DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – The US Navy said it has seized a large cache of assault rifles and ammunition being smuggled by a fishing vessel from Iran, possibly bound for war-torn Yemen.
US Navy patrol ships discovered weapons described as a stateless fishing vessel in an operation that began on Monday in the northern reaches of the Arabian Sea off Oman and Pakistan. The sailors boarded the ship and found 1,400 Kalashnikov-style rifles and 226,600 ammunition, as well as five Yemeni crew members.
It is the latest intervention amid the ongoing war in Yemen that pits Iran-backed Houthi rebels against a Saudi-led military coalition. Western countries and UN experts have repeatedly accused Iran of smuggling illegal weapons and technology into Yemen, fueling a civil war and enabling it to fire missiles and drones into neighboring Saudi Arabia.
Iran has denied arms to the Houthis, despite evidence to the contrary.
In an unusually pointed move, a statement late Wednesday from the Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet blamed Iran for sending weapons, saying the boat was sailing along a route “historically to the Houthis in Yemen”. Weapons were used illegally.”
“The direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer of weapons to the Houthis is in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and US sanctions,” the statement said.
In this photo released by the US Navy, a stateless fishing vessel, at right, is intercepted by USS ships crossing international waters in the northern Arabian Sea on December 20, 2021 (US Navy via AP).
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the intercept.
US Navy patrol ships transferred the confiscated weapons to the guided-missile destroyer USS O’Kane after the fishing vessel was sunk for commercial shipping because of the “threat”. It said the Yemeni crew would be sent back.
The US seizure of Yemen’s war-bound weapons, usually Kalashnikov rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, began in 2016 and has continued intermittently. Yemen is replete with small arms that have been smuggled into poorly controlled ports during years of conflict.
The Navy’s 5th Fleet said it has seized nearly 8,700 illegal weapons so far this year in 2.5 million square miles, including the strategically important Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Yemen’s war broke out in 2014, when the Houthis captured the capital of Sanaa and much of the country’s north. Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and other countries, launched a bombing campaign months later to restore the internationally recognized government and drive out the rebels.
The war has killed nearly 130,000 people and led to the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.