Donald Trump signed an executive order to reclassify Yemen's Houthi rebels as a “foreign terrorist organization”the White House announced on Wednesday.
Former Democratic President Joe Biden removed this qualification shortly after his election in 2020 and then, a year ago, classified the Houthis as an entity “specially designated as a terrorist at the global level”a slightly less severe category justified at the time by the desire to maintain the flow of humanitarian aid to this country at war.
The activities of the Houthis, an Iranian-backed group, “threaten the security of American civilians and military personnel in the Middle East, the security of our closest regional partners, and the stability of international maritime commerce”according to this decree.
-Since November 2023, these rebels, who control large swathes of the territory and the capital Sanaa, have carried out attacks off the coast of Yemen against ships they consider linked to Israel, but also the United States and the United Kingdom. They say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians in the context of the war in the Gaza Strip.
The attacks disrupted traffic in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a key maritime zone for global trade, prompting the United States to establish a multinational naval coalition and strike rebel targets in Yemen, sometimes with aid from the United Kingdom. At the end of December, the American army targeted several Houthi military targets, notably in Sanaa.
