Trump Reverses Biden Policy—Re-designates Houthis as Foreign Terrorist Organization
Egypt’s Foreign Minister revealed last year that Egypt had lost over 60% of its Suez Canal revenues—nearly $7 billion—because of the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping.

Jan 23, 2025
WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) On Wednesday, the White House released an announcement that President Donald Trump had signed an executive order re-designating the Houthis in Yemen as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO.)
The move represents yet one more aspect of how the Trump administration is adopting a much tougher posture toward Iran and the groups it supports than the Biden administration, which took office on Jan. 20, 2021 and had, as a major plank of its Middle East policy, the effort to restore the Obama era nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump had left in 2018.
Nothing came of that effort, of course, and two years later, President Joe Biden declared that it was “dead.”
Read More: Joe Biden: Iranian nuclear deal is “dead”
But the Biden administration never fully corrected the misunderstandings behind that policy, nor all the measures that followed from those misunderstandings. And Trump is now doing just that.
Trump’s Executive Order on the Houthis
“President Trump designated the Iranian-backed Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in January 2021,” the White House announcement of the executive order explained. “Within one month of taking office,” it continued, “the Biden administration reversed the Houthis’ designation.”
The White House then described the consequences of the Biden administration’s “weak policy” toward the Houthis: they (and their Iranian backers) were emboldened to fire at vessels of the U.S. Navy “dozens of times,” while they “launched numerous attacks on civilian infrastructure in partner nations, and attacked commercial vessels transiting Bab el-Mandeb more than 100 times.”
Huge Egyptian Losses Because of Houthi Attacks
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which lies between Yemen and Djibouti, provides access to the Suez Canal. Together, the Strait and the Canal, allow ships to transit directly between Europe and Asia. Taking that route saves ships over 5,000 miles, as opposed to going around southern Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
Egypt is a major U.S. ally, aligned with countries like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The Suez Canal is a major source of revenue for Egypt, which, before the Houthis attacks began, earned nearly $9 billion a year from transit fees.
Late last year, Egypt’s Foreign Minister revealed that Egypt had lost over 60% of its Suez Canal revenues—nearly $7 billion—because of the Houthis’ attacks on shipping.
As Trump’s order affirmed, “It is now the policy of the United States to cooperate with its regional partners to eliminate the Houthis’ capabilities and operations, deprive them of resources, and thereby end their attacks on U.S. personnel and civilians, U.S. partners, and maritime shipping in the Red Sea.”
Trump’s executive order was welcomed in a statement released by Rep. Michael McCaul (R, Texas), Chairman Emeritus of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“I called on President Biden to reverse his reckless removal of [the Houthis] FTO designation time and time again,” McCaul’s statement said. “But he instead chose a strategy of appeasement that only emboldened these Iran-backed terrorists as they worked to destabilize the region.”
McCaul’s statement concluded by thanking Trump “for demonstrating the strength needed to deter our adversaries and keep Americans safe.”
Notably, both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s nominee for UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, expressed strongly negative views of Iran in their Senate confirmation hearings, while Trump, himself, has held Iran responsible for Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border assault into Israel, which triggered the wider regional conflict involving Iran, Hizbollah, and the Houthis, as well as Israel and Hamas.
Read More: Trump Nominee as UN Envoy Denounces Iran in Senate Confirmation Hearing