The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen said Wednesday that it had foiled an attempt by Tehran to smuggle a huge cache of weapons into Yemen on a boat.
The weapons and equipment seized from the vessel include 18 anti-armored Concourse shells, 54 anti-tank BGM17 shells, 15 shell battery kits, four firing guidance systems, five binocular batteries, three launchers and one launchers’ holder.
The boat was reportedly manned by 14 Iranians and carried several documents indicating that it was owned by an Iranian national. The vessel was seized some 150 miles off the coast of Salalah in southern Oman on Saturday.
Brig. Gen. Ahmad Al-Assiri, consultant in the office of the Defense Ministry, said this showed the desperate attempts of the Iranians to bolster the Houthi rebels because they were losing the war.
In a television interview broadcast on a local channel an hour after the allied forces announced the seizure of the boat, Al-Asiri said that coalition teams had tracked the boat for a while before seizing it.
This was the first Iranian ship with arms attempting to reach Yemen, since the coalition forces banned them in March from entering the country’s waters, he said.
He added that other similar operations were underway but the coalition forces would not reveal details of these at this stage.
Al-Asiri said that the timing of the attempt, on the third day of Eid Al-Adha, after the return of the Yemeni president and the government to Aden, indicated the intention of the Iranian government to prevent any stability from returning to the country.
This is not the first incident of its kind. In May, an Iranian ship challenged the blockade and eventually agreed to offload its cargo under international supervision to distribute inside Yemen.
In another incident several months ago, the US Navy and Yemeni coast guard detained a vessel as it sailed from Iran into Yemeni territorial waters. The boat was loaded with rockets, plastic explosives, arms and ammunition.
It was announced that Somali authorities stopped an Iranian ship carrying arms, ammunition and armored vehicles in January this year at a port in Somalia. The ship named Shakir was heading toward Yemen.
