Confessions by detained sailors have revealed the smuggling routes used by the Houthi militants in Yemen to smuggle weapons from Iran.
Yemeni forces arrested in July seven people on board a ship they intercepted in the Red Sea. The sailors revealed the details of a significant smuggling network run by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) that ran routes through Beirut, Damascus, Somalia and Djibouti to reach the Houthi-held ports of Hodeidah.
The confessions were aired by al-Joumhouriya television that is run by the Yemeni national resistance that is based on the western Yemeni coast.
Four sailors confessed to smuggling arms shipments from Iran’s Bandar Abbas port to Hodeidah. They have been identified as Amer Masawa, Ali Qassir, Issa Qassir and Abdullah Afifi.
Masawa revealed that a Houthi official in Hodeidah had tasked him back in 2023 to return a ship from Iran to Yemen. Masawa headed to Houthi-held Sanaa with others where they were granted passports. From there, they boarded a Yemenia Airways flight to the Jordanian capital Amman.
From there, they continued on to the Lebanese capital Beirut where a man in his 60s escorted them to an apartment that was ready to receive them. They remained there for three days before being transported by car to the Syrian capital Damascus and from there they flew to Tehran, Iran.
In Tehran, a man escorted the travelers to a Houthi camp run by leading Houthi member Mohammed al-Talebi. Yemeni authorities identify him as a Houthi representative of the smuggling network from Iran.
After ten days in Tehran, they were flown to Bandar Abbas city where they stayed in a villa owned by Talebi who explained to them their mission. Soon after, they were joined by ten Somali sailors.
Oman route
The second sailor, Ali Qassir, recalled how he was recruited by people affiliated with a Houthi official at Hodeidah’s al-Salif port, Hussein al-Attas, to bring a ship from Iran to Yemen.
Ali Qassir and others were taken to the Jowf province east of Sanaa where they met with another smuggler who escorted them along a desert route through Jawf, Marib and Hadramawt to the al-Mahra province bordering Oman.
At the Sarfait border crossing, a smuggler escorted them to Oman where another person took them to Salalah city. Three days later, they were transported to Muscat where they were flown to Bandar Abbas.
They were taken to a camp run by the Houthis and where they joined their fellow sailors, as well as the ten Somalis. Talebi then set about explaining their missions.
Issa Qassir, Ali’s brother, said they were divided into two groups to sail with the illegal cargo back to Yemen. They were informed that they were transporting children’s toys, power generators and boxes of cancer treatment, which they were instructed must remain refrigerated.
As they sailed off the Omani coast, their vessel broke down. They contacted Omani authorities that transported them to Muscat, where they stayed for ten days until the ship was repaired, after which they headed to Yemen.
A third sailor said the people on the ship were unaware of the true nature of the cargo they were carrying, assuming it was battering and construction equipment. The coastguard eventually stopped their vessel and boarded it to discover the illegal shipment that included rockets and other weapons.
Further confessions revealed that the IRGC used three smuggling routes from Iran. The first was a direct route from Bandar Abbas to al-Salif, the second ran through Somalia and the third through Djibouti to al-Salif.
The sailors revealed that international patrols in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea never intercepted their vessels. While sailing at night, they would cross the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and sail west of the international shipping route to avoid detection by Yemen’s coastguard and national resistance.
