UAE urges US to reinstate Houthi's terrorist designation after attack on Abu Dhabi

In a phone call with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed on Monday, Jan 17 appealed to the Biden administration to re-designate the Iran-backed Houthi rebel faction in Yemen as a ‘terrorist organization’.

President Joe Biden had removed the Yemini based Houthi rebels from the Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist lists overturning the former US President Donald Trump's administration’s decision.

Houthis control nearly 80% of Yemen's territory and Biden’s announcement had come just 24 hours into his administration, earlier last year, had ended American support for Saudi-led offensive operations against the Houthis in Yemen, and frozen arms sales to Kingdom.

Over a phone call on Monday, the UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed and US Secretary Blinken held a discussion regarding the "idea of re-designation of the Houthis based on their current actions," a senior Emirati official told Axios. "The latest attack on civilian targets in Abu Dhabi, and the hijacking of a UAE-flagged ship, fall squarely in that category," he quoted Bin Zayed, on condition of anonymity.

Ansarallah’s [Houthi] leaders sanctioned by Trump administration

At the time when the Biden administration had delisted Houthis as “foreign terrorist organization” and “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” the US State Department had announced: “We are committed to helping Saudi Arabia defend its territory against further such attacks.”

It further added, "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."

Biden administration cited the United Nations and aid groups' concerns about the humanitarian crisis getting worse war-torn in Yemen as the reason for formally delisting the rebel Houthis. 

On Monday, as the Houthis unleashed an attack on the UAE that killed two Indians and a Pakistani foreign national, UAE asked Washington to declare the Houthis also referred to as ‘Ansarallah’ faction a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under its Immigration and Nationality Act.

The Iran-backed militia Ansarallah’s leaders Abdul Malik al-Houthi, Abd al-Khaliq Badr al-Din al-Houthi, and Abdullah Yahya al-Hakim were sanctioned by the former Trump administration for acts that “threatened the peace, security, or stability of Yemen".

The Houthis were designated as an international terrorist body after they carried out attacks on the commercial shipping in the Red Sea and several UAV and missile attacks into Saudi Arabia.

"United States will also continue to support the implementation of UN sanctions imposed on members of Ansarallah and will continue to call attention to the group’s destabilizing activity and pressure the group to change its behaviour," the US State Department had announced.

Biden administration, in a shift to its Mideast foreign policies, withdrew troops from the Saudi Arabia-led coalition that intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015. This came just one year after the rebellious northern-based Houthi faction ousted President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour and drove him out of Yemen's capital Sanaa.

The Trump administration, contrary to the Biden administration, had frozen the US-related assets of the Houthi and had banned any American trade or commerce with the then terrorist organization as the ban had gone into effect on January 19, just a day prior to the end to Trump's presidency.

Since then, the Houthis have escalated their attacks against Saudi Arabia, and UAE targeting the civilian areas and key oil facilities.