Houthis.
Since Hamas's October 7 raid on Israel, the world's most reputable armed group, besides Hamas, is Yemen's Houthis, and recently stated that any ship heading for Israel would be a "legitimate target" for the group's armed forces if food and medicine could not enter the Gaza Strip.
The Houthis have done what they say, and in addition to firing missiles at Israel from time to time, they have also launched all-out attacks on commercial vessels passing through the Red Sea: on December 3, 2023, a U.S. destroyer and three commercial vessels on a mission in the Red Sea were attacked by drones and ballistic missiles in the Red Sea.
Continued missile and drone attacks have led to a crisis in the route to the Suez Canal through the Red Sea, forcing shipping companies to make a detour to the Cape of Good Hope, while the United States has announced the formation of a multinational joint fleet to escort ships in the Red Sea to ensure safe navigation.
After watching these news, people inevitably wonder in their hearts, where is this Houthi and why is it so good!?
The Houthis are an Islamic Shiite armed group in Yemen, who expelled the ** army to the south during the Yemeni civil war, and controlled the Yemeni capital Sana'a and large areas in the north, including Al Jawf, Marib, Hodeidah and other places, accounting for about one-third of Yemen's land area.
Yemen is an extremely impoverished Arab country with a population of more than 30 million, about one-third of whom are Shiites, and is currently under the control of four different political forces: the south, controlled by the former army, divided into two factions, one backed by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United Arab Emirates, while the Houthis control most of the northern region and remote mountainous areas in the hands of al-Qaeda. In other words, even at the extreme, the total population of the Houthi-controlled areas is only more than 10 million, and even with the support of Iran, the strength is not strong.
The official name of the Houthis is Allah devout, and the slogan is: "Allah is great, down with America, down with Israel, cursed the Jews, victory for Islam!."
Let's see, the Houthis are of average strength, but they are resolutely anti-American, and behind them is Iran, the sworn enemy of the United States, and the United States has sufficient reasons and capabilities to solve it, but the paradox is that even if the Houthis make such a big move and cause such a big trouble, the United States will only form a joint fleet to escort it, and it has no intention of directly attacking it militarily.
What's even more bizarre is that as early as January 10, 2021, Trump** issued a statement listing the Houthis as a terrorist organization. But just a month later, on February 16, as soon as the new Biden took office, he couldn't wait to announce the removal of the Houthis from the list of terrorist organizations.
If an organization is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States**, it will be punished as follows:1, members and supporters of the organization will be barred from entering the United States;2. U.S. persons or any person under the jurisdiction of the United States shall not provide financial or other material assistance to designated foreign terrorist organizations;3. U.S. financial institutions must freeze the funds of designated foreign terrorist organizations and their individuals, and report to the Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Treasury Department.
Obviously, point 1 is meaningless, and the purpose of Biden's de-terrorism designation is point 2 and 3, which is to ensure that there will be no problems with the funding of the Houthis and that they will be maintained.
The question is, why did Biden open up to the Houthis, an organization that openly claims to bring down itself?The reason has to be found from a geopolitical point of view.
At present, the Islamic civilization has not yet formed a central country, and there are two countries in the Middle East that have ambition and strength to become central countries: Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran has taken a big step and has made every effort to create a "Shiite arc", that is, a political camp formed by countries and forces with Iran as the center, Shiites in power or important in political life, starting from Tehran (Iran), passing through Basra-Baghdad (Iraq), to Damascus (Syria) to Beirut (Lebanon), the above countries are geographically connected.
But two innate factors determine that Iran is unlikely to become the center of Islamic civilization: 1. Iran's Shiites are a minority in the Islamic world, accounting for less than 15% of the population;2. Iranians are Persians, and other countries in the Middle East are Arabs. Therefore, after Biden took office, his attitude towards Iran was somewhat ambiguous, and the unfreezing of $6 billion earlier this year is a typical example, and the purpose behind it is naturally to balance Saudi Arabia through Iran.
Saudi Arabia is a Sunni, 85% of the adherents of Islam, belongs to the absolute majority, and Saudi Arabia is the leader of the Gulf Cooperation Council (the GCC was founded in 1981, headquartered in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, and its member states include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain), and the area under its control or influence is far from being comparable to Iran's population, resources, and funds.
In addition, in recent years, Saudi Arabia's foreign policy has turned significantly, and this year, even under the mediation of our country, negotiations on the normalization of relations with Iran have been launched, and Riyadh funds have also poured into Hong Kong, and at the same time, Saudi Arabia and Russia have always maintained relatively good diplomatic and economic relations, all of which naturally make Biden feel a little unhappy.
The Houthis are considered to be the periphery of Iran's Shiite arc, but they control a strategically important area, with full control of the Indian Ocean's access to the Red Sea and borders Saudi territory. For Saudi Arabia, it is like a man's back and a fish in the throat, but the coalition army it has formed is very collapsed, and it has a full set of advanced American equipment, but it can't be defeated, so it can only be helpless.
If the Houthis can continue to grow, they can use it to beat and pinch Saudi Arabia, an ally that is no longer very obedient and has its own ideas, so why not?