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Mohammed Ali al-Houthi said the group reserves the “ right to respond to any designation ” by the Trump administration.
A leader of the Houthi movement in Yemen said on Monday that the Iran-aligned group reserved the right to respond to any US decision to blacklist it after the Trump administration announced plans to designate it as a terrorist organization foreign.
“The Trump administration’s policies and behavior are terrorist,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi said in a Twitter post. “We reserve the right to respond to any designation issued by the Trump administration or any other administration.”
“The Yemeni people do not care about any designation [US President Donald] The Trump administration as a partner in killing Yemenis and starving them, ”he added.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman also denounced the move, saying the blacklisting of the Houthis, such as the appointment of the chairman of the Iranian-aligned Iraqi Popular Mobilization Committee, Falih al-Fayyadh last week , is “doomed to failure”.
“It is clear that these movements are mainly due to the very undesirable conditions of the United States in West Asia,” Saeed Khatibzadeh said in Tehran.
“It won’t be far when they come to negotiate with these same responsible and indigenous groups in different countries, including Yemen. These movements have no serious value. These are the last days of the Trump regime. “
A leading humanitarian organization warned on Monday that Pompeo’s decision would deal another “devastating blow” to the impoverished and war-torn nation.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the leading humanitarian agencies active in Yemen, said Pompeo’s designation and planned sanctions against the Houthis “will hamper the ability of aid agencies to respond” to the humanitarian needs of millions of people. Yemenis.
“Yemen’s faltering economy will take another devastating blow,” said Mohamed Abdi, group director for Yemen. “Bringing food and medicine into Yemen – a country that is 80 percent dependent on imports – will become even more difficult.”
Relief organizations have long warned that sanctions could prove catastrophic for efforts to help starving Yemeni civilians caught up in the conflict between the Houthis and the Yemeni government, backed by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Arab nations who waged the war against the rebels.
Yemen, a country at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian disaster after more than six years of bitter conflict that has left most of its nearly 30 million people in need humanitarian aid.
The war has killed more than 112,000 people to date.
Al Jazeera’s Maziar Motamedi contributed to this report from Tehran
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