US Navy says it seized Iran assault rifles bound for Yemen

The US Navy seized over 2,100 assault rifles from a ship in the Gulf of Oman it believes came from Iran and were bound for Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, a Navy spokesman says. It is the latest capture of weapons allegedly heading to the Arab world’s poorest country.

The seizure last Friday happened after a team from the USS Chinook, a Cyclone-class coastal patrol boat, boarded a traditional wooden sailing vessel known as a dhow. They discovered the Kalashnikov-style rifles individually wrapped in green tarps aboard the ship, says Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet.

The Chinook, along with the patrol boat USS Monsoon and the guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans, took possession of the weapons. They resembled other assault rifles previously seized by the Navy, suspected to be from Iran and heading to Yemen.

“When we intercepted the vessel, it was on a route historically used to traffic illicit cargo to the Houthis in Yemen,” Hawkins says. “The Yemeni crew corroborated the origin.”

The Yemeni crew, Hawkins adds, will be repatriated back to a government-controlled part of Yemen.