Wrecking Yemen with a Terror Designation
Trump’s redesignation decision is the latest in a long line of despicable, cruel U.S. actions that will cause needless suffering and death in Yemen.
The Wall Street Journal reminds us that Iran hawks lie about everything even when they don’t have to:
The Trump Administration this week re-designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, and the honor was too well-earned. This reverses the error of Joe Biden, who took the Iran-backed Yemeni militia off the terror list in February 2021. The idea was to accommodate Iranian power as part of a strategy to get a new nuclear deal with Tehran, and we know how well that went.
Removing the Houthis from the foreign terrorist organization (FTO) list was one of the few things that the Biden administration got right in the Middle East, and it wasn’t done as a gesture to Iran. As U.S. officials said at the time, the reason for removing the group was to avoid exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and crippling Yemen’s economy. It was a rare instance where common sense and decency prevailed in our foreign policy, so naturally it was one of the first things Trump had to change once he was in office.
Humanitarian aid organizations and other civil society groups raised the alarm about Trump’s original designation because of the disastrous consequences it would have for the people of Yemen, and many issued the same warnings again last month when Trump began the process of putting the group back on the list. Adding the group to the list is a decision to drive the population towards famine. Trump’s destruction of USAID is contributing to starvation and death in so many places, including in Yemen, that it has overshadowed this awful decision. When politicians endorse the designation, they are endorsing a policy that will starve and kill innocent people.