Pompeo, as a favor to Saudi Arabia and Israel, is committing a crime against humanity in Yemen

A Yemeni boy walks past the rubble of homes destroyed by Saudi airstrikes. (Photo: AFP / Mohammed Huwais)

The Trump administration is about to commit an enormous crime against humanity in Yemen, one that could help trigger what the U.N. secretary-general calls “the worst famine the world has seen for decades.”

Mike Pompeo, the U.S Secretary of State, will declare that the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen is a “terrorist group” (according to a report in the New York Times). The Houthis, who control a large part of their nation, are no threat whatsoever to the United States or to American citizens. Pompeo is making the declaration because the Houthis are backed by Iran, and Trump’s allies in Saudi Arabia and Israel want this declaration as part of their aggressive campaign against Iran.

Pompeo’s declaration will have no impact on the Houthis themselves. It will, however, as the New York Times explains, “chill humanitarian efforts to donate food and medicine to Houthi-controlled areas in northern and western Yemen, where a majority of the country’s 30 million people live.” Relief groups will hesitate to keep working in those areas, “for fear the aid will be seized by rebels and used for profit that could be traced back to aid organizations.”

The U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, noted that Yemen is already deeply in crisis, and he requested that “everyone avoids taking any action that could make the already dire situation even worse.”

The Washington Post just published a valuable report from Raydah, Yemen, with first-hand testimony of the suffering. Abdullah Saleh Altam, a hospital manager, said:

In October, six or seven children died because their families couldn’t afford taking them to the hospital. All were under the age of 5. Recently, we were forced to turn away parents whose children needed the food when we ran out of supplies.

The New York Times notes that the U.S. has supported Saudi Arabia and its allies in the war against the Houthis,

providing intelligence and billions of dollars in weapons over the objections of Congress, despite indiscriminate bombings that have killed civilians and other military atrocities that could amount to war crimes.

Again, the Houthi movement in Yemen has not threatened the United States or our citizens in any way. So why the “terrorist” designation? Most obviously, the Trump family’s great friend, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed, wanted it. (The mainstream media won’t say this openly, but the ties between the Trump family and the Crown Prince are quite possibly lubricated by large sums of Saudi money, used to prop up, for instance, Jared Kushner’s tottering real estate holdings.)

Israel is also surely delighted over the Houthi terrorist designation, although the mainstream media left out this part of the story. So far, there’s no official Israeli statement, but the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington think tank, is a front for Israel, and an FDD staffer took immediately to Twitter last night to offer a tortured justification for Pompeo’s inhuman move.

Israel (and Saudi Arabia) oppose the Houthis because the rebel movement is backed by Iran, which they regard as their regional enemy. (The experts question the true extent and value of Iranian support, and argue the Houthis don’t actually need it.) Both nations have tried to goad Iran into a conflict with the U.S., but Trump’s time in power runs out in 9 days.

Even so, Pompeo has left an improvised explosive device behind for the Biden administration: either reverse the designation, and be smeared as “pro-terrorist” by the Israel lobby and others, or leave it in effect — in a nation where already “nearly half of all children suffer stunted growth because of malnutrition.”

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