Russia provided Houthis with tracking data to target ships in Red Sea — report
WSJ reports that members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Yemen relayed the info to the rebel group, helping it attack maritime traffic through key shipping lane
Russia earlier this year provided satellite data to help Yemen’s Houthi rebels strike ships in the Red Sea, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
The US daily — citing “a person familiar with the matter” and two anonymous European defense officials — reported that the data was transmitted by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps stationed in Yemen and used to target ships with missiles and drones.
The Iran-backed Houthis, who control vast swaths of Yemen, started targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror onslaught against Israel.
The attacks have led to a dramatic drop in traffic through the key shipping lane.
In response, the United States and Britain deployed a naval coalition to the region and have bombed Houthi targets in Yemen.
In more than 100 Houthi attacks over nearly a year, four sailors have been killed and two ships have sunk, while one vessel and its crew remain detained since being hijacked last November.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been keen to push back against the political and economic isolation imposed on his country by the West since his invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The report in the Journal comes on the heels of a summit of the BRICS countries, a diplomatic grouping that draws together nine countries that account for almost half the world’s population, including China, India and Iran.
Speaking at the BRICS summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin told leaders that the Middle East was on the brink of a full-scale war as the region braces for the expected Israeli response to Iran’s recent ballistic missile attack on the country.
The BRICS summit, attended by more than 20 leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, has shown the depth of Russia’s relations beyond the Western world.
Much discussion at the summit in the Russian city of Kazan was dedicated to the war in Ukraine and the violence in the Middle East, though there were no sign that anything specific would be done to end either conflict.
“The degree of confrontation between Israel and Iran has sharply increased. All this resembles a chain reaction and puts the entire Middle East on the brink of a full-scale war,” Putin, sitting beside Chinese President Xi Jinping, said.
Xi, speaking after Putin, said that there should be a comprehensive ceasefire Gaza, a halt to the spread of war in Lebanon and a return to the two-state solution under which states for both Israel and the Palestinians would be established.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian criticized international organizations, particularly the United Nations, for failing to end the conflict started by its proxy Hamas.
“The flames of war continue to rage in the Gaza Strip and cities of Lebanon, and international institutions, particularly the UN Security Council as a driver of international peace and security, lack the necessary effectiveness to extinguish the fire of this crisis,” Pezeshkian told the BRICS.
Putin said that unless Palestinians got their state, they would feel the burden of “historical injustice” and the region would remain in “an atmosphere of permanent crisis with inevitable relapses of large-scale violence.”
BRICS leaders in their summit declaration called for the establishment of a sovereign, independent and viable Palestinian state within the so-called 1967 lines. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas attended the summit, accusing Israel of trying to “empty” the Gaza Strip of Palestinians, especially in the northern part where it launched a new offensive against Hamas this month.
“It has been a full year since the greatest catastrophe that the Palestinian people experienced after the Nakba of 1948, which is the Israeli war in which crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing are being committed in the Gaza Strip,” Abbas said in a speech.
“This is part of a plan to empty the territory of its people, especially now in northern Gaza where the occupation forces are resorting to starving the population there.”
The war started on October 7, 2023 when Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
In its offensive aimed at destroying Hamas and returning the hostages, Israel has repeatedly called on civilians to evacuate from combat areas to a humanitarian zone on the coast.
