Breaking News: The Biden administration has decided to designate Yemen's Houthi rebel movement as an international terrorist organization.

The Violence Behind the Breaking News: Yemeni Houthis have spent three months attacking, damaging, and occasionally seizing U.S. and free world ships transiting the Red Sea.

Geographic Specifics Shaping the Breaking News: Houthi attackers use the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, as a global "chokepoint" to attack civilian commercial vessels.

The Houthis launched these attacks on global sea commerce for several reasons. Striking Israeli and Western shipping routes to disrupt them and spike maritime insurance costs are the most pertinent. But hurting the world is an ultimate aim. Eventually, high maritime insurance costs take money from everyone's wallet.

January 2024 White House Reaction to Houthi Breaking News: Scrub the embarrassing past and pretend it never happened.

Here is the embarrassing past the Biden administration prefers no 2024 American voter will notice: In 2021, the Biden administration decided to remove the Houthis from America's terrorist list.

To scrub the past, the Biden administration relies on Biden-friendly dominant media to pretend its delusional 2021 decision never happened.

Why did the Biden administration remove the Houthis from the terror list in 2021?

Because the Trump administration put the Houthis on the list. Bidenites removed the Houthis because ... they despise Donald Trump. Oh, they claimed Trump's terrorist designation "damaged prospects for peace" in Yemen and -- get this -- "crippled the economy" of a nation facing starvation.

Facts, however, are difficult things. The truth is the Houthis have never sought peace in Yemen. Worse, the Houthis have used starvation as a weapon in their war against everyone else in Yemen. By delisting the Houthis, the Biden administration reversed Trump's policy -- insert Ivy League applause -- but in the real world of physical suffering, Bidenites backed the Houthis fractious war and intentional starvation.

Ultimately, the Biden administration made it easy for Iran to provide the Houthis with weapons to attack Israel and then attack ships in the Red Sea, including U.S. Navy warships.

Willfully stupid? Yes. But why?

Answer: The Houthis are an Iranian proxy warfare outfit -- mercenaries with a religious veneer. They are trained, armed, and supplied by Iran's ayatollah Shia Islamists, the same ayatollahs who condemn America as The Great Satan and call Israel a "one bomb state," meaning a state that one nuclear weapon will eliminate.

The evidence that the Houthis are Iranian proxies is conclusive.

Here are a few telling examples. February 2014: A Yemeni government commission approves a recommendation to restructure Yemen as a federation with six semiautonomous regions. The Houthis will have their own region. But the Houthis reject the deal.

September 2014 -- Houthi rebels enter Yemen's capital Sanaa. On Sept. 21, the Houthis and the government agrees to a peace deal that includes a revealing demand: The government must free several jailed Iranians and Shia Arabs whom it had jailed and charged with being agents of the Iranian government. On Sept. 24, the government frees two Lebanese nationals accused of being members of Hezbollah. On Sept. 25, the weak national government releases three Iranians accused of being Iranian secret police and eight Yemeni Shia charged with smuggling Iranian weapons into Yemen. The peace deal briefly halts the street battles -- then collapses.

In 2019, starvation threatened some 17 million of Yemen's 25 million people. How many face starvation in 2024? We don't know. Yemen is in chaos. Chaos provoked and exacerbated by Iran's genocidal ayatollah regime.

Why did the Biden administration delist the Houthis? Brutal truth: It was following the Obama administration's delusion, believing a grand peace deal and nuclear weapons agreement with Iran's imperialist ayatollahs was possible.

The Obama and Biden delusions have cost lives and encouraged Iranian war-making.

Iran's ayatollahs spin a grandiose narrative of a return to Great Power status. They support that narrative with one of grievance -- they are victims. Iran's narrative of ancient imperial revival differs in content but not in form from China's expansion in Asia and Russia's Ukraine horror.

Ultimately, the entire world suffers.

To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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