The United States’ decision to redesignate the Houthis as terrorists may prevent a peace plan for Yemen that was negotiated with Saudi Arabia from being implemented, as a U.S. terrorist designation would bring sanctions that could impede the implementation of Saudi Arabia’s agreement with the Shia organization.
“For nine years, Yemen was torn by a war that erupted when the Houthis, a Yemeni militia supported by Iran, ousted the government and took control of the country’s northwest.
Alarmed by an Iran-linked group taking control across the border, Saudi Arabia assembled a military coalition and launched a bombing campaign, backed by American weapons and support, in an attempt to reinstate the government. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people died from fighting, starvation and disease, and the coalition pulled back under international pressure, leaving the Houthis in power.
When 2023 dawned, it looked as if the Houthis and the Yemeni factions they had been fighting were finally ready to sign a peace deal. But then the war in Gaza began, and now the prospect of peace is unraveling.
The Houthis launched a series of attacks on ships in the Red Sea, a U.S.-led military coalition began pounding Yemen with airstrikes — including an intensive barrage on Sunday — and a U.S. decision to designate the Houthis a terrorist group temporarily blocked a crucial element of the peace process.
Anti-Houthi groups in Yemen saw an opening to claw back territory, and began calling for international support to reignite their fight. All of that has spoiled hopes that many diplomats had for the United Nations-backed peace deal, which had looked imminent for much of last year.
‘The escalation in the Red Sea has resulted in the direct suspension of a deal that was anticipated to be announced in recent months’, said Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst at the International Crisis Group, a think tank. ‘The U.N.-led political discussions are presently at a standstill’.
Yemen, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is the poorest country in the Middle East. The conflict there began in 2014, when Houthi fighters swept into the capital, Sana, and took over state institutions. The years of war that followed pushed the country into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and left the Houthis entrenched in power in northern Yemen, where they have created an impoverished quasi-state that they rule with an iron fist.
Over the past two years, the fighting had largely quieted.
Saudi Arabia, which borders Yemen to the north, began direct talks with the Houthis in an effort to extract itself from the war, and diplomatic moves to resolve the conflict intensified.
In late December, the United Nations special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, announced that the rival parties had taken a significant step toward ending the war. At the time, the Houthis had already started attacking ships in the Red Sea. But inside the country, a de facto truce had taken hold, and the Houthis had committed to steps that could eventually lead to a lasting peace, Mr. Grundberg said at the time”. -Vivian Nereim, New York Times
As Saudi Arabia looks to exit its neighbor’s civil war after eight long years of what has proven to be an ill-advised military intervention in Yemen, Riyadh’s plan to strike a peace deal with the Houthi rebels has been jeopardized by the ongoing attacks on Israeli-linked commercial vessels in the Red Sea as a direct result of the expanding Israel-Hamas conflict.