Dark fleet cargo is not spared from attacks by Houthi rebels, it emerged over the weekend after a Panama-flagged oil tanker sailing in contravention of maritime sanctions against Russian sea trade came under fire near Yemen’s Port of Mocha.
A single missile strike by members of the Ansar Allah militia movement knocked out the vessel’s propulsion and steering systems.
According to reports, it also caused an oil spill in the environmentally sensitive area north of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the southern Red Sea choke point where the Houthis have concentrated their attacks on commercial vessels.
The unnamed tanker has been identified as regularly carrying cargo from pariah states such as Venezuela and Russia
It had loaded a consignment of oil at the Russian Black Sea Port of Novorossiysk and was heading for China at the time it was attacked at about 20:00 (EET) on Friday.
The reports on May 20 of the attack against a vessel carrying cargo from a country that has strong trade and diplomatic relations with Iran, which supplies weapons to Houthis, coincide with news from Tehran that the Islamic Republic’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, has died in a helicopter crash.
He was returning from a visit to Azerbaijan along with Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, when the helicopter they were in went down in dense fog in the hills of Khoda Afarin county, south of Iran’s Aras River border in the north-east.
Raisi, a strongman leader who ousted his more moderate predecessor, Hassan Rouhani, in 2021, reached a high point of outright provocation in April when he became the first President of Iran to launch a direct assault against Israel.
His government’s military support of the Ansar Allah regime in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, has enabled the Houthis to successfully disrupt at least 50% of all maritime traffic using the Suez Canal for rotations between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.
Although the violent disruption of vessels sailing through the Bab al-Mandab Strait since last November was initially aimed at maritime trade with links to Israel, Friday night’s attack against a dark fleet tanker accentuates the indiscriminate nature of Houthi militancy.
Thus far almost 100 vessels have been targeted by Houthi attacks in which at least two bulk carriers, the Rubymar and True Confidence, were sunk.
Rebel leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has threatened on several occasions that the Houthis will continue to attack commercial vessels near Yemen’s Red Sea and Gulf of Aden coastline.
He also threatened to extend their reach into the southern Indian Ocean to target vessels avoiding the Suez by sailing around South Africa.
Although the military hardware support and technical capability his movement had been receiving from Iran made this possible, the death of Raisi and Abdollahian could change power relations in the Middle East.
At the time this post was generated, the government of President Vladimir Putin had not issued a statement about the attack on the tanker carrying Russian oil to China.
