The Biden administration’s decision to redesignate Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis as a terrorist group still misses the mark and undermines the point of the designation, an expert told Fox News Digital.
“This is a bait and switch,” said Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former National Security Council official. “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,” Goldberg explained. “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,” he said. “They’ll issue all kinds of OFAC licenses to mitigate the SDGT designation, which they couldn’t do with an FTO designation.”
The Biden administration announced that it would relist the Houthis as a terrorist group on Wednesday by adding them to the specially designated global terrorist (SDGT) list in response to the repeated Houthi attacks on international trading ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
The administration called the attacks “a clear example of terrorism and a violation of international law” as well as “a major threat to life, global commerce and … the delivery of humanitarian assistance.”
The Houthi attacks on commercial ships have not stopped even after the U.S. and the United Kingdom launched strikes against Houthi assets in Yemen. The group said the attacks served as a response to Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
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. 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.”
Upon replacing Pompeo the following month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that he would reverse the decision and revoke the designation of Ansarallah, “sometimes referred to as the Houthis,” as an FTO, citing a “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 of his decision at the time.
“The revocations are intended to ensure that relevant U.S. policies do not impede assistance to those already suffering what has been called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” he added. “By focusing on alleviating the humanitarian situation in Yemen, we hope the Yemeni parties can also focus on engaging in dialogue.”
The U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a press release Wednesday, saying that the department would provide several counterterrorism general licenses following the Houthi change in status.
These licenses, which allow for certain actions in exception to the sanctions that were implemented as part of the terrorist designation, relate to “the provision of agricultural commodities, medicine, medical devices, replacement parts and components or software updates,” “telecommunications mail and certain internet-based communications,” “personal remittances” and “refined petroleum products,” among others.
Goldberg noted that the Biden administration early in its tenure tried to similarly move Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the FTO to SDGT lists, but the move fell through when Congress blocked the effort.
H/T Fox News (read more at FoxNews.com)
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