The Biden administration announced on Wednesday the redesignation of the Yemen-based Houthis as a terrorist entity the same day the U.S. military carried out strikes against the Iranian-supported group.

Houthi forces have carried out more than 30 attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea since mid-November, threatening the global trade industry, in addition to posing lethal threats to every crew member on those ships. They have continued to launch these attacks in spite of international condemnation and limited but repeated military responses.

“What the Houthis have proven is that they are not going to be responsive to U.S. pressure to stop their attacks on the Red Sea, and it’s rather unclear that additional sanctions on the Houthis will cause them to change their behavior,” Katherine Zimmerman, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “The Biden administration has made clear that it sees the sanctions regime as part of its effort to change the Houthi behavior.”

Designating the Houthis as a specially designated global terrorist entity will enable the U.S. to impede their funding and to restrict their access to financial markets further. The U.S. gave them that designation instead of listing them as a foreign terrorist organization due to certain restrictions involved in both.

Hours after the administration announced the designation, the Houthis launched a one-way attack drone that struck the Genco Picardy, which is a Marshall Island-flagged, U.S.-owned and operated bulk carrier ship. The crew reported “some damage,” but no one was harmed, according to U.S. Central Command. Later in the day, CENTCOM said U.S. forces conducted strikes on 14 Houthi missiles “that were loaded to be fired” and did so again on Thursday.

Thursday’s strikes were the fourth iteration of U.S. strikes since their initial and largest attack against the Houthis.

The U.S. and U.K. militaries carried out the largest iteration of strikes last Thursday since the Houthis’ attacks began. They hit more than 60 targets, including munitions depots, launching systems, air defense radar systems, and command and control nodes.

U.S. forces also intercepted Iranian-made weapons intended for the Houthis last week. Two Navy SEALs involved in the seizure are missing, lost at sea, while U.S. forces are conducting operations to locate them.

Defense officials have noted that while they believe the Houthis’ capabilities have been lessened following the strikes, they said after the first iteration that they expected a military response.

The U.S. military often references its ability to deter a would-be adversary from acting against U.S. interests by the implicit or explicit warning that the U.S. response to such an action would make the consequences of it outweigh what they would gain.

“We will continue to do what we need to do to work with partners to deter these attacks and, importantly, to safeguard vessels that are transiting the Red Sea,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters on Wednesday.

Zimmerman believes, however, that the U.S.’s publicly stated desire to avoid a broader regional conflict has deterred the U.S. from acting.

“U.S. officials have made clear that the last thing that they want is to see a regional escalation, which has enabled our adversaries to rattle their sabers and threaten regional escalation in order to affect our decision-making process. That, in itself, looks to me like a deterred action,” she explained. “The problem has been framing what the United States is doing in the Red Sea as restoring deterrence at all. The fact that the United States seems to be unwilling to do more than it already is demonstrates that we are the ones that are deterred.”

With the apparent red lines from the U.S., Zimmerman does not believe America’s Middle Eastern “adversaries are going to back down in the near term,” which is largely supported already given the Houthis’ continued attacks after the U.S. strikes and terrorist designation.

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The Houthis have gained support domestically since they began attacking commercial vessels in defiance of the U.S. and other Western leaders. The Iranian-backed group in Yemen has “been able to create momentum, popularity against an external adversary, the United States and Israel,” Zimmerman added. “They’ve actually laid the bait, which we’ve taken to conduct strikes against them inside of Yemen because that only helps build their power on the domestic front.”

The Shiite Islamist Houthis are one side of the Yemeni civil war that has raged on for nearly a decade and has fostered one of the worst humanitarian crises across the globe. The Houthis are an ally of Iran and act as a part of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance,” which comprises various independent militias or terrorist groups throughout the Middle East. The Houthis, which are also known as Ansarallah, or “supporters of God,” emerged in the 1990s.