The revived nuclear talks will not halt Iran’s proxy warfare strategy How big brother monitors the Middle Eastern waterways?

On January 10, the US Navy seized a shipment of 2,116 AK-47 assault rifles smuggled aboard a fishing vessel in the Gulf of Oman. The crew of the coastal patrol ship USS Chinook discovered and seized the cache along a maritime route typically used for trafficking weapons from Iran to Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The US seizure of illegal arms in the Gulf is not a new phenomenon, as recently there were several attempts of arms smuggling to Yemen via the Gulf of Oman, as on December 1, 2022, the crew of the USS Lewis B. Puller discovered more than 50 tons of ammunition, rocket fuses and propellant aboard a fishing trawler bound for Yemen.

Undoubtedly, Iran is behind the main arms smuggling operations in the Gulf due to its notorious role in the Yemeni conflict as a part of its long-term proxy warfare strategy. Earlier in November 2022, US Coast Guard ships intercepted a shipment of more than 70 tons of aluminium perchlorate, a chemical commonly used to make rocket fuel. The haul contained enough material to power more than a dozen medium-range ballistic missiles.

Since 2015, Iran has actively engaged in the conflict in Yemen by supporting Houthi-rebels, an ethnic Shi'a minority group, against the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition. The devastating conflict quickly turned Yemen into another failed state amid a severe humanitarian crisis. However, with the support of Iran, Houthis managed to establish control over a large part of the country, including the capital city of Sanaa in 2015.

For several years Iranian-backed Houthis conducted rocket attacks on airports and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Although the US provided the Gulf partners with sufficient intelligence information regarding the Houthi-perpetrated rocket attacks, it appeared unsatisfactory. Despite mounting pressure over these years, Tehran did not retreat from supporting Houthi rebels, which ignited regional security even more. As such, the Gulf monarchies and Israel demanded the US-inked nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 to be revoked, as it has not ceased efforts to destabilize the region. In 2018 the Trump administration rescinded the nuclear deal with Iran, though the negotiations re-launched during the Biden administration, albeit unsuccessfully.

In the last few years, Yemen was turned into a platform for targeting neighbouring countries, namely the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia and attacking international shipping lines in the Red Sea and Bab Al-Mandeb, thereby threatening energy security—the backbone of the global economy. Indeed, such a bizarre move increased Iran's leverage over the region enabling it to threaten militarily weak states. Moreover, the countermeasures of the Saudi-led coalition to curb Iran's influence did not yield significant results as of today.

Tehran is confident that its ongoing proxy strategy does not provoke the Western coalition to take strict measures against it. On the contrary, the European Union (EU) still maintains the nuclear dialogue with Iran, which apparently eases Tehran's pursuit of destructive policy in parallel. However, considering that the Biden administration rejected to resume the nuclear talks with Iran amid pressure from Arab partners and Israel, the recent seizure of Iranian ships carrying illegal arms in the Gulf should not come as a surprise.

As such, in his special briefing on May 11, 2022, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, Commander of the US Naval Forces Central Command, confirmed that about nine thousand weapons were confiscated in 2021—three times the quantities seized in 2020. The weapons were seized on corridors used for smuggling from Iran, including surface-to-air missiles and parts of cruise missiles on their way to the Houthis.

The vast amount of Iranian-made missiles is of critical importance for Houthi rebels, as they frequently use them to target Saudi oil infrastructure. Iranian support for the Houthis—which includes arms shipments, military manufacturing components, and the transfer of expertise for ballistic missiles and drone technologies—was demonstrated by the Houthis’ development of armed capabilities and the series of terrorist attacks launched since 2017.

Unsurprisingly, with the US growing pressure on Iran, Houthi-perpetrated terrorist attacks intensified since 2021 amid renewed escalation within war-torn Yemen. The escalation and terrorist attacks revealed the combat capabilities of Houthi rebels and the effectiveness of the Iranian proxy warfare strategy. Notwithstanding, Tehran officially denies the allegations of arms transfer to Houthi rebels and engagement in deadly rocket attacks.

These attacks also raise questions about the future threat posed by the existence and growth of this military technology in the hands of a terrorist militia that refuses to engage in the peace process and owes allegiance to Iran. This threat impacts the global trade movement in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, global energy security, and regional and international peace and security. In this vein, the US will likely increase pressure on Iran by conducting similar operations in the Gulf area with the support of Israel and Arab partners to torpedo the nuclear talks between Tehran-EU and thwart Iran's proxy forces in Yemen to ensure stability.