“Iran is a supplier of the Houthi and has provided equipment and training and expertise to other proxy organizations in the region,” a senior U.S. defense official said late Monday. “We have communicated…that we consider that activity to be unacceptable.” A spokesman for Iran’s delegation at the United Nations in New York didn’t return a request for comment.
Iran’s assistance to the Houthis is handled by some of the most elite officers in the Revolutionary Guard. The head of Tehran’s operations in the country is Abdolreza Shahlai, who once oversaw attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the Western security advisers and officials said. He is now wanted by Washington with a $15 million bounty.
The Western security advisers and officials said that the transfer of ballistic-missile technologies and training is overseen by Unit 340, which trained Houthi personnel in Iran and Lebanon and is led by Hamid Fazeli, a former head of Iran’s space-rocket program.
The Houthis have at least on one occasion used a missile that was later found in Iran’s arsenal, representing the first known instance of proxy-to-patron ballistic missile proliferation, he said.
“There is evidence to suggest that Yemen is an important battleground for Iranian weapons testing, and potential development,” he said “Iran has both an arsenal at home and an arsenal in exile.”
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