Iran has increasingly diversified shipping routes to mask its arms proliferation into trade between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula in order to continue the past decade of Iranian material support to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to an analysis published by The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
Bridget Toomey a research analyst at the FDD, and Behnam Ben Taleblu added” That Tehran is intent on rearming its Axis of Resistance, a transnational network of terror proxies, following the costs imposed on it during the 12-Day War with Israel and the United States, is another sign of the importance of this Axis to both the regime’s strategy and revolutionary ideology”.
In a February letter to the UN Security Council, the Islamic Republic rejected the notion that it was in “violation of arms embargoes” and that it was “fueling the conflict in Yemen.” UN Security Council Resolution 2624, passed in 2022, has an open-ended international arms embargo on the Houthis that expands an earlier resolution from 2015 containing an arms embargo against Yemeni and Houthi political leaders.
However, a decade of Iranian weapons proliferation tells a different story. Since the Houthi capture of Sanaa in 2014 catapulted the group into a member of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, the United States and international partners had intercepted at least 20 separate weapons shipments from Iran as of January 2024, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Iran’s evolving relationship with the Houthis has resulted in the Houthis’ possession of more advanced weapons than any other member in its Axis, despite their being the newest.
CENTCOM said many of the systems in the recent intercepted weapons on 27 June “were manufactured by a company affiliated with the Iranian Ministry of Defense that is sanctioned by the United States.”It included land-attack cruise missile (LACM) turbo-jet engines used in Iran’s Paveh-class LACM, which the Houthis call the Quds LACM; electro-optical seekers for anti-ship ballistic missiles (ABMs); an entire one-way attack drone (the Shahed-107) and dozens of piston engines; anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) warheads; man-portable air defense systems (MANPADs); anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) such as the Ghadir (Iranian C-802) and the newer Sejil; and a counter-drone missile unveiled by Iran in February dubbed the Qaem-118.
According to FDD analysis, smaller interceptions in 2024 and 2025 have highlighted the Houthis’ use of commercially available components to produce systems domestically, especially drones. However, this seizure of Iranian weapons and components demonstrates that the key elements of the Houthis’ supply chain remain reliant on Tehran.
The analysis recommended that “Washington should closely scrutinize any financial institutions continuing to operate out of Houthi controlled Sanaa for potential sanctions violations. It should also make the case to internationalize sanctions against Houthi financiers that the U.S. Treasury has already sanctioned and identified.
It concluded that “Washington cannot allow Tehran to continue proliferating weapons to its regional terror network as a low-cost, low-risk way of sustaining its shadow war against the United States and Israel”.