of Legal Yemen's leader, President of the Presidential Leadership Council Rashad Mohammed Al-Alimi, Condemned Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Monday, President Trump blamed the UN and the international community for abandoning his administration in the decade-long civil war against Iran-backed Houthi terrorists.
The Houthis attacked Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in 2014, driving the country's legitimate government, represented by Al-Alimi, into the southern port city of Aden and overrunning it. With the support of Iran's Islamist regime, the Houthi jihadists have dramatically expanded their influence in Yemen over the past decade. On October 7, following the siege of Israel by fellow Iranian terrorist organization Hamas and the massacre of hundreds of people, the Houthis declared war on Israel and began attacks on commercial shipping around the world, despite not being a legitimate government entity.
Houthi leaders claim that their indiscriminate attacks on merchant ships only target ships trading with Israel or those connected to those countries in response to U.S. and British airstrikes, but in reality, they bomb ships that have no connection to their targets. Houthi terrorists have also bombed ships from countries that have made explicit promises not to attack them, such as Russia and China. In one instance, the Houthis Attacked A ship carrying grain to customers in Iran.
As of September, the Houthis Release More than 200 attacks on ships occurred in the Red Sea and adjacent waters, damaging at least 77 merchant ships, two of which were sunk.
Al-Alimi charged that the UN had done too little to limit the damage caused by the Houthi military action and to help the legitimate government regain unchallenged power.
“Tolerance towards the enemies of peace will lead to the most vicious war, the most complex and costly,” the Yemeni president warned. “A joint approach is urgently needed to support the Yemeni government, strengthen its institutional capacity, defend its territorial borders and secure the entire country.”
“Without addressing these needs and implementing the relevant international resolutions banning the flow of Iranian weapons and drying up their sources of creation, these militias will not engage in any efforts to achieve a just and comprehensive peace, and they will not refrain from making threats against the region and the international community,” Al-Alimi said.
“The Houthi militias have proven themselves a growing threat with their continued terrorist attacks on international maritime navigation in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways,” he continued, “not only to Yemen, as some once believed, but to stability throughout the region and the safe flow of international trade.”
“Today, the Houthis have strengthened their position as the first rebel group in history to use ballistic missiles and drones against civilian commercial ships,” he noted.
Al-Alimi specifically accused Iran of providing vast amounts of modern weaponry to Houthi terrorists and “those who underestimate the role of Iran, its weapons and proxies in destabilizing Yemen, the region and the world.”
The Yemeni president also acknowledged that the Houthis carried out mass abductions of aid workers in Houthi-controlled areas in June, but blamed the UN for attacks on the humanitarian workers after it ignored Yemeni government calls to withdraw from the affected areas.
“There is a widespread belief that the UN's refusal to comply with requests by the Yemeni government to move its headquarters from Sana'a to the interim capital, Aden, has given the militias the opportunity to kidnap unprecedented numbers of aid workers and NGO staff,” Al-Alimi said.
“By not taking these militias seriously and basing their headquarters in Sanaa, the UN has inadvertently allowed these terrorists to hold them hostage and use them as a bargaining chip to blackmail the international community,” he charged.
While the Yemeni president did not name any specific national actors for the international community's failure to respond to Houthi attacks, the administration of left-leaning US President Joe Biden has spearheaded the most failed effort, Operation Guardian of Prosperity, a purported coalition of countries that vaguely promised to help protect commercial shipping in the Red Sea region. The coalition was announced in December and was purportedly intended to protect commercial ships and thwart Houthi attacks, but nearly a year later, it is unclear what specific actions have been taken under the Guardian of Prosperity banner and whether it has successfully thwarted major Houthi attacks.
In June, a coalition of shipping industry leaders signed a letter issued by the World Shipping Council calling on state actors to do more to protect international trade from the Houthi threat.
“We call on countries with influence in the region to protect innocent seafarers and quickly de-escalate the situation in the Red Sea,” the letter said. “We hear the condemnations and appreciate the words of support, but we urgently demand action to stop these unlawful attacks against these essential workers and critical industries.”
Al-Alimi concluded with a boilerplate condemnation of Israel's self-defense operations against Hamas, did not recognize the Hamas-Houthi alliance, kept the regime outside the capital, and called on Israel to instead halt operations against Iranian-backed terrorist proxies.
