http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/201752#.Vh0DYfldWSo
Iran Claims Houthis Destroy Saudi or Egyptian Warship Off Yemen
If true, claim suggests pro-Iranian rebels in Yemen have their hands
on sophisticated anti-ship missiles, presenting a game-changing
threat.
By Mark Langfan, Arutz Sheva UN Correspondent
First Publish: 10/12/2015, 10:30 AM
On Sunday, multiple Iranian news outlets claimed that the Yemeni-based
Iranian-proxy Houthi rebels destroyed either a Saudi or an Egyptian
warship in the Bab-el-Mandeb Straits, which lies between Yemen to the
east and Djibouti and Eritrea on the Horn of Africa.
The Bab al-Mandab Strait connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. At
its narrowest the el-Mandeb Strait is about 16 miles.
The el-Mandeb Strait is a geo-strategic choke-point and estimated to
transit about 3.3 million barrels of oil a day, or about 8% of the
world’s oil shipped daily by tanker.
The Iranian sources claim that the Houthi “forces fired rockets at a
Saudi-led coalition warship and destroyed it near al-Mukha coast in
the Yemeni province of Ta'iz.” They further alleged that the destroyed
warship was named "al-Mahrousa" and belonged to the Egyptian navy.
A search for that Egyptian ship “al Mahrousa” showed the ship to be
the current official yacht of the Egyptian President and not an
Egyptian warship.
Both of the Iranian sources also claim that on Thursday, October 7,
the Houthis forces managed to destroy another Saudi warship in the
same general area of the el-Mandeb Strait, with reports saying that
the sunken ship had repeatedly fired rockets on residential areas in
the southwestern province of Ta'izz.
If the reports are true, as opposed to sheer propaganda, this would
represent a dramatic escalation in the war for Yemen that pits the
Iranian-backed Shiite Houthis against the Saudi Arabian-Sunni
coalition.
The Iranians has developed a highly sophisticated domestically built
anti-ship missile system named Noor reverse-engineered off of an
originalChinese C-803 design.
The current Iranian anti-ship missile has a range of about 200
kilometers, so the anti-ship missile could be fired well into the
interior of Yemen and still control the el-Mandeb Strait that is only
about 30 kilometers. In 2006, Hezbollah successfully hit the INS
Hanit, an Israeli warship, with an earlier version of the Iran/Chinese
anti-ship missile.
If these anti-ship missiles have been smuggled into Yemen to the
Houthis, this would present the Saudi-led coalition naval forces with
a catastrophic game-changing threat as they try to maintain their
naval blockade of the Houthis on the West Yemen coast.
Received on Tue Oct 13 2015 - 09:30:17 EDT