The United States and France have affirmed that the Houthis are holding the future of Yemen hostage. The U.S. State Department stated that the U.S. envoy to Yemen, Tim Lenderking, and French diplomat, Christophe Farnaud, emphasized the necessity of including the Houthis in a fair deal that will bring relief to the Yemeni people. The officials confirmed that the ongoing Houthi attack on Marib poses a high cost. This came during a meeting between Lenderking and the head of the Middle East department at the French Foreign Ministry, Farnaud, as reported in a tweet from the U.S. State Department's Near Eastern Affairs account.
They indicated that "the Houthis are holding the future of Yemen hostage by continuing their costly and prolonged assault on Marib." They asserted that "the fair deal on the table will finally bring relief to the Yemeni people." The officials urged the Iranian-backed Houthi group to "engage immediately" in peace efforts, according to the same U.S. tweet.
Moreover, U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, Christopher Henzel, confirmed on Tuesday that a large shipment of weapons intercepted by U.S. naval forces in the Arabian Sea in recent days was intended for the Houthis. Henzel's message was shared on the U.S. embassy's Twitter, where he clarified that an Iranian port was the last stop for the weapons shipment recently intercepted, which contained anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of rifles, hundreds of machine guns, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers.
Henzel implicitly indicated that the massive shipment was headed for the Houthis in Yemen, stating that this "continuous flow of weapons to the Houthis would prolong the suffering of the Yemeni people and contribute to a broader regional conflict." On Friday, the U.S. State Department held the Houthi group responsible for derailing meetings conducted by the U.N. envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, over the past week in Muscat, aimed at reaching a peace agreement to end the Yemeni war, which ended without any progress.
The statement expressed that the Iranian-aligned Houthi group in Yemen squandered a "great opportunity" to demonstrate a commitment to peace by refusing to meet with the U.N. envoy in Muscat. The U.S. State Department confirmed that the Houthis are contributing to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Yemen by continuing their attack on Marib, "which exacerbates the dire conditions of already vulnerable displaced Yemenis."
