Iran is moving to rearm its militia allies

A pattern of high-value weapons seizures shows Tehran is making new efforts to arm its militia allies across the Middle East.

Iranian missiles exhibited in a park in Tehran, Iran. Picture: Getty Images.

Iran suffered a significant setback when Israel killed top military leaders and the US struck its nuclear facilities, but a pattern of high-value weapons seizures shows Tehran is making new efforts to arm its militia allies across the Middle East.

Forces allied with Yemen’s internationally recognised government this week intercepted a major shipment of missiles, drone parts and other military gear sent to Houthi rebels on the Red Sea coast. Syria’s new government says it has seized a number of weapons cargoes, including Grad rockets – for use in multiple-launch systems mounted on trucks – along its borders with Iraq and Lebanon.

The Lebanese army, meanwhile, has seized shipments brought in across its border with Syria that include Russian antitank missiles favoured by Hezbollah.

“Iran is rebuilding its presence in the Levant by sending missiles to Hezbollah and weapons from Iraq to Syria,” said Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the US-based Washington Institute for Near East Policy with expertise in Iran’s militia allies.

Yemeni forces said Wednesday they had seized a record number of Iranian missiles destined for the Houthis. The shipment was intercepted by the National Resistance Force, a military coalition aligned with the Yemeni government. The US Central Command, which is responsible for America’s military operations in the Middle East, said it was the National Resistance Force’s largest seizure of advanced Iranian conventional weapons – 750 tons of cruise missiles, antiship and anti-aircraft missiles, warheads, targeting components and drone engines.

The shipments were hidden aboard a ship called a dhow, beneath declared cargoes of air conditioners. They included Iranian-developed Qader antiship missiles and components for the Saqr air-defence system, which the Houthis have used to bring down US MQ-9 Reaper drones.

Previous seizures by the Yemeni and US governments generally yielded small arms or spare parts rather than fully assembled missiles.

The seizure comes just weeks after a ceasefire stopped Israel’s 12-day air campaign against Iran – a series of attacks that demonstrated Iran’s vulnerability despite the arsenal of missiles and militia allies it had built up to protect itself.

The US joined in the attack by bombing key Iranian nuclear facilities. This spring, the US pounded Houthi positions for nearly two months in an effort that ended with a ceasefire and left the Houthis looking for more high-end hardware.

“The timing and scale of this shipment strongly suggest Iran is moving quickly to replenish Houthi stockpiles depleted by US airstrikes,” said Mohammed al-Basha, founder of US-based Middle East security advisory Basha Report. It shows Tehran wants to “sustain their high operational tempo targeting Israel and commercial maritime traffic,” he said.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei on Thursday said any claim Tehran had sent weapons to Yemen was baseless.

The resupply effort might already be yielding results.

Last week, Houthi fighters used rocket-propelled grenades, missiles and drones to sink two merchant ships in the Red Sea, killing at least three crew members and taking others hostage. The militant group has also been lobbing ballistic missiles at Israel for weeks, though most are intercepted.

While the seized cargoes transited through the East African country of Djibouti, which sits across the mouth of the Red Sea from Yemen, the National Resistance Force found multiple documents in Farsi indicating their origin was Iran. The documents included a manual for cameras used to guide anti-aircraft missiles and a quality certificate attached to a missile fin manufactured by an Iranian company.

Iran’s efforts to move weapons to Hezbollah have been extensive as well. The militant group was forced into a ceasefire last fall after an Israeli campaign of covert operations, airstrikes and a ground incursion wiped out most of its arsenal and leadership.

There has been “an intensifying trend in recent months of smuggling attempts via or originating from Syria” to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, said Michael Cardash, the former deputy head of the bomb disposal division at Israel’s national police.

The arms pipeline has been crimped by the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime, which was aligned with Iran, and its replacement by a hostile government. Traffickers now have to bring in arms in small shipments after previously sending truckloads, said Cardash, who is now in charge of explosives research at Israeli security consulting firm Terrogence.

In one example in June, the Interior Ministry of the new Syrian government announced it had seized Russian-made Kornet antitank missiles en route to Lebanon in a truck transporting cucumbers. In May, the General Security branch intercepted Iranian-made air-defence missiles near the Lebanese border, according to media outlets affiliated with the new Syrian government.

Despite extensive efforts to keep Hezbollah from restocking its battered arsenal, the militant group, like the Houthis, has had some success. It manufactures its own drones and medium-range rockets, and has managed to restructure its smuggling networks to a degree and smuggle in some Kornets and other sophisticated weaponry, a person familiar with the group’s operations said.

Dow Jones