The Biden administration on Friday announced that it would no longer designate Yemen’s Iran-supported Houthi movement as a terror group, despite the fact the group’s slogan calls for the death of Americans and Jews.
The terrorist designation was made just last month by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to NBC News. It was slated to take effect by the State Department on Jan. 19, the day before President Joe Biden was inaugurated.
The Houthi movement, which is officially called Ansarallah (or Ansar Allah, for “supporters of God”), brags a slogan which reads: “God is great, death to the U.S., death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam.”
Designating the Houthis as terrorists would certainly seem appropriate. That slogan doesn’t exactly elicit a great deal of warmth from the group which brags tens of thousands of anti-American and anti-Semitic members.
“These designations will provide additional tools to confront terrorist activity and terrorism by Ansarallah,” Pompeo stated last month when officially designating the group as one motivated by violent ideology, NBC reported.
Apparently, the Trump administration didn’t come to the conclusion lightly. The Houthis are at war with the Yemeni government, and the situation has created a large-scale humanitarian crisis. Still, the move from the outgoing administration was the right call.
The group for more than a decade has armed thousands of children for combat, bombed cities and has targeted religious minorities while essentially being used as a proxy against Yemen’s government for the Iranians.
But under Biden’s “America is back” leadership, the Houthis will find their terror group designation lifted, Reuters reported. The Biden administration cited Yemen’s humanitarian crisis — which is at least partially being caused by the Houthi movement — along with state actors such as Iran and Saudi Arabia in the embattled region as reason for the policy reversal.
“Our action is due entirely to the humanitarian consequences of this last-minute designation from the prior administration, which the United Nations and humanitarian organizations have since made clear would accelerate the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” a State Department official told Reuters.
Apparently, the Biden administration fears that slapping the terror group with sanctions could worsen the situation for Yemen’s 29 million people. The White House apparently took its cues from the United Nations by lifting the terror destination for the Houthi movement.
The U.N. last month had warned that 80 percent of Yemen’s people are struggling to eat, and called the situation the largest humanitarian crisis on the planet. The blue helmets even warned the Trump administration’s designating terrorists as terrorists would create large-scale famine.
That was despite the Trump administration exempting foreign aid groups from sanctions — meaning the people could eat, while a spade could still be called a spade.
Naturally, those at the U.N. are celebrating the Biden administration’s reversal of the policy. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric praised the administration for lifting the Houthi terror designation.
“We welcome the stated intention by the U.S. administration to revoke the designation as it will provide profound relief to millions of Yemenis who rely on humanitarian assistance and commercial imports to meet their basic survival needs,” Dujarric said, according to Reuters.
Never mind of course all that “Death to America, death to Israel and curse on the Jews” rhetoric. Ansarallah will not face official sanctions for its actions, now that the compassionate Democrats are running the show.
Shooting rockets indiscriminately into civilian neighborhoods and targeting Jews apparently isn’t enough to get people in Yemen on the Biden administration’s naughty list.
That’s the same naughty list which presumably contains the names of millions of Americans who did not vote for Biden in the November election — and certainly those who traveled to Washington on Jan. 6 to make their voices heard, whether they partook in violent actions or not.
