Commanders from Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Lebanon's Hezbollah are on the ground in Yemen helping to direct and oversee Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, four regional and two Iranian sources told Reuters.
Tehran has provided advanced drones, anti-ship cruise missiles, precision-strike ballistic missiles and medium-range missiles to the Houthis, who started targeting commercial vessels in November in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, the sources said.
IRGC commanders and advisers are also providing know-how, data and intelligence support to determine which of the dozens of vessels travelling through the Red Sea each day are destined for Israel and constitute Houthi targets, all the sources said.
The attacks have affected global shipping between Asia and Europe through the Bab al-Mandab strait off Yemen. That has triggered US and British air strikes on Houthi targets in the country, opening a new theater of conflict linked to the war in Gaza.
The Gaza conflict has also sparked clashes between Israel and Hezbollah militants along the Lebanese border, as well as attacks by Iran-linked groups on US targets in Iraq and Syria.
"The Revolutionary Guards have been helping the Houthis with military training (on advanced weapons)," an Iranian insider told Reuters. "A group of Houthi fighters were in Iran last month and were trained in an IRGC base in central Iran to get familiar with the new technology and the use of missiles."
The person said Iranian commanders had travelled to Yemen as well and set up a command center in the capital Sanaa for the Red Sea attacks which is being run by the senior IRGC commander responsible for Yemen.
According to two former Yemeni army sources, there is a clear presence of IRGC and Hezbollah members in Yemen. They are responsible for supervising military operations, training and reassembling missiles smuggled into Yemen as separate pieces, the two people said.
