The military activities of the Iranian "Quds Force" in Yemen
English - Saturday 05 February 2022 الساعة 03:04 pm
Sana'a, NewsYemen, Muhammad Yahya:
While the Iranian diplomacy has repeatedly stated that Tehran has no direct hand in the Yemen war, its military leaders have been repeating that the Houthi forces are among six armies outside Iranian borders that will fight for Iran, according to what was stated by the leader of the Revolutionary Guards, Ghulam Rashid.
Rashid indicated that the dead, Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the "Quds Force" of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, told the Iranian joint military command, before he was killed by a US raid in January 2020, that he had established six armies outside Iranian territory, including the Houthi militia in Yemen.
The influence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the field of foreign policy is extended through the "Quds Force", which was established in 1990 in what was known at the time as attempts to export the Iranian revolution. The Legion included military formations tasked with supervising the Iranian regime’s foreign operations, to become the armed arm of Iran abroad, by supporting armed militias and leaders loyal to Tehran. Iraq, Syria and Yemen, whose presence in Yemen was reported after the outbreak of the Decisive Storm against the Houthis in 2015.
According to identical sources, Soleimani oversaw the establishment, arming and training of armed militias that follow and command the Revolutionary Guards, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, the Shiite militia in Syria, and the Houthi militia in Yemen.
With the Houthi militia taking control of the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014, the generals of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards quickly announced the good news, sometimes by announcing the fall of the fourth Arab capital, Sana’a, under their control after Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad, and sometimes with intensive visits by Iranian Revolutionary Guards military experts to Sana’a.
Observers believe that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's strategy is to reach Yemen to be close to the rich Gulf states, and the Houthis were the "necessary tool" for such a strategy.
In December 2019, Washington offered a financial reward of $15 million for anyone who would provide any information on Abdalredha Shahlai, a leader in the Revolutionary Guards who is in Yemen.
Washington considers him to be involved in terrorist acts and in the transfer of weapons to the Houthis, and in the case of the attempted assassination of the Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, inside a restaurant in the American city of Georgetown in 2011.
Shahlani survived an American raid targeting him in Yemen, on January 3, 2020, the same day that the raid in which Qassem Soleimani was killed in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, took place.
The US State Department indicated that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard committed the most heinous atrocities against the Yemeni people, and that their greatest criminal, Abdalredha Shahlai, was in Sanaa.
Observers believe that the presence of a Revolutionary Guard commander of this size to establish Iranian influence in Yemen indicates the importance of this country for Iran in the region, and its keenness to control matters there.
Political analysts talked about Abd alredha Shahlai and Hassan Erlo, the former ambassador of Tehran to the Houthis, who died in mysterious circumstances last December, that they were working in Yemen on behalf of the Revolutionary Guards, and they had close relations with Soleimani, at a time when there were doubts that they were the same person, but sources An American woman denied that "Erlo and Abdalredha Shahlai are not the same person."
And by declaring Earlo, a leader in the Revolutionary Guards, as Tehran’s ambassador to the Houthis in 2020, a US State Department statement said, “Sending Airlo to Sanaa sends a signal that the Quds Force intends to increase its support for the Houthis, thus complicating international efforts to reach a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
International reports indicate that Iran has begun to increase aid to the Houthis with the intensification of the war in Yemen, through the Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which provided many types of weapons and systems to the Houthis.
A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) explained that the Quds Force and the Lebanese Hezbollah trained Houthi militants, including improving their military tactics, and helping to assemble, use and maintain missiles, drones, weapons and other systems.
The report pointed out that Iran provided the Houthis with weapons and technology for anti-tank guided missiles, drones, 122mm Katyusha missiles, MANPADS, RDX high explosives and ballistic missiles, and the Houthis also developed a modified version of cruise missiles. With the help of Tehran, he pointed out that Iran had trained the Houthis to use drones within its borders, including the Kashan base near the city of Isfahan.
He continued, "The Quds Force does not use air and land bridges to transport weapons and equipment to Yemen, but rather uses many maritime smuggling routes. Iran often dismantled weapons systems, put them on boats, and transported them through ports."
Iran continued to provide military support to the terrorist Houthi militia, whether through arms supplies or training, expertise and consultancy through the Quds Force or Hezbollah operatives. The Houthi militia supplied weapons through maritime smuggling from Iranian ports to Yemeni territorial waters or through the coasts of the Horn of Africa. Several times, the legitimate government seized Iranian ships loaded with weapons for the militia, including the two ships, “Chihan 1” and “Chihan 2,,” which were carrying missiles and anti-aircraft platforms trying to enter Yemen, and worked to transfer weapons to Saada, and the Arab coalition forces seized Iranian ships in the Arabian Sea several times.
In March 2021, the new commander of the Quds Force, Ismail Qaani, in his speech at the Ayatollahs Cultural Complex in Tehran, praised the terrorist operations of the Houthi militia against Saudi Arabia.
Qaani acknowledged that the former commander of the Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, and his deputy, Muhammad Hijazi, together established what he described as the "resistance fronts", in reference to the armed factions and militias supported by Iran, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
It is worth noting that it was the new commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Ismail Qaani, who spoke about the Houthis' missiles with a range of 400 km, and that Iran would continue to support them.
In April 2021, the economic assistant to the commander of the "Quds Force", Rustam Qassemi, revealed for the first time the activities of Iranian military advisors in Yemen in support of the Houthis against the Arab coalition.
Qassemi said, in an interview with RT, that there are currently "a small number of advisors from the Revolutionary Guards, whose number does not exceed the fingers of a hand" in Yemen, adding that the Revolutionary Guards provided weapons to the Houthi militia at the beginning of the war, and trained members of its forces to manufacture weapons.
Qassemi added: "We have provided limited military consultations, and all Yemenis have weapons thanks to our assistance. We helped them with the technology to manufacture weapons, but weapons are made in Yemen, they manufacture them themselves. These drones and missiles are Yemeni manufacture."
In 2012, countries, including Canada, included the Quds Force on its list of terrorist organizations, due to what it said was its involvement in arming extremist organizations, at a time when the United States imposed sanctions on it, like 12 other Iranian entities, which the US Treasury designated it as a “terrorist organization.”
According to observers, the Houthi group's association with the Revolutionary Guard appeared early during the war with the Yemeni army in the group's stronghold in Saada, as the training, military expertise and literature on which the group was working were a duplicate of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Although the military relationship between the Revolutionary Guards and the Houthis is old, it remained hidden, but it began to become more evident in 2013, when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard intensified the smuggling of weapons and experts to the Houthis.
