Joe Biden's first 100 days in office as the 46th president of the United States, earned him overwhelming praise from lefists and liberals, amid the "America is Back" slogan.
Among a host of his celebrated executive orders, the delisting of former President Donald Trump's last-minute designation of Yemen's Houthi movement, as Foreign Terrorist Organisation and Specially Designated Global Terrorists, stood out.
A policy reversal that was lauded by a senior Houthi official, as "positive and good."
Amid this policy orientation, the Biden administration announced it would end U.S. support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition that intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015, in addition to cancelling arms sales negotiated during the Trump presidency.
This major policy shift, appeared under a humanitarian banner comprising of aid groups, the UN and some legislators among them Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Murphy, a critic of US-Saudi roles in the Yemen civil war, is also a middle ground advocate of U.S.policy towards Iran.
Defending more than 60 executive actions of which 24,were direct reversal of Trump's policies, the U.S. president denounced his predecessor's "bad policy" among many issues, that were "counterproductive to America's security and standing."
However, the tragic events following the bloody assault on Israeli territory by Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7,and a war that is threatening the entire Middle East, saw unceremonious reversal of the political fortunes of pro-Iranian Houthis, from the White House.
The Zaidi Shia militant group whose slogan "God is great, death to the US, death to Israel, curse upon the Jews, victory for Islam", a religious inspiration from Iran's revolution in 1979, is theatrically back on Washington's terrorism list.
Despite its contested status among Tehran's growing proxies not least Lebanon's Hezbollah, Hamas and Iraq's Al-Hashid Al-Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF) an umbrella organisation of mainly Shiite militia:the zealousness of the Houthis following the ouster of internationally recognised president in 2015, speaks volumes of their ideological charter and objectives.
Iran, which quashed widespread dissent and protests last year, is now the de facto military and political power in the Middle East, despite punitive Western sanctions on its oil-dependent economy.
Thanks to its battle-hardened proxies and transigent manoeuvres, following the collapse of some majority Sunni governments in the Arab Spring of 2011.
The emasculation of Sunni Arab countries and traditional Western allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia by Iran, is a cause for concern for Middle Easterners, wary of a mullahs dominated region.
Regarding the Yemen war and its devastating humanitarian effects, an Arab News-YouGov pan-Arab survey conducted in late 2020, suggested that for Biden's Middle East policy to succeed, he needed to discard the Obama administration baggage.
At 53 percent, the respondents felt that Obama left the region worse off, with another 58 percent saying Biden would fare better without the policies of his former boss.
Ironically there was a barrage of criticism in January 2020, in the legacy media against the Trump administration immediately after a U.S. drone strike, killed Qaseem Soleimani.
Soleimani, a vindictive mastermind of Iranian policy in Iraq and the Middle East, as well as leader of the Quds Force, an overseas arm of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed together with Mahdi Al-Muhandis of the Kataib Hezbollah.
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