Article author:
Associated Press
Jon Gambrell
Dubai, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The US Navy's Middle East-based Fifth Fleet helps sailors intercept weapons Beginning to reward information, drugs and other illegal transport throughout the region amid tensions over Iran's nuclear program and the armament of Yemen's Houthi rebels Tehran.
The Fifth Fleet's decision to provide cash and other goods for practical information in the Persian Gulf and other strategic waterways, while avoiding direct reference to Iran, is unstable. It is still held in Yemen, which may increase the pressure on the flow of weapons to the Houthi as a stagnant fire.
The Houthis has already threatened a new Allied MTF organized by the Red Sea's Fifth Fleet, but there was no attack by the Iranian-backed Navy at the time. rice field. Since then.
Meanwhile, the Fifth Fleet states that in 2021, the Fifth Fleet and its partners seized $ 500 million in drugs alone. This is above the total for the last four years. The Fifth Fleet also intercepted 9,000 weapons during the same period. This is three times the number seized in 2020.
"Be careful with unstable activities," Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, told The Associated Press. "There is no doubt that we saw a surge in success last year in seizing both illegal drugs and weapons. This is another step in our efforts to enhance maritime security in the region.
The new Fifth Fleet initiative will begin on Tuesday through the Department of Defense's incentive program. The attack was launched on September 11, 2001. With almost no ground wars across the region, the Fifth Fleet decided to use a program to patrol the waterways of the Middle East.
Hawkins said operators fluent in Arabic, English and Persian will use the hotline and the Navy will get hints online in Dari and Pashto. According to Hawkins, the payment could be $ 100,000 or equivalent vehicles, boats, or food for tips that also include information about planned attacks targeting Americans.
Does the increase in Fifth Fleet attacks represent a return to post-pandemic transport of the coronavirus, or an overall increase in the number of illegal transports in the region? It is unknown whether it represents. Traffickers typically use stateless dhows, which are traditional wooden dhows common in the Middle East, to transport drugs and weapons.
One of the destinations of the weapon seems to be Yemen. The Houthi occupied Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, in September 2014 and expelled the internationally recognized government. Armed with US weapons and intelligence, a Saudi-led coalition participated in the war on the side of the Yemeni government in exile in March 2015. Years of decisive battles have put the poorest nations in the Arab world at risk of hunger. The ceasefire that began around the month of Ramadan's Holy Muslim Moon seems to be still ongoing.
Despite the UN security board embargoing weapons on Yemen, Iran has long turned rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, missiles and other weapons into the Houthi. I have transferred it. Iran has denied the Houthis's armament, but independent experts, Western nations, and UN experts have traced the components back to Iran. When asked if a new seizure could increase tensions with Iran, Hawkins listed the weapons and narcotics that the Navy wanted to intercept under the program.
"That's what we want," the commander said. "It is not for the stability and security of the region."
Iran's mission to the United Nations did not respond to requests for comment. The US Navy and Iran continue to have tense encounters in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, where one-fifth of all oil traded passes.
The rewards program shows the latest initiative under Bradley Cooper, Vice Admiral of the Fifth Fleet, who launched the Drone Task Force last year in tension with Iran.
Cooper's other endeavor, the Red Sea Task Force, has been criticized by the Houthis in the past. A group of rebels, who have repeatedly denied Iran's armament, did not respond to requests for comment on the new Navy program.
However, Houthi official Ali Alkahom tweeted last week that rebels are monitoring increased US activity in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
"This opens up defense and conflict options," he said. "They and their demonic projects are not in this area."
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The Associated Press writer Ahmed Al-Haj in Sana'a, Yemen contributed to this report.
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