President Donald Trump redesignated the Yemeni Islamic terrorist group, Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
He first designated the Houthis as an FTO during his first administration, which the Biden administration removed in 2021. One year ago, the State Department designated the Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.
In 2014, the Houthis overthrew the Yemeni government and a civil war has ensued ever since. They are supported by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which arms and trains Islamic terrorists worldwide.
Since 2023, the Houthis have fired at U.S. Navy warships dozens of times and on Israel more than 300 times. Since the Yemen civil war broke out, the Houthis have launched numerous attacks on civilian infrastructure against their Arab neighbors, including against civilian airports in Saudi Arabia and committing deadly attacks in the United Arab Emirates in January 2022.
They’ve also attacked commercial vessels transiting Bab al-Mandeb more than 100 times, killing civilian sailors and forcing some Red Sea maritime commercial traffic to reroute.
Known as “the Gate of Grief” or the “Gate of Tears,” the Bab-el-Mandeb is the strait between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa.
With more than 20,000 fighters, “the Houthis’ infamous, Iranian-inspired rallying cry points to their ambitions beyond Yemen: ‘God is great, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam,’” The Council on Foreign Relations says.
“The Houthis’ activities threaten the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the safety of our closest regional partners, and the stability of global maritime trade,” Trump’s executive order states. “The policy of the United States is to cooperate with its regional partners to eliminate Ansar Allah’s capabilities and operations, deprive it of resources, and thereby end its attacks on U.S. personnel and civilians, U.S. partners, and maritime shipping in the Red Sea.”
The order directs the secretary of State, director of National Intelligence and Treasury secretary to submit a report to the president, through the National Security Council, on the FTO designation, after which the SOS will make the designation official.
After that happens, the SOS and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will review its United Nations partners, nongovernmental organizations, and contractors working in Yemen to determine if any made payments to members of, or governmental entities controlled by Ansar Allah or criticized international efforts to counter the Houthis. Those identified will no longer be working with USAID or receive any federal money.
The announcement comes after U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, last week reintroduced a bill designating the Houthis as an FTO.
After the Biden administration lifted the designation, Houthi fighters received more support, including launching anti-ship ballistic missiles, suicide drones, and precision-guided weapons systems capable of reaching Israeli territory, Cruz said. Redesignating them as a FTO “would trigger far more effective sanctions that target third parties supplying the Houthis,” he said. Sanctions will restore “maximum pressure on the Iranian regime.”
Cruz’s warning comes after the greatest number of people on the U.S. terrorist watchlist were reported attempting to illegally enter or illegally entered the U.S. under the Biden administration and Islamic terrorist threats increased, The Center Square reported.
Yemeni citizens were among the more than one million illegal border crossers deliberately not deported under the Biden administration who were granted “temporary protective status,” The Center Square reported.
