THREAD: As chatter around a U.S. designation of the Huthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation grows, I'm re-upping this @CrisisGroup commentary from October.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/united-states/yemen-should-be-factor-us-yemen-policy

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We received a lot of pushback after publishing from ppl who see a designation as building needed leverage with the Huthis. As we wrote, the lack of leverage w/the huthis is a source of deep frustration in Washington, Riyadh, and within the ranks of the Yemeni government.
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But the concerns we raise remain valid. The material support provisions of an FTO designation would make trade with Yemen -- any part of Yemen -- a legal nightmare for major international firms. This would not, as some suggest, be like the Hezbollah FTO designation.
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The Huthis control Yemen's main population centres (circa 70%) and tax everything that enters their areas, be it food shipped into Hodeida or trucked into the north via Aden, or currency transfers to banks in Sanaa. That makes pretty much everything fair game under FTO.
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If you're an international bank, or shipping firm, or insurance firm, you'll have a choice: make a small return on doing business in Yemen and risk being sanctioned/fined in the US -- or de-risk and get out of the Yemen game. It's not hard to guess what firms will do.
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And again, this will be the whole of Yemen, not just Hodeida/Sanaa. Eventually, yes, things will get sorted out in some parts of the country. People will find workarounds. But can Yemen afford the short-term impact of a near-halt to imports and forex inflows? Nope.
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The humanitarian collateral damage could be huge. And that's before considering the political/diplomatic -- and reputational -- fallout of a designation, which could push the Huthis further into Iran's arms and further constrain diplomacy.

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The U.S. really needs to rethink this one -- unless the Trump admin want its legacy to be of tipping Yemen into famine and the Huthis into closer alignment with Iran.

Others will disagree and say I'm being naive. If the U.S. designates, I sincerely hope they're right.

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