The Houthis, Iran's 'Weapon of War' and Iran's IRGC Must Be on US Terrorist List
by Pete Hoekstra • March 21, 2022 at 5:00 am
The Houthis are a dangerous and deadly, terrorist group based in Yemen. Recently, senior Houthi leader Mohammed Ali al-Houthi went on an antisemitic tirade in support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine stating, "It is because its President is Jewish. Any country run by a Jew ends up going to war."
Does the Biden administration find such racist, slanderous statements acceptable? Will the Biden administration refute it? Or will they passively accept such slander the same way they passively accepted the Taliban taking over Afghanistan or Putin invading Ukraine?
The Biden administration would do well to make sure that something comes at a cost. It is this backwards and hateful way of thinking that underpins the atrocities being committed by the Houthis in Yemen every day.
The Houthis need to be put back on the List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations immediately -- instead of the US taking Iran's rapacious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) off it. The IRGC, which just claimed credit for attacking the Kurds in Erbil, will simply, while the world is looking the other way, take over Erbil and the rest of Iraq.
"[S]aying that the world's largest terrorist organization is not a terrorist organization... This is too high a price" for "empty promises from terrorists" on a nuclear deal, according to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
If the US allows Iran to acquire nuclear weapons capability, you can kiss peace in the region goodbye. That will be President Joe Biden's legacy.
America's allies in the Middle East -- Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE -- are raising serious concerns about any new agreement between the U.S. and Iran. They see that embracing Iran comes from a false hope that it will lead to better behavior on the part of its regime and terrorist proxies.
Those statements by one of the Houthis' top officials give us a clear insight into what we can expect from Iran and its proxies. We should take them at their word.
Let us not make the same mistake the U.S. and Europe made by embracing Russia, or the mistake made in Asia by embracing China. We must recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran for the evil it is and redesignate the Houthis, who operate as a weapon of war for the Iranian regime, as the terrorist organization they are. The strategy of hope did not work for Russia or China, and it will not work with Iran.
Too often the West finds itself hoping for and seeing a positive outcome when reality presents something very different. Think about the West's response to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, where we promoted Western values of openness as a replacement for Communism. Consider the vote by Congress in 2000 to grant China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status, a status I voted against when in Congress. Reflect on President Barack Obama negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in 2015. None of these major deals has worked the way the West and the United States had expected or hoped.
