(Fox News) A senator has slammed the Biden administration’s offer to reverse the Houthis’ designation as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) group in exchange for guaranteeing an end to attacks against Red Sea shipping vessels.
“The Houthi terrorists and their Iranian benefactors have tried to shut down global trade in the Red Sea with deadly consequences,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote in a post on social media platform X. “Appeasing and rewarding such behavior would be a new low for the Biden foreign policy team.”
During a dial-in press briefing on Wednesday night, U.S. Special Envoy to Yemen Timothy Lenderking told reporters that his hope as envoy “is that we can find diplomatic off-ramps to find ways to de-escalate and allow us to pull back eventually the designation and, of course, to end the military strikes on Houthis’ military capability.”
“We know that there is no military solution, and in that commitment, we are joined by all members of the P5 — Russia, China, France, the U.K. — united in this goal, and I think that’s very helpful for listeners to know that there’s a strong consensus in the international community and among key players to support the peace effort going forward,” Lenderking said.
In response to a follow-up question, Lenderking said, “We would certainly study that but not assume it’s an automatic thing.”
U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking speaks during a conference on Yemen’s war hosted by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council in the Saudi capital Riyadh on March 30, 2022.
A top Air Force commander for the Middle East on Wednesday also suggested the Houthis may be running through their supply of drone swarms and anti-ship ballistic missiles as the pace of attacks has slowed, The Associated Press reported.
The State Department told Fox News Digital that the SDGT designation is the “appropriate tool at the moment to pressure the Houthis.”
“The U.S. government seeks to maximize its deterrent impact on the Houthis while mitigating impact on vulnerable Yemeni civilians to the greatest extent possible,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. “We have taken this action in order to deny Ansarallah (the Houthis) the resources necessary to facilitate its terrorist activity, including its missile and drone attacks against international shipping.”
