US considers designating Houthis a terrorist organization

The US issued new sanctions against Houthi officials for human rights abuses and the Trump administration continued its deliberations on whether to designate the militants as a terrorist group

Yemen’s Houthi militia behaves like a terrorist organization and is deepening its relationship with Iran’s elite military units, a senior US official said

Timothy Lenderking, deputy assistant secretary of state for Arabian Gulf affairs, said he could not comment on internal deliberations about a possible designation, but added: “The Houthis do things that are akin to the behavior of a terrorist organization

Speaking at a press briefing for regional media, Lenderking listed the Houthi actions that the US sees as most terrorist in nature and warned that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was increasingly helping fund and train the militants

“They target civilians and civilian infrastructure, they use kidnapping as a tool of war and, if anything, they seem to be deepening their relationship with the IRGC, which from our point of view is a designated terrorist organization,” he said

Iran is the only nation to officially recognize and appoint a diplomatic representation to the Houthis Earlier this week, the U.S 

Treasury Department sanctioned Hasan Irlu, Iran’s envoy to the Houthis, saying that as an official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), he had supported efforts to provide the Houthis with advanced weapons and training 

Irlu also coordinated with senior IRGC-QF leaders to support Houthi operations throughout the Arabian peninsula, and provided training to Hizballah members in Iran, the Treasury said

The U.N.-recognized Yemeni government said last month in a statement posted to social media that countries are not to deal with Houthi-appointed diplomats, and that judicial authorities had begun the process of seeking international warrants for their arrests

The militia sparked the Yemen conflict in 2014 when it seized the capital Sanaa from the internationally recognized government and now controls much of northwest Yemen