Mystery deepens over Iranian cargo ships en route to Yemen

FT.com

Over the past week, Saudi Arabian and US warships have closely tracked the Iran Shahed, a 3,000-tonne Iranian cargo vessel, as it steamed towards Yemen, escorted by two Revolutionary Guard destroyers, in a maritime standoff that underscores the mounting geopolitical tensions in the Gulf.

Riyadh fears the Shahed is laden with arms to bolster Yemen’s Houthi rebellion, drawing the Saudis and their allies deeper into a bloody backyard conflict they can ill-afford to lose. But Tehran appears to have scored something of a propaganda coup by announcing on Thursday that it would allow UN inspectors to verify the humanitarian contents of the ship, presumably to show that Saudi concerns are unfounded.

The Shahed’s voyage follows months of suspicious shipping activity between Iran and Yemen amid mounting claims from regional western diplomats and intelligence officials of Tehran’s complicity in the Yemeni civil war.

Maritime data obtained by the Financial Times show that at least four large cargo ships, with a combined capacity of more than 15,000 tonnes, made a series of highly unusual and undeclared trips between Iran and Yemeni ports controlled by the Houthis in the first few months of this year.

Tehran has staunchly denied it has provided arms to Yemen and evidence to support claims to the contrary has been scant. While the cargo of the four ships cannot be verified, their pattern of behaviour is nevertheless striking.

All four undertook voyages to transport cargo from the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran to Yemen’s Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida — a route none had plied before — after the Houthi capture of Sana’a in January. The ships changed their ensigns, turned off their tracking devices at key points during their voyages, registered false information in international shipping logs and met unidentified craft mid-ocean.

Details of their activity were provided to the FT by Windward, a maritime intelligence service set up by two former Israeli naval officers. The data comprise information from dozens of non-public and proprietary shipping registers as well as public information and satellite and radio tracking logs that Windward has compiled. Where possible the information has been independently corroborated by the FT.

“If you look at any one piece of these ships’ activities by itself it might seem legitimate, but if you look at all of it together, there’s no way it can be,” said Ami Daniel, the chief executive of Windward. “The problem is that no one sees all of this data normally. We are the only ones who have compiled it all . . . this has been going on under the noses of Nato patrols in the Gulf.”

In one example, a cargo ship — a 7,000 tonne vessel more than 100m in length — left Southeast Asia, its sole historical area of operation, in December 2014 after changing its identity and registered domicile. It arrived in Karachi, Pakistan in mid-January, departing at the end of the month. It disappeared at sea for nine days after turning off its satellite tracking equipment but reappeared in Iran’s Bandar Abbas in mid-February, where it was fully loaded. It left the same day and reappeared off the Yemeni coast, outside the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida on February 23. It remained anchored in Yemeni waters for a month, before heading back towards Iran.

“This behaviour is neither logical or economical —it indicates that there is a sovereign, not a commercial interest at stake,” said Mr Daniel.