The Nation, December 14, 2017 – A military analyst contacted by The National said there is “growing evidence” that Iran had supplied missiles used by the Houthis against Saudi Arabia in two attacks this year.
A spokesman for the Houthi rebels claimed on November 4 that the weapon they had launched at the Saudi capital was Burkan-2H missile. This weapon, which is a variant of the Scud missile family and is also known as the Volcano H-2, has a range of 800km and was first used on July 22 when it was launched at the Saudi region of Yanbu.
However, according to Jeremy Binnie, Middle East editor for Jane’s Defence Weekly, “given thatYemen has no known history of producing its own ballistic missiles, let alone extended range Scud versions, the emergence of the … Burkan missiles appears to support the claims made by the coalition and US officials that Iran is extensively involved” in providing ballistic missiles to the Houthis.
Mr Binnie told The National that “there is a growing amount of evidence that Iran has at the least provided components to modify Yemeni ballistic missiles and probably entire missiles for more recent attacks. This is the most obvious explanation for the existence of ballistic missiles with a range of around 900km in Yemen, although it is still a mystery how such large items are being smuggled into the country.”
Last month, Jane’s published a document which appeared to show that the missile was indeed an Iranian Qiam, which is also a Scud-related system and which has a similar range as the Burkan. It lacks the fins that most Scuds possess, which makes it harder to track by radar and also increases the range and the payload of the missile. It was first revealed in 2010 and was used in combat for the first time in June this year, when Iranian forces targeted ISIL fighters in Syria’seastern Deir ez-Zor region in retaliation for terror attacks in Tehran.
The dossier, which was published by the Saudi-led coaltion backing the government in Yemen,featured photos of a recovered section of one of the two Houthi missiles fired at Saudi Arabia this year. One photograph showed that the missile carried the same markings as seen on a photo of a Qiam which was released by the Iranians in 2010. Another photograph appeared to show that the recovered missile shared the same steering mechanism as has been identified on the Qiam.
Mr Binnie, the author of the November 17 story, also said that “the document also noted that the warheads seen on the Burkan-2s that the rebels have displayed were the same shape as the ones used on the Qiam and that the launcher briefly seen in a rebel video of a Burkan-1 attack was pulled by a civilian tractor like Iranian systems, not mounted on an all-terrain military vehicle.”
He also noted on Twitter that in the video released by the Houthis to claim the November launch, “the rebels appear to have obscured the rear of the Burkan-2H. Are they trying to hide a finless Qiam from Iran?”.
However, Michael Elleman, senior fellow for missile defence at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The National that: “earlier reports had presented nothing of real substance to determine the origins of the missile that hit Riyadh. All told, if the evidence includes an analysis of the material of construction (steel vs aluminum alloy) one could draw some definitive conclusions. If it is made from steel, most likely the missile was part of the 2002 (or 2006?) shipments from North Korea.”
