Yemen fighters allied to exiled government claim seizure of tons of Iranian-supplied Houthi weapons
For years, the U.S. Navy and other Western naval forces have seized Iranian arms being sent to the Houthis, who have held Yemen's capital since 2014 and have been attacking ships in the Red Sea over the Israel-Hamas war.
The seizure announced Wednesday, however, marked the first major interdiction conducted by the National Resistance Force, a group of fighters allied to Tariq Saleh, a nephew of Yemen's late strongman leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The Houthis and Iran did not immediately acknowledge the seizure, which the National Resistance Force said happened in late June.
A short video package released by the force appeared to show anti-ship missiles, the same kinds used in the Houthis' recent attacks that sank two ships in the Red Sea, killing at least four people as others remain missing.
The footage also appeared to show Iranian-made Type 358 anti-aircraft missiles. The Houthis claim they downed 26 U.S. MQ-9 drones over the past decade of the Yemen war, likely with those missiles. The majority of those losses having been acknowledged by the U.S. military.
The footage also appeared to show drone components, warheads and other weapons. The force said it would release a detailed statement in the coming hours.
Iran denies arming the rebels, though Tehran-manufactured weaponry has been found on the battlefield and in sea shipments heading to Yemen for the Shiite Houthi rebels despite a United Nations arms embargo.
The Houthis seized Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in September 2014 and forced the internationally recognized government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition armed with U.S. weaponry and intelligence entered the war on the side of Yemen's exiled government in March 2015. Years of inconclusive fighting has pushed the Arab world's poorest nation to the brink of famine.
The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
13 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
With sanctions looming, Trump's envoy to Russia meets with Putin
But a few hours after the meeting's end, Trump announced that he would increase his tariffs on India to 50 percent, describing the move as a penalty for purchasing Russian oil. Trump also ordered his administration to determine whether other countries are importing Russian oil and recommend whether they should face similar tariffs. Advertisement Trump said Tuesday that, depending on the results of Witkoff's meeting, the United States could impose new sanctions on Russia and countries that buy its fossil fuels. A White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting, said Trump's timetable was unchanged and that the secondary sanctions he has threatened were still expected to be implemented Friday. Ushakov said Witkoff had passed along 'signals' from Trump and that Putin had conveyed 'some signals' back. He added that he would offer more details once Witkoff had briefed Trump. Trump wrote in his post on social media that he had shared an update of Witkoff's meeting with several European allies, and said that 'everyone agrees this War must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come.' Advertisement Previous meetings between Witkoff and Putin drew praise from the Kremlin without leading to any breakthroughs in stopping the Ukraine war, which Trump describes as his primary goal in diplomacy with Russia. But Witkoff's visit Wednesday held particular weight because it came just days before a deadline imposed by Trump for Putin to make peace. Brief video footage released by the Kremlin from the meeting's start showed a smiling Putin greeting Witkoff with a warm handshake as Ushakov looked on from behind an oval conference table. Earlier Wednesday, Witkoff was met at Moscow's Vnukovo airport by Kirill Dmitriev, an economic aide to Putin who has been his main counterpart at the Kremlin. Russian state television then showed Dmitriev and Witkoff taking a walk in the morning sun in Zaryadye, a landscaped park just outside the Kremlin walls, before Witkoff headed into the Kremlin for his meeting with the Russian president. During his recent visits to Russia, Witkoff, a longtime personal friend of Trump who now holds the title of special envoy for peace missions, has held hourslong talks with Putin himself. That has given him extraordinary access to a Russian leader who has met with few Western officials since he invaded Ukraine, and who rarely grants audiences to foreigners who are not heads of state. Those meetings helped facilitate prisoner exchanges that freed two Americans jailed in Russia, and helped pave the way for phone calls between Putin and Trump. But none brought clear signs of progress in ending the war in Ukraine. While Trump initially appeared to give Putin the benefit of the doubt and blamed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for dragging out the three-year war, he has increasingly soured on Putin in his public comments lately. Putin, on the other hand, has sought to placate and engage with Trump without showing any willingness to compromise on his far-reaching goals in his war against Ukraine. Advertisement Trump said on July 28 that he would give Moscow 10 to 12 days to end the conflict or face a new round of financial penalties — a deadline that expires soon. Asked Tuesday whether he was still considering sanctioning countries like China that buy Russian energy, Trump said the United States would 'be doing quite a bit of that,' but suggested that Witkoff's visit would determine the next steps. Putin's forces have been advancing on the ground and have pummeled Ukraine with some of their fiercest airstrikes of the war in recent months, even as Trump has tried to negotiate peace. The United Nations said that June saw the most civilian casualties in a single month over the past three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 injured, and that preliminary data showed that 'this alarming pattern' continued in July. Overnight, Russia again hit Ukraine with drone strikes. A summer holiday resort in the Zaporizhzhia region of southeastern Ukraine was targeted, killing two people and injuring 12, including children, Ukrainian officials said. Zelensky said he discussed the details of Wednesday's call with Trump and European leaders in a separate conversation. He didn't release any of those details, but said, 'Our joint position with our partners is absolutely clear — the war must end.' Energy exports are the main source of revenue for the Russian government, though those earnings have declined as the price of Russian oil has fallen. The Russian government collected about $9.8 billion in oil and gas taxes in July, Russia's Finance Ministry said Tuesday, a 27 percent drop from a year earlier when measured in Russian currency. Advertisement This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump takes an unexpected walk on the White House roof to survey new projects
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's day began typically enough, with a television interview and a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Then it took an unexpected and unusual turn when he appeared on the roof of the White House's West Wing. Late Tuesday morning, Donald Trump emerged from a door connected to the State Dining Room and stepped onto the roof above the press briefing room and west colonnade that walls the Rose Garden. He spent nearly 20 minutes surveying the rooftop and the grounds below, including a newly paved makeover of the Rose Garden. Reporters, tipped off by the out-of-the-ordinary positioning of snipers above the Oval Office, shouted questions from below. One called out: 'Sir, why are you on the roof?' 'Taking a little walk,' Trump shouted back. 'It's good for your health.' Trump walked with a small group that included James McCrery, architect of the newly announced $200 million ballroom project. They moved slowly, with Trump frequently gesturing and pointing at the roof and grounds. Several times, he wandered toward the corner nearest the press corps, waving and cupping his hands to shout responses to shouted questions. At one point, he said he was looking at 'another way to spend my money for this country.' Later, near the end of his appearance on the roof, Trump was asked what he was going to build. He quipped, 'Nuclear missiles.' The unexpected walk on the rooftop comes as Trump looks to leave a lasting footprint on what's often referred to as 'The People's House.' He has substantially redecorated the Oval Office through the addition of golden flourishes and cherubs, presidential portraits and other items and installed massive flagpoles on the north and south lawns to fly the American flag. And last week, his administration announced that construction on a massive ballroom will begin in September and be ready before Trump 's term ends in early 2029. While Trump appeared on the West Wing, the White House has said the ballroom will be where the 'small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits.' While rare, there have been times through the years where presidents ventured out onto — and even slept on — the White House roof. To promote renewable energy, President Jimmy Carter installed 32 solar panels on the West Wing roof in the 1970s. The panels were removed during the Reagan administration. In 1910, President William Howard Taft had a sleeping porch built on the roof to escape Washington's hot summer nights.
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
AI isn't having a '90s internet moment, it's more like '60s personal computing, and it needs one special company to kickstart the revolution
Fresh on the heels of the announcement of President Trump's AI Action Plan, China released a global action plan for artificial intelligence, calling for international cooperation on tech development and regulation. China's plan, announced at the annual state-organized World Artificial Intelligence Conference, focused on how China plans to partner with the Global South to promote AI standards around the world. It's undeniable that AI is going to make a significant impact on our economy. But there's always a chance AI could be another bubble. I lived through the internet expansion of the '90s, and AI is on pace to be much bigger, more disruptive, and more impactful. AI has the potential to impact every human being and company in the world. In order to achieve this and ensure that Western values drive AI adoption, we have three big things to fix before AI can become the 'new internet' that changes every interaction we have. Accessing critical AI infrastructure is hindered by the following fundamental problems: crushing costs, extreme concentration, and insufficient capacity. The U.S. AI Action Plan framed it as, 'Currently, a company seeking to use largescale compute must often sign long-term contracts with hyperscalers—far beyond the budgetary reach of most academics and many startups.' Further, data transfer fees, the costs a company faces when moving its own data out of a cloud system, strangle competition by creating artificial barriers that have nothing to do with technical merits. Part of what made the Internet open to all was the common TCP/IP standard, that lets any computer talk to any other computer. This ability to connect outside of the (then) walled garden of AOL opened up new business uses while creativity flourished and capabilities improved rapidly. If we want AI to grow and succeed like the Internet, we need the global standards and open exchange that can make accessing it as easy as sending a packet from one computer to the next. Beijing has already published several action plans that help provide direct subsidies to AI companies and make vast datasets available to national champions through public-private partnerships, providing common approaches for Chinese companies to follow. The Chinese government has announced a state-run exchange to catalog and market compute. For too long, America's fragmented approach and lack of national strategy has risked ceding our current AI leadership permanently. By setting the standards that will help us stay ahead in AI, we can create the type of market-driven solutions that will quickly bring the power of American AI to more of the world's population. The '40s, the '60s, the '90s and today Before the internet, we can look further back to the age of the mainframe and the transition to the PC for insight. In the 1940s, computing power was so expensive that only governments could afford it, housing room-sized machines in hangars and partnering with universities for access. Today, my pocket-sized phone is more powerful than those early supercomputers. What changed? IBM led the commoditization of computer hardware while building a profitable business. Microsoft and Linux created operating system standards. These changes rolled out over decades, but today's technology moves so much faster, and calls for a faster response to stay competitive. Today, AI sits where computing did in the 1960s — powerful but accessible only to those with massive resources. We need our own IBM PC revolution for artificial intelligence, with open standards and exchange, so we can move as quickly as possible to win the global war for AI. This shift won't happen just through government mandate, nor should it. It requires market forces guided by open standards that make AI resources truly accessible and interoperable. When companies can easily compare compute options and move workloads between providers, competition will drive market-efficient prices and improve service. When developers can access standardized AI infrastructure without months of advance planning, innovation accelerates. This approach serves America's strategic interests. When our allies and our adversaries can easily adopt US-developed AI standards and infrastructure, we strengthen the entire democratic technology ecosystem. President Trump's move to allow China to purchase NVIDIA H20 processors helps us in the long-term, because it helps encourage Chinese developers to build on American technology. When adversaries rely on an American technology stack, we gain influence far beyond what export controls can achieve while promoting our democratic values. The government has a role here to ensure markets function competitively. Strategic compute reserves could provide emergency capacity during crises, similar to our strategic oil reserve. Procurement policies can prioritize small and medium enterprises over concentrated providers, especially government procurement. Standards development can prevent the kind of fragmentation that has historically hampered American technology leadership. This is the time for swift action. President Trump has promised to keep America 'the hottest country' in technology and his AI Action Plan positions us for success. China has a plan that they've been working on for years. Delivering on the promise of AI for the Western world requires not only a government commitment to leadership but also creating the market conditions where American innovation can flourish – open, competitive, and accessible to everyone willing to build the future. The opinions expressed in commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. This story was originally featured on
