Iran has been exporting thousands of weapons from a single port to Yemen and elsewhere, according to a draft UN Security Council report obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
The confidential UN report details how thousands of rocket launchers, machine guns, sniper rifles and other weapons seized in the Arabian Sea by the US Navy were smuggled along routes to Yemen through wooden boats and overland transport, according to the UN report seen by the WSJ.
According to the UN report, the weapons were made in Russia, China and Iran, and they were smuggled from the Iranian port of Jask on the Sea of Oman.
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“US officials said Jask has been used as a departure point for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for some time, but the UN report provides the first detailed evidence about specific arms shipments tied to the port,” the WSJ reported.
Iran has long been accused of fanning the flames of violence in the Middle East through financial and military support to its network of Shia proxies in the region, specifically in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Tehran denies the accusation.
Just last December, the US Navy seized two large caches of Iranian weapons from two vessels in the Arabian sea which Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) intended to ship to the Houthi militias in Yemen, according to the US Justice Department.
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