Yemen, allies crack down on Iranian arms smuggling

ADEN -- Yemeni forces, in co-operation with the Arab coalition, have successfully blocked attempts to smuggle Iranian weapons to the Houthis via Yemeni ports and border crossings, curbing Iran's support for its proxies, officials said.

Yemeni and Arab coalition operations in al-Mahra province recently netted a number of weapons and suspected drug smugglers with links to the Houthis and Iran.

On October 10, security services in al-Mahra referred 16 individuals to the specialised criminal prosecution in Hadramaut province in connection with charges of smuggling weapons and bringing in drugs.

Of this number, a seven-member Houthi cell was charged with smuggling weapons from Iran to Yemen, and six Iranian sailors were accused of bringing in narcotic substances. Drug traffickers and dealers also were charged.

These arrests and court summonses come as a direct result of operations carried out by Yemeni forces in co-operation with Arab coalition forces, said Deputy Minister of Legal Affairs and Human Rights Nabil Abdul Hafeez.

These efforts aim "to contain Iranian smuggling and communication in support of terrorism, whether with weapons or drugs", he told Al-Mashareq.

Yemeni forces and allied forces operating in the region have "succeeded in clamping down on the smuggling operations carried out by sea and by land by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to support its Houthi militias", he said.

Abdul Hafeez noted that the United Nations (UN) has imposed fresh sanctions on Houthi leaders involved in arms smuggling and attacking Yemenis, neighbouring countries and vital installations by air and sea.

Fresh round of sanctions

New UN sanctions were imposed October 4 on the Houthis' so-called air force commander Ahmed Ali Ahsan al-Hamzi and navy commander Mansour Ahmed al-Saadi, also known as Abu Sajjad.

The former deputy director of the Houthis' so-called National Security Bureau (intelligence agency), Mutlaq Amer al-Marrani, also was slapped with sanctions.

The sanctions on al-Hamzi "came as a result of his active role in the drone programme and attacks on Saudi Arabia and its vital facilities", political analyst Faisal Ahmed told Al-Mashareq.

Al-Saadi was involved in attacks carried out by the Houthis, "including the targeting of an Emirati commercial ship", Ahmed said.

He also was involved in arms smuggling and using al-Hodeidah as a base for recruiting smugglers and smuggling operations by sea.

Al-Marrani was sanctioned "for his involvement in crimes of torturing detainees held by the Houthi intelligence agency", Ahmed added.

These individuals played a role in smuggling conventional and advanced weapons from Iran "as parts that are reassembled in special workshops in al-Hodeidah and Sanaa under the supervision of Iranian IRGC leaders", he said.

IRGC and the war economy

Deputy Minister of Justice Faisal al-Majeedi told Al-Mashareq the IRGC has been engaged in smuggling "weapons and war technology to the Houthis via various sea and land routes".

Certain Iranian ports, including Bandar Abbas, are known to have been used for smuggling arms to the militia, he said.

The IRGC relies on a network of pirates and duped seafarers in the Gulf region for its smuggling operations, in a bid to circumvent the arms embargo on the Houthis that was imposed by the UN Security Council in April 2015.

The IRGC and its proxies, including the Houthis, Hizbullah and affiliated militias in Syria and Iraq, depend entirely on the war economy, Abaad Centre for Strategic Studies director Abdul Salam Mohammed said.

Iran is living in a war economy, and is using all illegal tools at its disposal to make money, he said, adding that "European countries were unaffected by this situation until Iranian drones arrived to support Russia in its war on Ukraine".

Smuggling revenues enable Iran to circumvent the sanctions imposed on it, Mohammed said, and also to finance its military operations in the region.

He said the Houthis work with the IRGC to smuggle weapons and illicit drugs, with many of the drug and hashish shipments going to the wealthy Gulf states.

On October 19, Saudi authorities said they have thwarted an attempt to smuggle almost 4 million amphetamine tablets into the kingdom.

The seized narcotic pills were hidden inside a shipment of peppers, said General Directorate of Narcotics Control spokesman Mohammed al-Nujaidi.

It was not immediately clear where the shipment arrived from.

Saudi Arabia is the largest market for tablets bearing the Captagon logo, and the kingdom's customs agency seized 119 million of the pills last year.

Captagon, an amphetamine-type stimulant, is produced mainly in Syria and smuggled to large consumer markets in the Gulf.

Many of these shipments can be traced back to Hizbullah, with the drugs originating in Captagon workshops in areas of Syria and Lebanon controlled by the Iran-backed party, which has a long history of dealing in narcotics.

Recent smuggling attempts have been thwarted by the vigilance of customs officials and by civilian tip-offs -- including from disgruntled Hizbullah insiders who feel cheated out of their share of the profits, security sources said.