Yemen Accuses Houthis of Converting Iranian Air Defence Systems into Loitering Cruise Missiles

Yemen’s Saudi-backed government has levelled a serious allegation against the Tehran-aligned Houthi movement, claiming the group has repurposed Iranian air defence hardware into loitering cruise missiles with direct help from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The charge, aired by a senior military spokesman, raises fresh concerns about the safety of civilian aviation corridors over Yemen and the southern Red Sea, one of the world’s most sensitive maritime and aerial chokepoints.

Brigadier General Majed al-Nazili, who speaks for Yemeni government forces, said the converted weapons are now being deployed against aircraft and cruise missiles alike. In his account, each missile can remain airborne and manoeuvre for as long as 25 minutes, homing in on any heat source it detects. Crucially, he argued, the system cannot tell the difference between a military target and a civilian one, making it inherently indiscriminate in populated or transited airspace.

That limitation, al-Nazili warned, transforms the skies above Yemen into a hazard zone not only for combatants but for passenger jets, cargo flights and humanitarian aircraft. He singled out United Nations and aid agency flights that routinely cross Yemeni and regional air routes, saying they could all be exposed to risk. The presence of such weapons, he added, amounts to an escalation whose consequences extend well beyond Yemen’s own borders.

The timing of the allegation is significant. It follows public warnings from Iranian officials, including Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, about targeting aviation services in the region after Washington tightened sanctions on Iranian airlines. Rezaei initially suggested regional airports could lose flights if they cooperated with US restrictions, though his office later clarified that Tehran was not preparing military retaliation, while leaving open the possibility of non-military countermeasures against specific airports.

Al-Nazili seized on those statements, arguing that the use of Iranian weaponry launched from Yemeni soil represents a direct threat to international air navigation and therefore cannot be dismissed as an internal Yemeni affair. He urged international authorities to respond with urgency and decisiveness, framing the issue as one that demands collective action rather than bilateral diplomacy alone.

The Houthis, for their part, have escalated their own military messaging. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia said it intercepted six ballistic missiles fired towards Taif in the west of the kingdom and the Yanbu port area on the Red Sea. The Houthis separately claimed to have struck what they described as a sensitive target in Riyadh, along with Saudi Aramco facilities in Yanbu. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group employed ballistic and cruise missiles as well as drones in those operations.

The broader conflict has deep roots. The Houthis fought Yemen’s internationally recognised government and a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states from 2014 until a UN-brokered ceasefire took hold in 2022. In recent weeks, however, fighting has reignited, with the group seizing Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, the strategically vital city of Mocha and Mayyun Island in the Bab al-Mandeb strait, the narrow southern gateway to the Red Sea. In July, the Houthis declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea, effectively opening another front in the wider US-Israel war on Iran.

That maritime dimension matters enormously. With the Strait of Hormuz having been closed during the war, the Red Sea has become a critical alternative export corridor for Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest oil producer. The kingdom’s East-West Pipeline, which carries crude from eastern oilfields to the western port of Yanbu, is only now resuming operations after suffering damage in a drone attack earlier this month. Any new threat to Red Sea shipping or the airspace above it therefore carries immediate economic consequences.

Independent expertise offers a measured but troubling assessment. Eleonora Ardemagni, a senior associate research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, told Al Jazeera that while no conclusive evidence yet proves the Houthis have modified an Iranian air defence system, several factors mean the possibility cannot be dismissed. She noted that the group has repeatedly shown an ability to innovate under wartime pressure, making the steady evolution of its threat capabilities a consistent feature of its military trajectory.

Ardemagni also pointed to years of research indicating that the Houthis do not typically receive fully assembled missiles from Iran. Instead, they obtain Iranian-origin components and assemble the weapons themselves, a practice that has given them substantial technical expertise. That supply model, she suggested, makes the conversion of existing systems into new configurations more plausible than it might first appear.

Taken together, the allegations and the ongoing strikes point to a conflict that is becoming more technologically sophisticated and more dangerous for civilians. If the Yemeni government’s claims are accurate, the introduction of heat-seeking loitering munitions into Yemen’s arsenal would complicate air operations for everyone, from coalition aircraft to aid flights. It would also sharpen the debate over Iran’s role in proliferating advanced weapons to non-state actors across the region.

For Saudi Arabia, the stakes are both strategic and economic. Its Red Sea coast, oil infrastructure and airspace are all now potential targets, while the alternative export route it depends on remains vulnerable. For international powers, the question is whether the threat to civil aviation over the southern Red Sea warrants coordinated action, and whether any such action could be taken without deepening a conflict that already spans multiple countries and theatres.