WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday put Yemen’s Houthis rebels back on the list of specially designated global terrorists, piling financial sanctions on top of U.S. military strikes in the Biden administration’s latest attempt to stem the militants’ attacks on global to stop shipping.
Officials said they would design the financial sanctions to minimize damage to Yemen’s 32 million residents, who are among the poorest and hungriest in the world after years of war between the Iran-backed Houthis and a Saudi Arabia-led coalition.
But emergency officials expressed concern. The decision would only “add a new level of uncertainty and threat to Yemenis who remain embroiled in one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises,” said Scott Paul, deputy director of Oxfam Americas.
The sanctions that come with the formal designations are intended to disconnect violent extremist groups from their sources of funding.
President Donald Trump’s administration designated the Houthis as global terrorists and a foreign terrorist organization in one of his last acts in office. President Joe Biden changed course early, citing the humanitarian threat the sanctions posed to ordinary Yemenis.
Military strikes by the US and Britain against Houthi targets in Yemen have failed to stop weeks of drone, rocket and rocket attacks by Houthi forces on commercial ships plying the Red Sea route bordering Yemen .
The Houthis are part of a network of Iran- and Hamas-linked militant groups in the Middle East that have escalated attacks on Israel, the US and others since Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’ attacks on October 7 in Israel.
The Houthis were originally a clan-based rebel movement. They captured Yemen’s capital in 2014 and withstood a subsequent years-long invasion led by Saudi Arabia aimed at ousting the Houthis from power. Two-thirds of Yemen’s population lives in territory now controlled by the Houthis.
Critics say the additional broad U.S. sanctions may have little effect on the Houthis, a rebel and relatively isolated group with few known assets in the U.S. that could be threatened. There are also concerns that designating the Houthis as terrorists could complicate international efforts to reach a peace deal in the now-subsided war with Saudi Arabia.
War and chronic misgovernance have left 24 million Yemenis at risk of hunger and disease, and roughly 14 million people in acute need of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations said. Aid groups repeatedly warned during the height of the war in Yemen that millions of Yemenis were on the brink of famine.
Aid agencies worry that the mere fear of running afoul of U.S. regulations could be enough to deter shippers, banks and others in the commercial supply chain on which Yemenis depend for survival. Yemen imports 90% of its food.
U.S. officials told reporters before the State Department’s announcement Wednesday that the sanctions would exempt commercial shipments of food, medicine and fuel, and humanitarian aid. The U.S. will wait 30 days before sanctions take effect, officials said, giving shipping companies, banks, insurers and others time to prepare.
The government will not impose the stricter designation of foreign terrorist organization on the Houthis for the time being. That would prevent the Americans, along with people and organizations under U.S. jurisdiction, from providing “material support” to the Houthis. Aid groups said the move could have the effect of criminalizing ordinary trade and aid to Yemenis.
The three U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administrative planning, described Wednesday’s appointment as part of a series of U.S. measures aimed at putting pressure on the Houthis to halt their attacks on shipping. The US will reevaluate the designation if the Houthis comply, officials said.
Jared Rowell, country director for the International Rescue Committee in Yemen, said last week that the attacks and counterattacks interrupted the delivery of goods and aid to Yemen, delayed the shipment of essential goods and increased prices for food and fuel.
Conservatives have been pushing for the foreign terrorist designation to be reinstated since the Biden administration lifted it. The calls for tougher action against the Houthis and their Iranian supporters have become louder since the war between Israel and Hamas.
When Biden was asked last week whether the Houthis were a terrorist group, he replied: “I think so.”
Hisham Al-Omeisy, a Yemeni analyst living in the Washington area, said the American designation plays into the Houthis’ narrative to the world that they are rising up against a superpower to defend Muslims around the world.
Domestically, the designation contributes to the Houthis’ message to Yemenis that the US is the cause of their suffering, Al-Omeisy said.
In the past, he said, the Houthis were angry because “the US was essentially treating them like a bug on the windshield.”
Now, “they say, ‘You know what, they respect us,'” he said of the Houthis’ stance. “Yes, we can agree with the Americans, right?”