- Court documents reveal that the US government confiscated a considerable number of weapons between 2021 and 2023.
- These weapons are believed to be linked to an Iranian smuggling operation that supports rebel forces in Yemen.
- The evidence, including photos, depicts neatly stacked rows of assault rifles, rocket launchers, and anti-tank guided missiles.
Between 2021 and 2023, the United States Naval Forces Central Command intercepted four vessels sailing in international waters in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
These ships were found to be carrying thousands of weapons and almost 800,000 rounds of ammunition, believed to be part of an Iranian smuggling operation designed to aid rebel forces in Yemen.
According to federal prosecutors, in a seizure notice filed on July 6, the weapons and ammunition were being smuggled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an arm of the Iranian military designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration in 2019. The intended recipients were the Houthi forces in Yemen.
CourtWatch initially reported on the documents.
“There is no plausible way these weapons and munitions could have been transferred between Iran and Yemen without the involvement of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has a history of smuggling lethal aid to Houthi forces in Yemen,” stated a Department of Defense official quoted in the notice.
The Houthi forces, part of an Islamist movement, have been engaged in a civil war with the Yemeni government since 2014, when they seized the country’s capital, Sanaa. Iran has frequently been accused of supporting this rebel faction.
The US Navy intercepted four dhows (narrow ships that often do not transmit an automatic identification signal) on May 6 and December 20, 2021, as well as on January 6 and 15, 2023. All four ships had visited known IRGC ports and followed routes consistent with previous IRGC smuggling operations, according to the Department of Defense official.
The seized weapons include nearly 10,000 rifles of various types, approximately 300 machine guns, 194 rocket launchers, over 70 anti-tank guided missiles, and close to 800,000 rounds of ammunition, among other munitions.
Below are some of the photographic evidence submitted with the government’s seizure notice:
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