LONDON: The head of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council on Thursday urged the international community to form a decisive alliance to restore security, stability and state institutions in his country, which risks becoming a permanent hub for transnational terrorism.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly’s 80th session, Rashad Mohammed Al-Alimi described what was happening Yemen not just as an internal crisis but “a test of the credibility of the international system,” citing the Houthis’ decade-long control and their use of starvation and maritime routes as tools of coercion.
“The Houthis are no longer a remote rebel group,” he said. “They’re an active terrorist organization armed with advanced Iranian weaponry, from ballistic missiles and drones to naval mines and cluster munitions.”
Al-Alimi highlighted the Houthis’ destabilizing activity regionally, including drug trafficking and experimentation with military technologies, framing them as part of “a project to redraw the map of Iranian influence in the region.”
He warned that tolerating the group could “leave the Red Sea permanently hostage to this terrorism.”
