Arsenal found on ‘Iran’ ship

1,000s of guns bound for Yemen

The crew of a US guided-missile cruiser has found thousands of assault weapons, machine guns and sniper rifles on a ship in the Indian Ocean believed to be bringing them from Iran to support the rebels in Yemen’s civil war, the Navy said Sunday.

Sailors on the USS Monterey discovered the weapons Saturday hidden aboard a dhow, a traditional Mideast vessel, spotted in the northern reaches of the Arabian Sea, between Oman and Pakistan, the Navy said.

The service also released images and video of the arsenal that was found with the cache.

The weapons were found below deck, most wrapped in green plastic, officials said.

The cache included nearly 3,000 Chinese Type 56 assault rifles, a variant of the Kalashnikov, as well as hundreds of other heavy machine guns and sniper rifles, the Navy said.

There were also dozens of advanced, Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, and several hundred rocket-propelled grenade launchers and optical sights for weapons, according to the Navy.

Officially, the Navy said “the original source and intended destination of the” weapons is “currently under investigation.”

“Assessment of the findings will be an interagency effort.”

But sources said that while the ship is stateless, an initial investigation has found it was heading to Yemen from Iran, again tying the Islamic Republic to arming Yemen’s Houthi rebels despite a United Nations arms embargo.

“The unique blend of materiel recovered by the USS Monterey appears to be consistent with the materiel from previous interdictions, which have been linked to Iran,” said Tim Michetti, an investigative researcher who studies the illicit-weapons trade.

Since starting in September 2014, Yemen’s civil war has killed some 130,000 people, including more than 13,000 civilians in targeted attacks, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

The UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on the Houthis in 2015.

Despite that, UN experts warn that “an increasing body of evidence suggests that individuals or entities in the Islamic Republic of Iran supply significant volumes of weapons and components to the Houthis.”

Iran’s mission to the UN did not respond to a request for comment, but in the past Tehran has denied giving the rebels weapons.

QUITE A CACHE: Thousands of weapons, thought to be destined for Yemen and seized by the US Navy from a stateless ship in the Arabian Sea, are laid out on the deck of the USS Monterey.