by FRANCES MARTEL
President Joe Biden told reporters this weekend his administration’s decision to remove the Yemeni Houthi terrorist group from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) was “irrelevant.”
On the same day – Friday – Biden responded to a question asking if he thought the Houthis meet the definition of a terrorist organization, “I think they are.”
Biden dismissed the State Department’s terrorism designations in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he was touring local businesses shortly after the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) announced a flurry of targeted airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
On Jan. 11 at 2:30 a.m. (Sanaa time), U.S. Central Command forces, in coordination with the United Kingdom, and support from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Bahrain conducted joint strikes on Houthi targets to degrade their capability to continue their illegal and… pic.twitter.com/bR8biMolSx
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) January 12, 2024
The Houthis have dramatically disrupted global trade after declaring war on Israel in October and executing that declaration by launching attacks on commercial ships transiting through the Red Sea. Houthi leaders have claimed that they are only targeting Israeli ships or ships traveling to and from Israel but, in reality, their drone and missile attacks have targeted seemingly random commercial ships.
Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have resulted in a 90-percent drop year-on-year in container ship traffic through the Red Sea and Suez Canal between January 2023 and 2024 and a massive diversion of ship traffic to Africa, where the ships will transit around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. As of Friday, the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) documented an increase of over 300 percent in the cost of shipping per container.
The Houthis launched an overthrow of the legitimate Yemeni government in 2014 that prompted the ongoing civil war in the country. Formally known as Ansarullah, the Houthis are a Shiite terrorist organization with close links to Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. Their official slogan is “Allahu Akbar, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
Biden’s initial response to the Houthi campaign against global shipping in the region was to create “Operation Prosperity Guardian,” a dubious coalition of mostly Western militaries meant to assure commercial shipping companies that transiting in the region would remain safe. “Operation Prosperity Guardian” lacks support from some of the region’s most influential countries – notably including Israel itself and Saudi Arabia, which has faced targeted attacks from the Houthis for years – and inspired some allies, such as India, to increase its naval presence in the Red Sea but reject membership in the Biden-led initiative.
Not good. https://t.co/zqapy5crkR
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 15, 2024
On Friday, CENTCOM announced an escalation, along with the British armed forces, to airstrikes against Houthi military targets within Yemen. The strikes figured prominently in questions by reporters during Biden’s Pennsylvania tour. One reporter asked Biden whether he believed the Houthis fit the definition of a terrorist group or not, to which Biden answered in the affirmative. As a follow-up, another reporter asked, “how soon are you [Biden] willing to designate them as such?”
“It’s irrelevant whether they’re designated,” Biden responded, according to a transcript published by the White House. “We’ve put together a group of nations that are going to say that if they continue to act and behave as they do, we’ll respond.”
Biden appeared to be referring to Operation Prosperity Guardian.
The president’s declaration of the State Department’s FTO list as “irrelevant” ran afoul of comments by his National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby, who told reporters on the same day that the administration believed the FTO list was relevant enough to “review” the absence of the Houthis on that list.
“We are reviewing the FTO — Foreign Terrorist Organization — finding on the Houthis. As you know, we — we delisted them,” Kirby conceded, “And we have announced that we’re reviewing that — that decision right now. No decisions have been made yet.”
Kirby told reporters that, despite the removal of the Houthis from the list, “in this administration alone, we’ve issued some 500 sanctions again- — I mean, against 500 entities, 50 sanction regimes,” presumably against both the Houthis and their patron state, Iran.
It’s not irrelevant, you stupid dumbass. When they are designated terrorists, we can block funds going to them and sanction them. Lord knows what possible benefit to the nation and world Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden sees in kissing terrorists’ asses; maybe he does it simply because he likes the taste.
biden is out of his league. Former SEC DEF Gates said biden throughout his entire political career has been in the wrong side when it came to foreign relations. That is because biden is not smart. He finished in the lower 1/3 of his law class. He is indeed an idiot.
Those Houthis just successfully attacked a USA flagged cargo ship.
This time, only damage.
Next time they might sink one.
But, hey, they’re not “terrorists.”
Well, Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden is already winding down for the weekend.
What dose Blunder Breeches think about the Tea Party or NRA?
What ever he is told to think.
They say the NRA has blood on its hands, we see highly questionable psychiatry and drugged kids.