Iran accused of arming Shias
Officials in a Saudi-led coalition battling Shia rebels for control of a crucial port in Yemen on Tuesday displayed weapons captured on the battlefield that they say show Iran is arming the insurgents.
Iran long has denied arming the rebels, known as Houthis, despite reports by the United Nations, Western countries and outside groups linking it to the rebels’ arsenal.
Weapons shown to reporters in Abu Dhabi and later at an Emirati military base on a government-sponsored tour included drones, a sniper rifle, roadside bombs disguised as rocks and even a “drone boat,” which had been filled with explosives that failed to detonate.
The officials showed Iranian-labelled components inside of equipment they said was used to produce and load fuel for the rockets the rebels have fired across the border at Saudi Arabia. They also displayed images allegedly showing Iranian officials building components for the “drone boat.” The officials said such weapons threaten both coalition forces and civilians.
“Unsurprisingly, there are advanced military components in the Houthi militia’s hands,” Talal al-Teneiji, an Emirati Foreign Affairs Ministry official, said. “We took time to inspect and disassemble these to figure out the source … and we can say that these elements are military-grade materials imported from Iran to the Houthi militias.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations later said it had no comment on the specifics of the Saudi-led coalition’s allegations “other than reiterating that Iran has not sent and does not send armaments to Yemen.”
The rare show-and-tell by the Saudi-led coalition comes as the United Arab Emirates leads Yemeni forces in an offensive seeking to capture the Red Sea port city of Hodeida.
Their campaign has been criticised by aid groups, which fear a protracted fight could force a shutdown of the port and potentially tip millions into starvation. Some 70% of Yemen’s food enters via the port, as well as the bulk of humanitarian aid and fuel supplies. Around two-thirds of the country’s population of 27 million relies on aid and 8.4 million are already at risk of starving.
The Houthi-controlled port has remained open, as the main battle on Tuesday was around the city’s airport, to the south.
Some of the weapons shown have previously been described by UN weapons experts and an independent group called Conflict Armament Research, which gained access to the materiel through the UAE’s elite Presidential Guard. Among them were roadside bombs disguised as rocks that the research group has said bear similarities to others used by Hizbollah in southern Lebanon and by other Iran-backed fighters in Iraq and Bahrain, suggesting at the least an Iranian influence in their manufacture.