February 28, 2020
The US Navy has seized another dhow-load of weapons it says the Islamic Republic was trying to sneak to rebels in Yemen.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for action against Iran after the February 13 seizure.
“The US Navy interdicted 358 Iranian-made missiles and other weapons’ components on their way to the Houthis in Yemen. This is another example of the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, continuing to defy the UN Security Council,” Pompeo wrote on Twitter.
“The world must reject Iran’s violence and act now to renew the expiring UN arms embargo on Iran,” Pompeo said. The embargo will expire in October. A major goal of US policy is to convince the UN to renew the embargo before then, although Iran has never abided by it and the UN has never taken any punitive action for the violations.
In Tehran, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of the Pasdar maritime force, denied the US charges and said the Americans just make up such stories to try to cover up their defeats in Yemen. At the UN, Iranian Ambassador Majid Takht-e Ravanchi called the US assertions “absurd.”
According to the US Navy, sailors from the USS Normandy, a missile cruiser, boarded a dhow bound for Yemen in the Arabian Sea and discovered 150 Dehlavieh anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), which are Iranian-manufactured copies of Russian Kornet ATGMs.
“Other weapons components seized aboard the dhow were of Iranian design and manufacture and included three Iranian surface-to-air missiles,” the statement said.
The weapons were “identical” to those seized in a similar operation last November by the USS Forrest Sherman, it said.