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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Seized Chinese Weapons Raise Concerns on Iran
By ROBERT F. WORTH and C. J. CHIVERS
An Iranian dhow seized off the Yemeni coast was carrying sophisticated
Chinese antiaircraft missiles, a development that could signal an escalation
of Iran’s support to its Middle Eastern proxies, alarming other countries
in the region and renewing a diplomatic challenge to the United States.
Among the items aboard the dhow, according to a review of factory markings
on weapons and their packing crates, were 10 Chinese heat-seeking
antiaircraft missiles, most of them manufactured in 2005.
The missiles were labeled QW-1M and bore stencils suggesting that they had
been assembled at a factory represented by the state-owned China National
Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation, sanctioned by the United
States for transfers of missile technology to Pakistan and Iran.
The Chinese missiles were part of a larger shipment interdicted by American
and Yemeni forces in January, which American and Yemeni officials say was
intended for the Houthi rebels in northwestern Yemen. But the presence of
the missiles in the seized contraband complicates an already politically
delicate case.
The shipment, which officials portray as an attempt to introduce
sophisticated new antiaircraft systems into the Arabian Peninsula, has
raised concerns in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen, as the weapons would have
posed escalated risks to civilian and military aircraft alike.
And it has presented the Obama administration with a fresh example of Iran’
s apparent transfer of modern missiles from China to insurgents in the
larger regional contest between Sunni-led and Shiite-led states, in which
the American military has often been entwined.
The United States has previously accused Iran, a Shiite-led theocracy, of
sending weapons to the Houthis, who follow an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Saudi Arabia, an American ally, is considered the leading Sunni power in the
region. Both sides have aided and equipped groups or governments they deem
aligned with their interests, helping to fuel violence in Yemen, Iraq, Syria
, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Sudan and elsewhere.
Iran has rejected the allegations as “baseless and absurd.” Neither the
Iranian government nor the Chinese firm that markets QW missiles answered
written requests for comment.
The government of Yemen has asked the United Nations to investigate the
shipment and report the findings to the Security Council. Yemeni news media
reported that United Nations experts were in Yemen last week.
The analysis of the weapons’ markings and origins was based on photographs
taken when Yemeni officials briefly displayed the weapons to journalists.
Concerns over sophisticated Chinese missiles reaching Iran’s proxies have
considerable regional history. They are part of both the larger worries over
antiaircraft weapons set loose by conflicts across the Middle East in the
past decade and the lingering frustration in Washington over China’s
military aid to Iran.
In 2008, late in the Bush administration, the United States complained to
China about two similar antiaircraft missiles that were recovered from
Shiite militants in Iraq, according a diplomatic cable made public by
WikiLeaks.
“We have demarched China repeatedly on its conventional arms transfers to
Iran, urging Beijing to stop,” the cable noted.
The cable said the QW-1 missiles recovered in Iraq had been manufactured in
China in 2003.
Like the American-made Stinger, China’s QW series is part of a class of
weapons known as man-portable air-defense systems, or manpads. The cable
instructed American diplomats to warn China of the “unacceptably high risk
that any military equipment sold to Iran, especially weapons like manpads,
that are highly sought-after by terrorists, will be diverted to nonstate
actors who threaten U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as
well as civilians across the region.”
The latest discovery of Chinese manpads came after the United States Navy
detected the dhow, the Jeehan 1, as it took on cargo in an Iranian military-
controlled port. The vessel then embarked on a high-seas smuggling run,
according to accounts by Yemeni and American officials.
The vessel tied off on a pier in the harbor on Lesser Tunb Island, a tiny
spit of land just west of the Strait of Hormuz that is claimed by both Iran
and the United Arab Emirates, officials familiar with its voyage said. The
island is occupied by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
After passing eastward through the strait and heading south along the
Arabian Peninsula, the dhow was stopped on Jan. 23 by the American destroyer
Farragut and a Yemeni boarding team off the coast of Al Ghaydah.
The dhow’s Iranian crew initially insisted the vessel was Panamanian-
flagged and carried only fuel, an American official said. The military cargo
, which included many ammunition crates that had been painted over with
white or black paint, was found in hidden compartments, American officials
said.
That cargo also included 316,000 cartridges for Kalashnikov rifles, nearly
63,000 cartridges for PK machine guns or the Dragunov series of sniper
rifles, more than 12,000 cartridges for 12.7-millimeter DShK machine guns
and 95 RPG-7 launchers.
The rifle cartridges were packaged in crates strongly resembling packaging
used by Iran’s Defense Industries Organization, another firm under American
sanction, according to James Bevan, director of Conflict Armament Research,
a private arms-tracking firm that has documented the spread of Iranian
ammunition in East and West Africa.
The vessel also carried 10 SA-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles with
two gripstocks for firing them, nearly 17,000 blocks of Iranian-made C-4
plastic explosives, 48 Russian PN-14K night vision goggles, and 10 LH80A
laser range finders made, according to their placards, by the state-run Iran
Electronics Industries, also under American sanction.
The original provenance of the SA-7s was not clear, though the crates they
were in had stenciling in Bulgarian.
The captain and crew of the Jeehan 1 remain in Yemeni detention, and the
dhow has been impounded under Yemeni custody, a Yememi official said.
An American official called the shipment “deeply disturbing” and said it
“clearly appeared to violate” Security Council resolutions prohibiting
Iran from exporting arms.
Two independent arms-trafficking researchers who have reviewed photographs
and written a summary of the markings on the missiles and crates said the
weapons appeared to be of Chinese origin.
Matthew Schroeder, an analyst for the Federation of American Scientists in
Washington and the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, said that this was the first
time to his knowledge that the QW-1M had left state control.
“If so, and these missiles were indeed bound for insurgents, this shipment
is extremely worrisome, both from a regional security and a global
counterterrorism perspective,” he said.
Unlike many older shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles seen in insurgent
hands around the world, the QW-1M is believed by analysts to have a seeker
head more resistant to countermeasures intended to deceive it. | l******t
发帖数: 12659 | |
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