a statement.

Administration officials noted that the label differs from the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list, which includes groups like the Islamic State group, al-Qaida and Boko Haram. John Kirby, coordinator of strategic communications for the National Security Council, said the moniker assigned to the Houthis gives greater leeway for aid organizations to continue providing humanitarian assistance to Yemen.

The Houthis emerged in the 1990s in opposition to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and were led by Hussein al-Houthi, who was killed by the military in 2004. The movement led to a revolution in 2011, which took control of part of the country. By 2014, the conflict reached a full scale civil war that continues today.

The group has been targeting shipping in the crucial route through the Red Sea, which borders Yemen, since Oct. 19. 

“These attacks against international shipping have endangered mariners, disrupted the free flow of commerce, and interfered with navigational rights and freedoms,” Blinken said in a statement. “This designation seeks to promote accountability for the group’s terrorist activities.”

The attacks are widely seen as one of the spillovers from Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. The Houthis are a Shia Islamist movement that support the establishment of a Palestinian state and have condemned Israel’s policies toward the occupied territories.

The Biden administration, however, has rebuffed such correlations. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said although there’s been “kinetic activity” in the region connected to clashes in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, the Middle East isn’t “tipping into a full blown conflagration.” Kirby said although the Houthis have claimed to target shipping headed for Israel, all the attacks have hit ships destined for other ports.

“The whole argument that this is about the war in Gaza, they’re just driving a stake through a straw,” Kirby said. “There’s nothing there.”

The Trump administration, in its final days, designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, but President Joe Biden reversed that decision less than a month later with a vow to deescalate Yemen’s civil war.

Miller said Wednesday’s action is not an admission that removing the Houthis from the terrorist list was a mistake.

“The circumstances have very much changed,” he said. “We have seen them launching attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, something that wasn’t the case in 2021.”

The designation provides “more tools to go after their access to funds,” Miller said, including new sanction power to target the movement’s supporters and blocking access to the U.S. financial system.

Last week, the U.S. and United Kingdom led joint airstrikes against 60 Houthi targets in Yemen seeking to hinder the group’s ability to attack shipping.

“These attacks fit the textbook definition of terrorism,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said in a press release. “As President Biden has said, the United States will not hesitate to take further actions to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce.”

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