Iranian Vessel Seized in Yemeni Waters

Socotra’s territorial waters (Getty)
Socotra’s territorial waters (Getty)
TT

Iranian Vessel Seized in Yemeni Waters

Socotra’s territorial waters (Getty)
Socotra’s territorial waters (Getty)

Yemen's caretaker minister of fishery, Fahd Kafayn, said Thursday that Yemeni naval forces stopped an Iranian vessel off the coast of the Mahrah governorate in the southeast.

Kafayn wrote on his Twitter account that the Iranian vessel was seized on Thursday morning while on an illegal fishing mission.

The Global Fishing Watch and the Trygg Mat Tracking (TMT) that provide information and analyses on fisheries to combat illegal fishing, said in a report released end of June that nearly 200 Iranian vessels were detected doing illegal fishing in Somali and Yemeni waters.

The report said that Iran uses Yemen and Somalia low maritime security to practice one of the world’s largest illegal fishing operations.

Yemen’s government has frequently accused Iran of using fishing ships in Yemeni territorial waters to cover its smuggling of arms, ballistic missiles and drones to the Tehran-backed Houthi group.

Information Minister Muammar Al-Eryani had said the report proves that during the 2019-2020 fishing season, a 192-strong Iranian fleet was illegally operating in the Northwest Indian Ocean, including 144 in Yemeni waters with what appears to be behavior consistent with fishing activity.

Previous Yemeni reports said that the Yemeni authorities have seized 13 Iranian vessels inside Yemeni territorial waters over the past three years, including nine ships seized in the Socotra archipelago.
The vessels are among the 43 ships that illegally entered Yemeni waters and practiced various prohibited activities during 2016.

The legitimate government had several times seized ships loaded with arms on their way to the Houthi militias, and other vessels engaged in prohibited activities under the cover of fishing.

In previous statements, Eryani said the prohibited activities of vessels represented a blatant attack on Yemeni fisheries and water, adding that the legitimate government, in coordination with the Arab coalition and through diplomatic channels, was and continues to face these Iranian aggressions.



Trump Victory Expected to Boost Musk's Mars Dream

US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are seen at the Firing Room Four after the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, May 30, 2020. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are seen at the Firing Room Four after the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, May 30, 2020. (Reuters)
TT

Trump Victory Expected to Boost Musk's Mars Dream

US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are seen at the Firing Room Four after the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, May 30, 2020. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are seen at the Firing Room Four after the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, May 30, 2020. (Reuters)

Elon Musk's dream of transporting humans to Mars will become a bigger national priority under the administration of US President-elect Donald Trump, sources said, signaling big changes for NASA's moon program and a boost for Musk's SpaceX.

NASA's Artemis program, which aims to use SpaceX's Starship rocket to put humans on the moon as a proving ground for later Mars missions, is expected to focus more on the Red Planet under Trump and target uncrewed missions there this decade, according to four people familiar with Trump's burgeoning space policy agenda, according to Reuters.

Targeting Mars with spacecraft built for astronauts is not only more ambitious than focusing on the moon, but is also fraught with risk and potentially more expensive. Musk, who danced onstage at a Trump rally wearing an "Occupy Mars" T-shirt in October, spent $119 million on Trump's White House bid and has successfully elevated space policy at an unusual time in a presidential transition. In September, weeks after Musk endorsed Trump, the latter told reporters that the moon was a "launching pad" for his ultimate goal to reach Mars.

"At a minimum, we're going to get a more realistic Mars plan, you'll see Mars being set as an objective," said Doug Loverro, a space industry consultant who once led NASA's human exploration unit under Trump, who served as U.S. president from 2017 to 2021.

SpaceX, Musk and the Trump campaign did not immediately return requests for comment. A NASA spokeswoman said it "wouldn’t be appropriate to speculate on any changes with the new administration." Plans could still change, the sources added, as the Trump transition team takes shape in the coming weeks. Trump launched the Artemis program in 2019 during his first term and it was one of the few initiatives maintained under the administration of President Joe Biden. Trump space advisers want to revamp a program they will argue has languished in their absence, the sources said. Musk, who also owns electric-vehicle maker Tesla and brain-chip startup Neuralink, has made slashing government regulation and trimming down bureaucracy another core basis of his Trump support.

For space, the sources said, Musk's deregulation desires are likely to trigger changes at the Federal Aviation Administration's commercial space office, whose oversight of private rocket launches has frustrated Musk for slowing down SpaceX's Starship development.

The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

NASA under Trump, the sources said, is likely to favor fixed-price space contracts that shift greater responsibility onto private companies and scale back over-budget programs that have strained the Artemis budget.

That could spell trouble for the only rocket NASA owns, the Space Launch System rocket (SLS), whose roughly $24 billion development since 2011 has been led by Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Cancelling the program, some say, would be difficult since it would cost thousands of jobs and leave the U.S. even more dependent on SpaceX.

Boeing and Northrop did not immediately return a request for comment.

Musk, whose predictions have sometimes proven overly ambitious, said in September that SpaceX will land Starship on Mars in 2026 and a crewed mission will follow in four years' time. Trump has said at campaign rallies that he has discussed these ideas with Musk.

Many industry experts see this timeline as improbable.

"Is it possible for Elon to put a Starship on the surface of Mars in a one-way mission by the end of Trump's term? Absolutely, he certainly could do that," said Scott Pace, the top space policy official during Trump's first term.

"Is that a manned mission on Mars? No," Pace added. "You have to walk before you run."