Victor Ezeja
The United States government has handed 1.1 million rounds of rifle ammunition seized from an Iranian ship to Ukraine as support for its war with Russia.
The rounds were seized by the US Central Command (Centcom) naval forces in December off of a vessel the command described as a “stateless dhow,” a traditional wooden sailing ship, that was being used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to support the Houthis in Yemen’s civil war in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution.
In an X post on Wednesday evening, Centcom, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said the 1.1 million 7.62mm rounds were transferred to the Ukrainian armed forces on Monday.
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While Ukraine will use the 7.62 mm ammunition seized from Iran in its fight against Russia, Iran has been supplying Russia with the Shahed 136 drones that its forces have used in Ukraine against both civilian and military targets.
The US government added that it obtained ownership of these munitions on July 20 through the department of justice’s civil forfeiture claims against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian armed forces tasked with preserving the country’s government.
Iran backs the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s ongoing civil war, but arms transfers to the group are barred under a 2015 resolution by the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
Since the second half of last year, Iran has also repeatedly been accused of supplying Russia with arms, most notably drones, for use in the war in Ukraine.
The latest transfer of arms comes a day after Ukraine’s allies in the West warned that their production lines were struggling to keep up with the rate at which Ukraine was using ammunition.
Ukraine, which fires thousands of shells everyday, now gets most of its ammunition from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
Meanwhile, NATO’s most senior military official, Adm Rob Bauer, had warned that “the bottom of the barrel is now visible”.
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