DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Fighters allied to Yemen’s exiled government claimed Wednesday they had seized 750 tons of Iranian-supplied missiles and weaponry bound for the country’s Houthi rebels, the latest interdiction of arms in the country’s decadelong war allegedly tied to Tehran.
For years, and other Western naval forces have seized Iranian arms being sent to the Houthis, who have held Yemen’s capital since 2014 and have been attacking ships in the Red Sea over .
The seizure announced Wednesday, however, marked the first major interdiction conducted by the National Resistance Force, a group of fighters allied to Tariq Saleh, a nephew of Yemen’s late strongman leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.
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The Houthis and Iran did not acknowledge the seizure, which the National Resistance Force said happened in late June.
A short video package released by the force appeared to show anti-ship missiles, the same kinds used in the in the Red Sea, killing at least four people as others remain missing.
The footage also appeared to show Iranian-made Type 358 anti-aircraft missiles. The Houthis claim they downed 26 U.S. MQ-9 drones over the past decade of the Yemen war, likely with those kinds of missiles. The majority of those losses having been acknowledged by the U.S. military.
The footage also appeared to show drone components, warheads and other weapons. The force said it later would release a detailed statement, though it had not appeared hours after the announcement.
The U.S. military’s Central Command praised the seizure in a post on the social platform X, saying that the Yemeni force told it “there were manuals in Farsi and many of the systems were manufactured by a company affiliated with the Iranian Ministry of Defense that is sanctioned by the United States.”
“The interdiction of this massive Iranian shipment shows that Iran remains the most destabilizing actor in the region,” Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, CENTCOM’s commander, was quoted as saying. “Limiting the free flow of Iranian support to the Houthis is critic to regional security, stability and freedom of navigation.”
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Iran denies arming the rebels, though and in sea shipments heading to Yemen for the Shiite Houthi rebels despite a United Nations arms embargo.
The Houthis seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September 2014 and forced the internationally recognized government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition armed with U.S. weaponry and intelligence entered the war on the side of Yemen’s exiled government in March 2015. Years of inconclusive fighting has pushed the Arab world’s poorest nation to the brink of famine.
The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
