Ukraine's foreign ministry announced on Friday that since September 2022, Russia has launched 8,060 Iranian-made Shahed 136 suicide drones at Ukraine, as news of Iran’s missile deliveries to Russia dominated headlines this week.
Tom Sharpe, worked alongside the Americans in the Red Sea for two decades, witnessing their might as the most powerful navy in the world.
Despite that image and legacy, the Houthis have not been deterred by the US defensive and allied naval actions, he believes.
The Americans, and by extension the ‘West’, are failing to the Iran-backed rebels from the mountains of Yemen, he concluded.
The retired navy commander revealed on the Eye for Iran podcast that Tehran is winning against the US in the Red Sea.
“They're achieving their ends, all of them, and we're achieving none of ours. We're spending millions and millions of dollars on not winning. It's a real problem.”
Just after Oct 7, the Houthis have been attacking maritime shipping, disrupting shipping trade through the crucial Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
The Iran-backed rebel group say they are conducting the attacks in solidarity with the people of Gaza to push for a ceasefire, but Sharpe said they have only convinced a few.
According to the Joint Maritime Information Centre, the Houthis have attacked nearly 100 vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since Israel's war against Hamas began after the atrocities of Oct 7.
The rebel group released footage in August of their fighters on the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion, detonating explosives on the ship. That prompted concerns of an environmental disaster.
In early September, the US military said the Houthis attacked two crude oil tankers – the Saudi- flagged Amjad, carrying about two million barrels of oil, and the Panama- flagged Blue Lagoon in the Red Sea. The Houthis claimed responsibility for targeting the Blue Lagoon with missiles and drones.
For Sharpe, the way the US is responding to the Houthis is “unusual” given how the US Navy had been operating and their procedures over the years.
“When the USS Mason was fired at in 2017 in the same area, they shot T -Lam Tomahawks straight back almost immediately. This whole thing has been backward leaning for all sorts of political reasons, but it’s just engendered this idea that the Houthis can keep going.”
Why is it that the most powerful navy in the world cannot beat a rebel group from the mountains?
Sharpe said to “hit them hard enough to make them stop would be really difficult” and the reason is “they’ve learned so much from Iran in terms of mass maneuverability.”
The bedrock of Iran’s strategy, he said, is concealment and agility in the Persian Gulf. Sharp added, if you go after one target, which costs in the millions, the Houthis are skilled at hiding their weapons, and move it around on mobile launchers, hiding it in the mountains and villages.
The Americans would need a tremendous amount of airborne surveillance to achieve anything and that comes with huge costs with one missile used to strike a drone, amounting to around 6 million US dollars, according to Sharpe.
Another reason for a weak response from the Americans would be not to anger Iran and set off the balance of deterrence in the Middle East.
On Ward Carroll's YouTube episode, titled 'Admiral Tells the Real Truth about battling the Houthis in the Red Sea," a US Navy commander from the Dwight D Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, said he suggested more aggressive strikes on the Houthis, but he was told not to by higher command to reportedly avoid angering Iran.
Gen. Michael Kurilla, CENTCOM's commander claimed in a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that the current policies are "failing" to have the desired impact on Houthi attacks, according to an exclusive published in the Wall Street Journal.
On Eye for Iran, Sharpe also revealed that the Houthis are likely exporters of weapons, saying that they learned to reverse engineer from the Islamic Republic.
"They've become so good at this; they may well be sending it back to Iran."
For more, you can watch the full episode on YouTube or listen on Spotify, Castbox, Apple, or Amazon.
The report is based on satellite imagery given to the institute by Western intelligence officials, who say that in the past 18 months, Iranian experts who were involved in Iran’s weapons-related projects in the early 2000s have been back at work at two secret sites.
The two sites, Sanjarian and Golab Dareh, were “central” to Iran’s alleged attempts to develop and test devices and systems that could be used to build a nuclear weapon, the report says.
It’s unclear if the recent activities at these two sites are nuclear weapons-related. But there’s room for concern, the authors write, given Iran’s significant progress in uranium enrichment and its lack of transparency, as reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
US E3 warning
Earlier this week, the United States, Britain, France and Germany warned that Iran’s nuclear program could be referred to the United Nations security council within months if Tehran does not show more transparency to the UN nuclear watchdog.
The four Western powers accused Iran of failing to explain undeclared nuclear material and allow visits to alleged secret sites - activity the IAEA has said raises concern about the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.
“This board has shown considerable patience. But that patience has its limits, and we will not stand by while Iran continues to obfuscate,” they said in a joint statement at the Board of Governors meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
'Further action'
“If Iran continues to fail to provide the necessary, full and unambiguous cooperation with the agency to resolve all outstanding safeguards issues, further action by this board will be necessary,” they added.
The statement cited the IAEA’s authority to act when a member state fails to demonstrate the peaceful nature of its nuclear activities and empowers it to refer the issue to the Security Council.
Iran maintains that its nuclear program is a peaceful scientific enterprise while top adversary Israel says Tehran seeks a bomb.
Tehran has been brought before the Security Council repeatedly from 2007 to 2010 and faced several resolutions condemning the program and expanding international sanctions.
JCPOA and its unmaking
After lengthy negotiations, Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent UNSC members plus Germany) reached an agreement in 2015 in a deal by which restrictions and more rigorous inspections of its nuclear sites was agreed in exchange for sanctions relief.
That agreement fell apart in 2018 when the U.S. administration under Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew and reimposed sanctions.
Other signatories remained in the deal, but Iran scaled back its compliance and limited access to its sites, barring several IAEA inspectors from returning to the country.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi warned earlier this week that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is on the rise.
Iran’s nuclear breakout time—the time needed to produce enough 90% enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon—has likely shrunk to "one or two weeks”, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in July.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry announced on Friday that September 13 marks the anniversary of the downing of the first Iranian drone over the country.
The United States first warned in July 2022 that Iran was preparing to supply Russia with battlefield drones, and September 13 marked the anniversary of the first Shahed drone being shot down by Ukraine.
Russia soon began large scale use of the Iranian drones in attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and civilian targets. The Shahed 136 drones have been used alongside cruise and ballistic missile attacks to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. While Western nations have supplied more air defense systems to Ukraine, the cost imbalance remains significant. Shooting down the relatively cheap drones with expensive missiles drains Ukraine’s defense resources, making it a costly challenge to maintain consistent protection against the barrage of incoming threats.
Western media have reported that Russia has begun producing Iranian Shahed drones at a factory in Tatarstan. However, it remains unclear what percentage of the drones currently used are being shipped from Iran versus those manufactured domestically in Russia. The Shahed drones carry a payload of around 40 kilograms that can be devastating against soft civilian targets.
News of Iran delivering short-range ballistic missiles to Russia has dominated headline this month. Western countries are certain that up to 200 Fath-360 missiles with a range of 120 kilometers, and a 150- kilogram warhead, have arrived in Russia.
The Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with the IRGC, described the Fateh-360 missiles in October 2022 as precision-guided, solid-fuel missiles equipped with bunker-busting warheads. Tasnim maintained that the missiles were upgraded with a combined and optical guidance system, these missiles are designed to resist electronic warfare and accurately destroy targets without interference.
The United States and top European powers imposed new sanctions this week against Iran and its state carrier Iran Air for the deliveries - the first missiles Iran is alleged to have delivered to Russia since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia has been producing a new long-range attack drone with Chinese engines and parts, Reuters reported Friday, adding that the new drones have been used in attacks against Ukraine. The new drones would likely “reduce Russian reliance on Iranian drones”, sources from a European intelligence agency were quoted as telling Reuters.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday that the bloc was mulling new sanctions on Iran's aviation sector in response to the missile flights.
"The European Union has repeatedly strongly cautioned Iran against transfers of ballistic missiles to Russia," Borrel said, adding that the EU would "respond swiftly and in coordination with international partners".
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman accused the EU of acting on misinformation and warned that Western sanctions will be met with an unspecified response from the Islamic Republic. However, the government apparently allowed one well-known commentator to criticize the missile delivery in local media, and a lawmaker confirmed the news, despite denials by the foreign ministry.
Iranian government-owned media and semi-independent outlets under government control have largely remained silent on the drone and missile delivery controversy. Many Iranians resent the Islamic government’s foreign adventures that have brought on sanctions and isolation, seriously hurting the country’s economy.
