The US has sent Ukraine guns and ammunition that were intercepted over the past few years while being illegally smuggled from Iran to the Houthis in Yemen.
Last week’s delivery marks the second time that the Biden administration has transferred seized Iranian weaponry to Ukraine and comes amid uncertainty over the future of US security assistance to the eastern European country as Kyiv’s forces continue to defend against Russia’s unrelenting war machine.
Washington on April 4 transferred more than 5,000 AK-47s, machine guns, sniper rifles, RPG-7s, and over 500,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition to the Ukrainian military, US Central Command, or CENTCOM, revealed on Tuesday. “These weapons will help Ukraine defend against Russia’s invasion,” it said in a statement.
The weaponry was intercepted at sea by US and partner naval forces as it was being smuggled from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, to the Tehran-backed Houthis, which is a violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution.
Four different boats were raided in separate incidents that occurred between May 2021 and February 2023, and the US officially obtained ownership of the weaponry in December 2023 through a Department of Justice civil forfeiture claim, CENTCOM said.
Western navies in recent years have conducted several interceptions of lethal weaponry bound to the Houthis, who have spent the past five months attacking shipping lanes off the coast of Yemen with drones and missiles. There have already been at least two such raids carried out by US forces this year alone, leading to the seizure of missile components, explosives, and other military-grade hardware.
The US “is committed to working with our allies and partners to counter the flow of Iranian lethal aid in the region by all lawful means,” CENTCOM said on Tuesday.
“Iran’s support for armed groups threatens international and regional security, our forces, diplomatic personnel, and citizens in the region, as well as those of our partners,” CENTCOM continued. “We will continue to do whatever we can to shed light on and stop Iran’s destabilizing activities.”
The US previously sent Ukraine more than 1 million rounds of 7.62mm ammunition, which can be fired from AK-47s, that it seized at sea from smugglers.
Tehran has provided Russia with security assistance, including the notorious Shahed one-way attack drones, throughout the full-scale invasion, but the transfer last fall marked the first time that Iranian weapons were given to Kyiv’s forces instead, albeit unwillingly.
Though the most recent weapons transfer on April 4 is certainly helpful for Ukraine, small arms and ammunition is not what its forces need most right now.
Kyiv has repeatedly said that it desperately seeks more air-defense systems to defend against unrelenting Russian bombardments, punishing both front-line troops and civilians in major cities.
“It is quite obvious that the air-defense capabilities available to us in Ukraine are not enough, and this is obvious to all our partners as well,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Sunday address to the nation.
“There are air-defense systems in the world that can help,” he added. “The only thing needed is the political will to transfer these systems to Ukraine.”
Ukraine has long relied on Western security assistance, including advanced air-defense capabilities and artillery ammunition, to help fuel its steadfast defense against Russia, but the future of such support is in jeopardy, as around $60 billion in US military aid remains blocked by Republican lawmakers.
War experts, as well as Ukrainian and Western officials, have warned it is imperative that Washington eventually resumes arming Kyiv, and failure to do so could be detrimental.
“Kyiv is confronted by the threat that an attritional war in the air domain will increasingly favor Russia without adequate support from the US and its allies,” experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank wrote in a late-March assessment on Russian bombing tactics and Ukraine’s strained air defenses.
They added that “Ukraine’s ability to continue to counter Russian air threats and impose costs on the Russian Aerospace Forces remains important to the outcome of the war.”
