“Russia could decide to help the Houthis with their Red Sea attacks and is engaging with the Iran-backed rebels at a “serious level,” a senior US State Department official said.
The Houthis have long received extensive support from Iran, including weapons and training, which the rebels have relied on over the past year to carry out attacks on military and civilian vessels transiting key Middle Eastern shipping lanes.
But the State Department has grown increasingly concerned in recent months that the Houthis could be receiving assistance from another country: Russia, US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking told Business Insider in a recent interview.
“It does seem as though there is a fairly serious level of engagement happening,” Lenderking said of the Houthis and Russia. “We are particularly concerned about the kind of equipment that would really enable the Houthis to be more accurate in their targeting of US and other ships in the region — that would enhance the Houthi capability to strike those targets.””
“US Navy warships have twice been called upon to defend Israel from massive Iranian ballistic missile attacks and have used SM-3 interceptors to defeat the incoming threats.
The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), a key air-defense interceptor made by RTX and, for some variants, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, was first used in combat in April to shield Israel from an unprecedented attack, and then it saw combat again in October when Iran attacked a second time. The weapons, which can cost between $10 million and almost $30 million depending on the variant, were fired by American destroyers in the area.
Navy leadership has said that it needs many more SM-3s to counter threats in the Pacific, like China, but it’s burning through these weapons in conflicts in the Middle East without sufficient plans to replace them.
Archer Macy, a retired Navy admiral, told Business Insider that the SM-3 is particularly important in a fight with China because the interceptor is designed to counter China’s “apparent preference for long-range theater weapons.””
“The US and its allies have warned for years that Iran is developing pharmaceutical-based weapons in breach of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the manufacture and use of “toxic chemicals,” defined as “chemical action on life processes [that] can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals.” Treaty signatories — including Iran — are obligated to destroy existing stockpiles.
Still, evidence suggests Iran is pursuing PBAs. “In 2014, Iran’s Chemistry Department of IHU [Imam Hossein University] sought kilogram quantities of medetomidine — a [veterinary] sedative it has researched as an aerosolized incapacitant — from Chinese exporters, according to a 2023 US State Department’s report. “The Chemistry Department has little history of veterinary or even medical research, and the quantities sought (over 10,000 effective doses) were inconsistent with the reported end use of research.”
In September 2023, Iranian anti-government hackers “posted confidential documents detailing an Iranian military university’s development of grenades meant to disseminate medetomidine,” the State Department said.
Of particular concern were references in Iranian literature to the 2002 Dubrovka incident, when Russian security forces pumped pharmaceutical-based gas — probably fentanyl or carfentanyl, another synthetic opioid vastly more potent — into a crowded Moscow theater to subdue Chechen rebels who had taken almost a thousand hostages. Commandos then stormed the building and killed the incapacitated rebels — but the gas also killed more than 130 hostages.”
““If North Korea attempts to use nuclear weapons, it will face the resolute and overwhelming response of our military and the (South Korea)-U.S. alliance,” President Yoon Suk Yeol told thousands of troops gathered at a military airport near Seoul. “That day will be the end of the North Korean regime.”
“The North Korean regime must abandon the delusion that nuclear weapons will protect them,” Yoon said.
During the ceremony, the South Korean military displayed about 340 military equipment and weapons systems. Among them was its most powerful Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile, which observers say is capable of carrying about 8 tons of a conventional warhead that can penetrate deep into the earth and destroy underground bunkers in North Korea. It was the first time for South Korea to disclose that missile.
The U.S. flew a long-range B-1B bomber during the ceremony in an apparent demonstration of its security commitment to its Asian ally. South Korea also flew some of its most advanced fighter jets.
Since taking office in 2002, Yoon, a conservative, has put a stronger military alliance with the U.S. and an improved trilateral Seoul-Washington-Tokyo security cooperation at the center of his security polices to cope with North Korea’s advancing nuclear program. In recent years, North Korea has performed a provocative of missile tests and threatened to use nuclear weapons preemptively in potential conflicts with South Korea and the United States.
Last month, concerns about North Korea’s bomb program further grew after it published photos of a secretive facility to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. It was North Korea’s first unveiling of a uranium-enrichment facility since it showed one at the country’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex to visiting American scholars in 2010.
South Korean officials say North Korea will likely try to further dial up tensions with provocative weapons tests ahead of the U.S. election to increase its leverage in future diplomacy with a new U.S. government. Experts say North Korea likely thinks an expanded nuclear arsenal would help it win bigger U.S. concessions like extensive sanctions relief.”
“Russia has received shipments of short-range ballistic missiles from Iran, US officials confirmed on Tuesday, warning that these weapons could be used against Ukrainian cities within weeks.
The delivery marks the latest transfer of foreign weapons to Russia as it continues to rely on other pariah states like Iran and North Korea for military support to fuel its ongoing war efforts in Ukraine.”
“North Korea’s provision of weapons has strengthened Russia’s hand in Ukraine by allowing it to keep its arsenals stocked at home, Germany’s top military official said during a visit to South Korea on Monday.
Chief of Defence General Carsten Breuer said Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have reached out to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for weapons if they were not useful.
“It’s about increasing the production of weapons for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, it’s also strengthening Russia by making it possible for them to keep their stocks like they are,” Breuer told reporters in the South Korean capital Seoul.
Ukraine and the United States, among other countries and independent analysts, say that Kim is helping Russia in the war against Ukraine by supplying rockets and missiles in return for economic and other military assistance from Moscow.
North Korea has shipped at least 16,500 containers of munitions and related materiel to Russia since September last year, and Russia had launched more than 65 of those missiles at targets in Ukraine, Robert Koepcke, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, said in a speech last week.
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied direct arms transfers, which would violate United Nations embargoes.”
“Iran recently transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to use in the war against Ukraine, according to two sources familiar with the intelligence, completing a delivery that US and Western officials had warned was in the works for almost a year.
It is not clear when exactly the missiles were delivered, but their transfer comes as Russia has intensified its missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and as Ukraine braces for large-scale Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure this winter. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told allies at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany on Friday that Ukraine urgently needed more air defense systems.”