The American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, quoted what it described as a “confidential draft report of the United Nations” that “thousands of weapons, including rocket launchers and machine guns, seized by the US Navy in recent months in the Arabian Sea, most likely come from a port.” The Iranian Jask, and she was heading to Yemen in particular.”
The American newspaper stated that this document was prepared by a team of experts from the UN Security Council on Yemen, in which it stated that small wooden boats and land transportation were used in an attempt to illegally pass weapons made in Russia, China and Iran to Yemen, which has been witnessing a civil war since 2014.
According to the newspaper, the authors of the draft report relied on “interviews with Yemeni crew members of these vessels, as well as data from navigation equipment that revealed that the boats used to transport weapons set off from the Jask port in southeastern Iran overlooking the Sea of Oman.”
The newspaper added that Iran confirmed to the UN expert team that these weapons are not sold, transferred, or exported to Yemen, and the newspaper mentioned that the Undersecretary of the Houthi Information Ministry, Nasr al-Din Amer, denied that Iran was transferring these weapons to Yemen, describing this as a mere “illusion.”
Saudi Arabia, which has led a military coalition that has supported the Yemeni government since 2015 in its war with the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, as well as the United States, has long accused Iran of supplying weapons to the Houthis, a charge Tehran denies. The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on the Houthi rebels in 2015.
The conflict in Yemen, which erupted in 2014, is intensifying, with the coalition intensifying its air strikes in recent days on the capital, Sanaa, which is controlled by the Houthis.
The United Nations estimates that the war in Yemen has killed 377,000 people, most of whom died due to the repercussions of the conflict, especially the lack of clean water, hunger and disease.