If Houthis STOP Red Sea Ship attacks US may consider revoking Terrorist label

“My hope is that we can find diplomatic off-ramps,” Tim Lenderking, President Joe Biden’s special envoy for Yemen, told reporters in an online press briefing on Wednesday 10 April

The comments suggest Washington is once more leaning on diplomacy after a nearly three-month-long campaign of airstrikes against Houthi facilities in Yemen.

Asked by Bloomberg News after the briefing if the US was offering the Houthis a quid pro quo to end their attacks on ships in return for revoking the designation, Lenderking said: “We would certainly study that but not assume it’s an automatic thing.”

In mid-January the US State Department announced that it was naming Ansarallah, who are commonly referred to as the Houthis, as a Specially Designated Terrorist Group. That was just after the US and UK began their joint strikes in response to the attacks on shipping.

The Houthis, an Islamist organization, started targeting ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in mid-November, ostensibly to put pressure on Israel to end its war against Hamas in Gaza. Most Western shipping firms are now avoiding the waterways, which normally account for about 30% of global container traffic. Instead, they’re sending vessels around the southern tip of Africa, a much longer route for ships going between Asia and Europe.

The Yemeni militants say they’re determined to continue their attacks. Last month, they killed three crew members on a commodities carrier and sunk another vessel.

Lenderking said deescalation by the Houthis could help restart United Nations-mediated peace talks in Yemen which have been frozen since Oct. 7. The country’s been mired in a civil war for a decade, though there’s been a fragile truce since 2022.