News/Commentary

Biden redesignates Houthis as terrorists – but there’s a catch

January 18, 2024 | | Print Article

President Joe Biden’s redesignation of the Houthis as terrorists has prompted criticism from those who’ve been paying attention.

The problem with his re-designation is that the Houthis should have never been undesignated as terrorists in the first place, yet that’s precisely what happened in the days after Biden assumed office in 2021.

“President Joe Biden’s administration is moving to revoke the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group, citing the need to mitigate one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters,” the Associated Press reported on Feb. 5th, 2021.

The move came weeks after the Trump administration designated the Iranian-backed proxy group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

“The Trump administration in January 2021 designated the Houthis as an FTO after an attack on the airport in Aden, Yemen – the oldest airport on the Arabian Peninsula,” according to Fox News.

“Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said of the designation that if the Houthis ‘did not act like a terrorist organization, we would not designate it as an FTO,'” Fox News notes.

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Dovetailing back to the present, the Biden administration has finally reversed course amid the Houthis’ attacks on commercial vessels passing through the Red Sea. But there’s a catch.

The Houthis were originally listed as both a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) and a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

But in an executive order filed this week, Biden only restored the former status, meaning the Houthis aren’t an FTO. This is a problem, say critics like Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former National Security Council official.

“This is a bait and switch,” he told Fox News. “Get the media to write that they’re relisting the Houthis as a terrorist group while obscuring their decision not to relist the group as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). They know FTO status would put maximalist pressure on the Houthis, which is why they won’t do it.”

“Why avoid FTO? It’s the same reason they delisted in the first place. They want the Houthis legitimized enough to be a part of the governing structure in Yemen. They’ll issue all kinds of OFAC licenses to mitigate the SDGT designation, which they couldn’t do with an FTO designation,” he added.

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According to Fox News, these licenses will allow humanitarian aid and other essential goods to be still be delivered to the Houthis.

In other words, the Biden administration is still trying to cater to the Houthis’ interests, despite all the havoc they’ve wreaked in recent weeks.

Goldberg noted in his statement to Fox News that the Biden administration tried to pull a similar stunt with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), but that it was at the time thankfully blocked by Congress.

“Rob Malley was spinning that removing the IRGC from the FTO list wouldn’t matter because it would remain an SDGT, but Congress pushed back hard, knowing the political and economic relief that would come from such a move,” he explained.

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In a background call about the decision, senior administration officials reportedly defended the Houthis’ new lightweight designation, arguing it’s “the appropriate tool at the moment to pressure the Houthis.”

“As with all sanctions, we are looking to make sure that our sanctions are effective in putting pressure on an actor to cease activity that … is problematic to achieve the foreign policy goals,” one official said. “We think the SDGT does that in a number of ways, including cutting off Houthis from financing, putting pressure on them and calling out their terrorist behavior in a clear manner.”

“Where we’ve come to is, I think we do think that the SDGT provides better flexibility to achieve the aims that we have in terms of carving out and safeguarding humanitarian assistance, as well as the broader well-being of the people of Yemen, and targeting the action towards the Houthis while still achieving our foreign policy aims, which is to call out the Houthis’ actions for what they are, which is unacceptable terrorism,” the official added.

A second official reportedly on the call said the Biden administration will “continue to calibrate its response accordingly, if we choose to do so.”

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Vivek Saxena
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