WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday re-designated Yemen’s Houthi movement, known formally as Ansar Allah, as a “foreign terrorist organization,” the White House said.
The move will impose harsher economic penalties than the Biden administration had applied to the Iran-aligned group in response to its attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and against US warships defending the critical maritime chokepoint.
Proponents of the move say it is overdue, though some experts say it could have implications for anyone seen as aiding the Houthis, including some aid organizations.
“The Houthis’ activities threaten the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the safety of our closest regional partners, and the stability of global maritime trade,” the White House said in a statement.
The Houthis, who control most of Yemen, have carried out more than 100 attacks on ships plying the Red Sea since November 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. They have sunk two vessels, seized another and killed at least four seafarers.
The attacks have disrupted global shipping, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa for more than a year.
The group has targeted the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, which are joined by the narrow Bab Al-Mandab strait, a chokepoint between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
Under the Biden administration, the US military sought to intercept Houthi attacks to safeguard commercial traffic and waged periodic strikes to degrade Houthi military capabilities. But it did not target the group’s leadership.
At the start of his presidential term in 2021, Joe Biden had dropped Trump’s terrorist designations to address humanitarian concerns inside Yemen. Confronted with the Red Sea attacks, Biden last year designated the group as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” organization. But his administration held off on applying the harsher FTO designation.
British charity Oxfam said the move would worsen the suffering of Yemeni civilians, disrupting vital imports of food, medicine, and fuel.
“The Trump administration is aware of these consequences but chose to move forward anyway, and will bear responsibility for the hunger and disease that will follow,” Oxfam America’s director of peace and security, Scott Paul, said in a statement.
David Schenker, who was assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in the first Trump administration, said Trump’s move on Wednesday was an obvious, early step to respond to what he described as one of Iran’s leading proxy forces in the Middle East.
“While the redesignation likely won’t have a positive impact on the group’s behavior, the measure suggests the new administration is not looking to induce (or cajole) the Iranians to negotiations through blandishment,” Schenker told Reuters.
The Trump administration said the US will work with regional partners to eliminate Houthi capabilities, deprive it of resources “and thereby end its attacks on US personnel and civilians, US partners, and maritime shipping in the Red Sea.”
The designation will also trigger a broad review of UN partners, non-governmental organizations and contractors operating in Yemen, the White House said.
“The President will direct USAID to end its relationship with entities that have made payments to the Houthis, or which have opposed international efforts to counter the Houthis while turning a blind eye toward the Houthis’ terrorism and abuses,” the White House said.
The Houthis in recent days have signaled they were scaling back attacks in the Red Sea following a multi-phase cease fire deal between Israel and Hamas. Earlier on Wednesday, the group released the crew of the Galaxy Leader commercial ship more than a year after they seized their Bahamas-flagged vessel off the Yemeni coast.
Trump designates Yemen’s Houthis as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’
https://arab.news/yrfva
Trump designates Yemen’s Houthis as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’
- The Houthis’ activities threaten the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the White House says
NGOs fear ‘catastrophic impact’ of new Israel registration rules
- NGOs working in Israel and occupied Palestinian territories have until December 31 to register under the new framework
- Save the Children is among the charities already barred under the new rules
PARIS: New rules in Israel for registering non-governmental organizations, under which more than a dozen groups have already been rejected, could have a catastrophic impact on aid work in Gaza and the West Bank, relief workers warn.
The NGOs have until December 31 to register under the new framework, which Israel says aims not to impede aid distribution but to prevent “hostile actors or supporters of terrorism” operating in the Palestinian territories.
The controversy comes with Gaza, which lacks running water and electricity, still battling a humanitarian crisis even after the US-brokered October ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism told AFP that, as of November 2025, approximately 100 registration requests had been submitted and “only 14 organization requests have been rejected... The remainder have been approved or are currently under review.”
Requests are rejected for “organizations involved in terrorism, antisemitism, delegitimization of Israel, Holocaust denial, denial of the crimes of October 7,” it said.
‘Very problematic’
The amount of aid entering Gaza remains inadequate. While the October 10 ceasefire agreement stipulated the entry of 600 trucks per day, only 100 to 300 are carrying humanitarian aid, according to NGOs and the United Nations.
The NGOs barred under the new rules include Save the Children, one of the best known and oldest in Gaza, where it helps 120,000 children, and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
They are being given 60 days to withdraw all their international staff from the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and Israel, and will no longer be able to send humanitarian supplies across the border to Gaza.
In Gaza, Save the Children’s local staff and partners “remain committed to providing crucial services for children,” such as psychosocial support and education, a spokeswoman told AFP.
The forum that brings together UN agencies and NGOs working in the area on Thursday issued a statement urging Israel to “lift all impediments,” including the new registration process, that “risk the collapse of the humanitarian response.”
The Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (HCT) warned that dozens of NGOs face deregistration and that, while some had been registered, “these NGOs represent only a fraction of the response in Gaza and are nowhere near the number required just to meet immediate and basic needs.”
“The deregistration of NGOs in Gaza will have a catastrophic impact on access to essential and basic services,” it said.
NGOs contacted by AFP, several of whom declined to be quoted on the record due to the sensitivity of the issue, say they complied with most of Israel’s requirements to provide a complete dossier.
Some, however, refused to cross what they described as a “red line” of providing information about their Palestinian staff.
“After speaking about genocide, denouncing the conditions under which the war was being waged and the restrictions imposed on the entry of aid, we tick all the boxes” to fail the registration, predicted the head of one NGO.
“Once again, bureaucratic pressure is being used for political control, with catastrophic consequences,” said the relief worker.
Rights groups and NGOs including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused Israel of carrying out a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a term vehemently rejected by the Israeli government.
“If NGOs are considered to be harmful for passing on testimonies from populations, carrying out operational work and saying what is happening and this leads to a ban on working, then this is very problematic,” said Jean-Francois Corty, president of French NGO Medecins du Monde.
‘Every little criticism’
The most contentious requirement for the NGOs is to prove they do not work for the “delegitimization” of Israel, a term that appears related to calling into question Israel’s right to exist but which aid workers say is dangerously vague.
“Israel sees every little criticism as a reason to deny their registration... We don’t even know what delegitimization actually means,” said Yotam Ben-Hillel, an Israeli lawyer who is assisting several NGOs with the process and has filed legal appeals.
He said the applications of some NGOs had already been turned down on these grounds.
“So every organization that operates in Gaza and the West Bank and sees what happens and reports on that could be declared as illegal now, because they just report on what they see,” he told AFP.
With the December 31 deadline looming, concerns focus on what will happen in early 2026 if the NGOs that are selected lack the capacity and expertise of organizations with a long-standing presence.
Several humanitarian actors told AFP they had “never heard of” some of the accredited NGOs, which currently have no presence in Gaza but were reportedly included in Trump’s plan for Gaza.
“The United States is starting from scratch, and with the new registration procedure, some NGOs will leave,” said a European diplomatic source in the region, asking not to be named. “They might wake up on January 1 and realize there is no-one to replace them.”
