In mid-January 2024, Biden was asked about the Houthi rebels who have been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea.
A reporter asked President Biden if he was “willing to call the Houthis a terrorist group, sir?”
The president responded, “I think they are.”
The question is, why weren’t they on the list to begin with?
In February 2021, Biden reversed a Trump decision that placed the group on the terrorist list, which prevented them from conducting international banking.
At the time, the Biden administration claimed that keeping them on the list hurt Yemeni civilians and negotiations with the group, which has been at war with Saudi Arabia.
Former Trump Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel said that the group was placed on the list because they wanted to squeeze funding to deter attacks in Saudia Arabia, where US troops are stationed.
“So you shut them down financially and you are able [to] target them as terrorists. And then if they meet the threshold, you’re able to take out their leadership — people who are actually terrorists,” he said.
“When you remove the designation, like the Biden administration did, you allow them access to the global banking system, you allow them to travel freely, you allow them to engage in business with our allies,” he said. “So you allow them to get money, get funded. You allow Iran to pay them, and we don’t have a recourse. Since they’re not a designated terrorist organization, operationally and intelligence-wise, they’re not a priority to take out, they’re not a priority for intelligence collection purposes.”
Well, now the Houthis have upped their attacks since the war broke out in Israel, and recently, the group hit a US-owned commercial ship.
After Joe was asked about what he thought about the group, he was asked, “How soon are you willing to designate them as such?”
Biden called it “irrelevant.”
“It’s irrelevant whether they’re designated. 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.”
REPORTER: “Are you willing to call the Houthis a terrorist group?”
BIDEN: “I think they are.”
(Biden *removed* the terrorist designation on the Houthis in 2021) pic.twitter.com/k3OYkxloYy
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 12, 2024
