U.S. attempts to stop arms smuggling to Yemen with limited resources

Washington Post-0316th2024

The Biden administration is expanding efforts to surveil and intercept Iranian weapons being smuggled to Yemen, where Houthi militants have staged a deadly campaign of violence against commercial shipping that has proved resilient to six weeks of military strikes, said U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The initiative seeks to map seafaring routes used by Tehran and stop the arms shipments while in transit, an acknowledgment that the Houthis are likely to pose a significant security challenge for the foreseeable future. It is part of a broader strategy that also includes sanctions and diplomatic pressure, but faces constraint as essential military resources are in short supply.

A senior U.S. defense official described the evolving mission as “a renewed effort to try to better understand what those water routes look like.” Like others interviewed for this report, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive military activity. The work requires considerable collaboration with the U.S. intelligence community, the official said.

A second senior defense official characterized the effort as “very vigorous,” saying Washington also is exploring how partner nations can expand their focus on disrupting Iranian arms smuggling to help offset a limited inventory of U.S. drones and other surveillance assets that are central to the process. The official declined to identify which nations are involved in those conversations, but said all governments affected economically by the Houthi attacks should do more.

“It’s definitely a challenge in an area as large as the one we are describing to identify all of these craft,” this person said. “But we are devoting significant resources to identifying, tracking and — where we have the ability — interdicting. And what we are finding is significant.”

The Houthis, who rose from a ragtag band of rebels to functioning now as the de facto government overseeing much of Yemen, fall under Iran’s regional network of proxy forces opposed to Israel and the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. The group’s leaders have characterized its actions in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden as a demonstration of solidarity with Hamas fighters battling Israeli forces in Gaza, yet often its targeting has appeared indiscriminate — it once even fired on a ship hauling grain to Yemen, where conflict has left millions in hunger, according to aid organizations.

When Houthi fighters seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014, they inherited an array of weaponry, including North Korean and Soviet-era scud missiles, Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles, and Chinese anti-ship missiles, said Mohammed al-Basha, a senior Middle East analyst at the Navanti Group. Since then, the group has learned to create more advanced weapons by modifying items in its arsenal and using technology obtained from overseas, including from Iran.