The government of Canada announced on Tuesday that it would place Ansarallah, the Iran-backed Houthi jihadists of Yemen, on its official list of designated terrorist entities.
The designation, which the Canadian Ministry of Public Safety described as having “financing, travel and recruitment” consequences as well as banning Houthi terrorists from entering the country, follows leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveling to Florida for a private meeting with President-elect Donald Trump. Neither leader offered details on the topics discussed at the meeting, though Trump stated in written remarks following the meeting that they had spent much of their time on trade and immigration. Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc attended the meeting with Trump, held at the president-elect’s estate, Mar-a-Lago.
The first Trump administration initially designated the Houthis a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 2021, shortly before the end of his term. Outgoing current President Joe Biden removed the jihadists from the FTO list as one of his first acts in office later that year.
The Houthis are a Shiite jihadist organization that receives significant support from Iran. They rose to international prominence in 2014 after invading the capital of Yemen, Sana’a, and ousting the country’s legitimate government from the capital, prompting what has become a decade-old civil war. The government of Yemen is currently headquartered in the southern city of Aden and relies on support from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies to continue its currently ineffective attempts to dislodge Houthi leaders from Sana’a.
Following the barbaric attack on Israel by Houthi allies Hamas on October 7, 2023, the Houthis launched a maritime terrorism campaign to disrupt global shipping, attacking at random civilian ships sailing in waters near Yemen. While the Houthis claim they are only targeting ships with ties to Israel, America, and Britain, many of their victims in the past year have had no overt ties to those countries. Some have even been linked to states that maintain friendly relations with the Houthis, such as Russia, China, and Iran.
The official Houthi slogan is “Allahu Akbar, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
LeBlanc, the Canadian Public Safety Minister, said on Tuesday the designation of the group as terrorists serves for “aligning Canada with [its] allies.”
“Today’s addition of Ansarallah as a listed terrorist entity contributes to our efforts in fighting terrorism globally and aligning Canada with our allies,” he explained. “Acts of violent extremism and terrorism have no place in the world and we will continue to take action to curtail the spread of these activities internationally and to counter threats to Canada, its citizens and its interests around the world.”
The designation bans Canadians, and anyone in Canada, from knowingly dealing in Houthi property or “directly or indirectly provid[ing] property knowing that it will be used by or benefit a terrorist group.” Members of the Ansarallah are also banned from entering Canada.
Trudeau’s government did not initially respond positively to Canada’s Conservative Party calling for the Houthis to be listed among designated terrorists in October 2024. At the time, Pierre Poilievre, the head of the Conservatives, described the Houthis as a “front for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an organization that is the biggest and most well organized terrorist group in the world” in his call to designate them terrorists. The Trump administration designated the IRGC, an official wing of the Iranian armed forces, a foreign terrorist organization in 2019.
“The Americans banned the Houthis back in January, the Liberals at the time said they were thinking about it. What is there to think about?” Poilievre said at the time. “Common sense Conservatives are calling on the NDP/Liberal government to list the Houthis as a terror group … that will allow our law enforcement the power to seize their bank accounts, shut down their operations, criminalize recruitment, logistics and planning on Canadian soil.”
The Biden administration, however, did not “ban” the Houthis in January 2024. Rather, Biden placed them on a weaker sanctions list as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” (SDGT) entity, which does less to limit financing and operations.
“The only thing you get with the SDGT is a listing on [Office of Foreign Assets Control],” former Trump senior national security official and current pick for FBI director Kash Patel told Breitbart News in January. “FTOs are hit with crippling sanctions and mandatory congressional notifications. They are literally suffocated from the global trade and banking [system].”
Patel described the SDGT designation as a “huge paper tiger.”
Neither Trudeau nor Trump identified Yemen or the Houthis as a topic of conversation at Mar-a-Lago this weekend, though the timing of Canada’s designation is notable. Trudeau traveled to Florida in apparent response to a post Trump published on his social media outlet Truth Social in which he announced he would impose a 25-percent tariff on all Canadian goods until Trudeau addressed mass migration and drug trafficking issues.
Trump described his meeting with Trudeau as “productive.”
“I just had a very productive meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, where we discussed many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “like the Fentanyl and Drug Crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of Illegal Immigration, Fair Trade Deals that do not jeopardize American Workers, and the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada.”
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