The US Department of Justice announced in a statement on Wednesday that it has seized two large caches of Iranian arms in the Arabian Sea destined for Houthi militants in Yemen. The U.S. Navy had seized two years ago the cache of weapons from two vessels in the Arabian Sea while conducting routine maritime security operations, which included 171 surface-to-air missiles and eight anti-tank missiles, as well as approximately 1.1 million barrels of Iranian petroleum products. The arms shipments, which were destined for Houthi militants in Yemen, have been orchestrated by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated foreign terrorist organization. The U.S. Navy had also seized Iranian petroleum products from four foreign-flagged tankers in or around the Arabian Sea while en route to Venezuela. The US Department of Justice stated that these actions represent the government's largest-ever forfeitures of fuel and weapons shipments from Iran. The seized petroleum products pursuant to a court order have been sold by the U.S. government, while indicating that the net proceeds of that sale, which is amounted to $26,681,397.67, might be directed, in whole or in part, to the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund. The Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division said that the actions of the United States in these two cases strike a resounding blow to the Government of Iran and to the criminal networks supporting Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. On his part, Assistant Director Alan E. Kohler Jr. of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, emphasized: "The Government of Iran's sponsorship of terrorism has left innocent victims in its wake and its attempts to support regimes dangerous to the United States and our allies will be met with the full force of the law." According to the court, the IRGC constituted an entity engaged in planning or perpetrating a federal crime of terrorism against the United States. The court granted the government's motion for default judgment and issued a final order of forfeiture on Nov. 15 after the Justice Department filed a complaint seeking to forfeit the seized weapons in the U.S. District Court, Columbia. The complaint alleged that the arms shipments were part of an IRGC trafficking network designed to distribute illicit weapons to the Houthi movement in Yemen. It is noteworthy that the U.S. Navy Central Command (NAVCENT) seized weapons from two flagless vessels in the Arabian Sea on Nov. 25, 2019, and Feb. 9, 2020, respectively.
