Moment US Navy Seizes 1,400 Illegal AK-47 Assault Rifles And Nearly A Quarter Of A Million Rounds Of Ammo From Iran
This is the moment the US Navy seizes approximately 1,400 illegal AK-47 assault rifles and nearly a quarter of a million rounds of ammunition from a stateless vessel in the Arabian Sea that allegedly came from Iran and that the Americans then sank.
In the incident, which took place in the North Arabian Sea, near Bahrain, the US 5th Fleet seized approximately 1,400 AK-47 assault rifles and 226,600 rounds of ammunition on 20th December.
The footage shows US sailors cutting open packages containing the guns. They can be seen tightly wrapped in plastic.
The footage then shows the weapons being laid out on the deck of a vessel.
The US Navy released a statement in which it said that the raid had taken place during a flag verification operation aboard a stateless fishing vessel and that the operation had been conducted in accordance with international law.
The US Navy said in its statement that the USS Tempest and the USS Typhoon took part in the operation that saw US Coast Guard personnel aboard the US Navy vessels raid the stateless fishing vessel.
The illegal weapons and ammunition have been handed over to the USS O’Kane destroyer where they “await final disposition”.
The Navy also said in its statement: “The stateless vessel was assessed to have originated in Iran and transited international waters along a route historically used to traffic weapons unlawfully to the Houthis in Yemen. The direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer of weapons to the Houthis violates U.N. Security Council Resolutions and U.S. sanctions.”
The Navy said that the stateless vessel’s five crew members said that they were Yemeni nationals, adding that they will be returned to Yemen.
The Navy said that after the operation, US naval forces determined that “the stateless vessel was a hazard to navigation for commercial shipping and sank it”.
The US Navy said that it had seized approximately 8, 700 illegal weapons in the region in 2021 and that these included dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of Chinese assault rifles, as well as hundreds of machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket propelled grenade launchers.
In the past, they have also seized thousands of AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers, as well as barrels, stocks, optical scopes and other weapon systems.
The US 5th Fleet operates in an area that includes “the Arabian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, Red Sea, parts of the Indian Ocean and three critical choke points at the Strait of Hormuz, Suez Canal and Strait of Bab al Mandeb”.
