Above photo: Reuters.
Washington has also deployed warships to the Red Sea.
To protect Israeli shipping interests from attacks by the Yemeni armed forces.
The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on 28 December imposed unilateral economic sanctions on one individual and two currency exchange houses in Yemen, accusing them of “facilitating” the flow of funds for the Ansarallah resistance movement.
“Today’s action underscores our resolve to restrict the illicit flow of funds to [Ansarallah], who continue to conduct dangerous attacks on international shipping and risk further destabilizing the region,” said Brian Nelson, the US Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
The sanctions targeted Nabil Ali Ahmed – reportedly the head of the Currency Exchangers Association in Sanaa – and the Yemen-based Nabco Money Exchange and Remittance Co. and Al Raqda Exchange and Money Transfers Company. Al Aman Co. Kargo, a third exchange house based out of Turkiye, was also sanctioned.
According to the US Treasury, these companies “facilitated the transfer of millions of dollars to [Ansarallah] at the direction of … Said al-Jamal,” an alleged Iranian financier “affiliated” with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force.
The White House has accused Tehran of being “deeply involved” in helping the Yemeni armed forces conduct attacks against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea.
“We know that Iran was deeply involved in planning the operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea,” White House national security spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said last week.
“[Ansarallah] has its own tools … and acts by its own decisions and capabilities,” Iran’s deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani said in response to the accusation. “The Yemeni government has announced that they will prevent assistance to Israel as long as the Zionists continue their crimes against people in Gaza. [The Yemenis] are an independent player in the international scene … it is not right to relate their measures to others,” he added.
In a desperate bid to protect Israeli shipping interest in the Red Sea, the US has also deployed multiple warships to confront Yemeni attacks under the umbrella of Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG) – a brittle “coalition of the willing” that Washington claims has the support of “over 20 nations.”
The new round of economic sanctions on the Arab world’s poorest country comes as peace talks with Saudi Arabia are reportedly approaching the finish line, despite US pressure for the kingdom to walk away and restart hostilities with Yemen.
“Events over the past eight years underscore the key role played by western financial powers like the US and Britain in planning and orchestrating crippling economic warfare in Yemen. Their objective appears to be to gain control over the resource-rich areas in southern Yemen while exploiting the humanitarian crisis as leverage against Sanaa,” The Cradle columnist Abdel Qader Osman detailed in September.
“Three years after the war started, in November 2018, UNICEF reported that approximately 2.2 million Yemeni children were already suffering from malnutrition, with 400,000 of them experiencing acute malnourishment. By the end of 2022, this dire situation had escalated dramatically, with 11 million children now affected, including 540,000 children under the age of five facing severe malnutrition. According to data from the World Bank Group in March, foreign aggression against Yemen has driven up the nation’s poverty rate to a staggering 78 percent – more than three-quarters of its population,” Osman added.