Yemen Monitor / Washington / Special:
Members of the U.S. Congress have reintroduced a bill to designate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization amid ongoing Houthi attacks in the Red Sea against commercial and U.S. military vessels.
U.S. media reported on Tuesday that Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, introduced the bill to designate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization.
The foreign terrorist organization designation granted during the Trump administration was removed by the Biden administration in 2021 and was reinstated early last year, but their designation was “specifically.”
Cruz stated that ” Biden’s administration made a political decision on day one to dismantle terrorism sanctions against the Houthis and their leaders.” He added that “the administration knew the decision was unjustified, lied about parts of it in front of the cameras before the American people, and deliberately restricted access to the full announcement.”
Cruz mentioned that the result “was a clear and catastrophic mistake from the beginning and contributed to empowering the Houthis to resume their attacks on civilians in Yemen, launch missiles at Israel and our Gulf allies, and over the past year conduct continuous attacks on commercial vessels and the US service members in the Red Sea.”
In contrast, he believes that the elected President Donald Trump “will reinstate these sanctions as part of restoring maximum pressure on the Iranian regime, and this law ensures that the decision is supported and affirmed through congressional action.”
Cruz was joined in sponsoring the bill by U.S. Senators Tom Cotton from Arkansas, Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, John Barrasso from Wyoming, Thom Tillis from North Carolina, and Rick Scott from Florida.
Cruz claims that after Biden’s administration lifted the foreign terrorist organization designation, Houthi fighters received more support, including the launch of anti-ship ballistic missiles, suicide drones, and precision-guided weapon systems capable of reaching Israeli territories. He sees that reclassifying them as foreign terrorist organizations “would lead to more effective sanctions targeting third parties supplying weapons to the Houthis.”
