"'It is inconceivable that they [the weapons dealers] are not operating on the Houthis’ behalf,' said the former British Ambassador to Yemen, Edmund Fitton-Brown, who now works for the Counter Extremism Project.
'Purely private dealers who tried to profit from supplying, [for example] the government of Yemen, would be quickly shut down.'"

"Edmund Fitton-Brown, the former British ambassador to Yemen who is now a senior adviser to the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based non-profit organisation, said: 'To me, this is clear material support for terrorism. X has a lamentable history of failing to police itself properly against extremists [and] this is a problem that has clearly got worse since Twitter became X. The very fact that they sell blue tick marks to terrorist groups like the Houthis and the Taliban is obviously a breach of sanctions and a breach of the law.'"

"The operations of these traders are closely tied to the Houthi movement, which has been identified as a terrorist organization by both the United States and Australia. Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British Ambassador to Yemen and current member of the Counter Extremism Project, remarked, “It is inconceivable that they [the weapons dealers] are not operating on the Houthis’ behalf.” He elaborated that independent dealers attempting to engage with the Yemeni government for profit would face immediate suppression."

"The U.S.-led responses have been 'meticulously proportionate,' said Fitton-Brown, now a senior adviser for the New York and Berlin-based Counter Extremism Project.

'We need to be more determined and creative about what to do about this,' he said. 'We are looking at a de facto authority, and a de facto authority has fixed points you can attack.'"