In the early hours of 4 May 2025, a ballistic missile fired from Yemen by the Iranian-backed Houthis thundered through Israeli airspace and landed near Ben Gurion International Airport — Israel’s primary civilian aviation hub. The missile strike, which left multiple civilians injured and paralysed air travel, was not simply a military provocation. It was a direct act of terror against the heart of Israel’s civilian infrastructure, carried out by a group that now openly and proudly declares its alignment with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This was no isolated incident. It was the latest and most brazen in a string of Houthi attacks stretching far beyond Yemen — reaching into the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and now the skies above Tel Aviv. And yet, despite the scale and audacity of their operations, the Houthis — also known as Ansar Allah — remain unproscribed in the United Kingdom. That must change. Now.
The missile strike on a civilian airport should be a line no nation allows to be crossed without consequence. But Britain’s silence, like much of the West’s, has been deafening.
While the United States has designated the Houthis as a terrorist organisation, the UK continues to afford them a legal and political ambiguity they have long since forfeited through their actions.
The newly released policy briefing by the Forum for Foreign Relations — Proscribing Ansar Allah: An Urgent Imperative for UK Security and Values — is a document of moral clarity and forensic precision.
It details the ideological programme, military operations, and transnational networks that make the Houthis not merely a regional menace, but a fully integrated node in Iran’s global architecture of terror.
We have entered an era where terrorism wears the costume of resistance and finds apologists among the fashionable circles of Western grievance politics.
Where slogans like “Death to Israel” and “Curse on the Jews” are chanted in London alongside banners glorifying the very group that brought Tel Aviv airport to a standstill.
This is not free speech. It is imported fascism masquerading as solidarity. Let us be clear: the Houthis are not misunderstood revolutionaries. They are not a political faction seeking redress.
They are ideological shock troops in service of Tehran’s theocratic imperialism. Their doctrine is hatred, their methods are terror, and their targets are civilians.
Their crimes are not limited to Israel. In Yemen, they have waged a merciless war against their own people — executing political opponents, torturing journalists, conscripting children, and weaponising famine.
Their war crimes are as numerous as they are unapologetic. They have fired hundreds of missiles and drones at civilian targets, hijacked commercial vessels, and declared economic warfare on an entire region.
Their leadership boasts of these acts in official statements, music videos, and propaganda films. They revel in the panic they induce.
And yet, inexplicably, the United Kingdom continues to treat them as though they were a foreign insurgency rather than what they plainly are: a terrorist organisation acting with global intent and genocidal rhetoric.
To proscribe the Houthis is not merely a legal step — it is a moral one. It will allow British authorities to dismantle domestic support networks, disrupt financing, and prosecute those who amplify their propaganda.
But more than that, it will send a message: that Britain will not be a haven for those who glorify terror, regardless of the cause they claim to serve.
Let us remember: we did not hesitate to proscribe Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or Hezbollah once the weight of evidence made their true nature undeniable. The Houthis have long passed that threshold. What remains is political will.
This is not a matter for debate. It is a matter of principle. Terrorism is terrorism — whether it is directed at Jewish civilians in Tel Aviv, political dissidents in Sana’a, or merchant sailors in the Red Sea.
Whether it is launched from caves, parliaments, or presidential palaces. Whether it is cloaked in revolutionary language or bellowed through antisemitic chants.
Britain must now choose: to stand with its allies, its laws, and its moral traditions — or to offer continued legal shelter to the emissaries of a regime that sows war and worships death.
The Houthis have spoken. With drones, with missiles, with slogans of hate. The time has come for Britain to respond — not with words, but with action.
History will remember what we chose to tolerate. Let us be remembered for choosing justice.