Cruz reintroduces legislation to designate Yemeni Houthis as terrorists

As unrest continues in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with Houthi rebels targeting shipping vessels and allegedly waging a proxy war with the U.S. and Israel on behalf of Iran, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reintroduced a bill designating the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).

The FTO designation granted under the Trump administration was removed by the Biden administration in 2021.

“The Biden administration made a day one politically driven decision to dismantle terrorism sanctions against the Houthis and their leaders,” Cruz said. The administration “knew the decision was unjustified, lied about portions of it on camera to the American people, and deliberately limited access to the full announcement.”

The result “was an obvious and catastrophic mistake from the very beginning, and contributed to enabling the Houthis to relaunch their assault on civilians in Yemen, to launch missiles at Israel and our Gulf allies, and over the last year to consistently attack commercial ships and American servicemembers in the Red Sea,” Cruz said. By contrast, he says he believes President-elect Donald Trump “will reimpose those sanctions as part of restoring maximum pressure on the Iranian regime, and this bill ensures that the decision is backed and locked in by Congressional action.”

Joining Cruz as cosponsors are U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rick Scott of Florida.

In 2014, the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah (Supporters of God in Arabic), overthrew the Yemeni government. A civil war has ensued ever since.

After the Biden administration lifted the FTO, Houthi fighters received more support, including launching anti-ship ballistic missiles, suicide drones, and precision-guided weapons systems capable of reaching Israeli territory, Cruz argues. Redesignating them as a FTO “would trigger far more effective sanctions that target third parties supplying the Houthis.”

Since the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel in October 2023, Houthi fighters targeted more than 90 merchant vessels with missiles and drones in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the Associated Press reported.

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. Houthis, Shiite Muslims like the leaders of Iran, have also warred with their Saudi Sunni neighbors.

After the Houthis launched multiple attacks against Israel, Israel retaliated by launching targeted airstrikes in Yemen. The only way for rebels from a poor country to launch such an attack is to receive funds from Iran and other enemies of the US and Israel, critics argue. The U.S. military has also been targeting Houthi military facilities and weapons systems.

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.