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10-04-2024
WASHINGTON: The US has transferred to Ukraine thousands of infantry weapons and more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition that were seized more than a year ago as they were being shipped by Iran to Houthi forces in Yemen, the US military said on Tuesday.
The hardware sent last week is the latest military assistance that US President Joe Biden’s administration has provided to Kyiv for its fight to retake territory occupied by Russia.
Democrat Biden has been blocked from providing further US weaponry to Kyiv by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to call a vote on $60 billion in new security assistance.
With Ukrainian forces running low on weapons and munitions, especially heavy artillery rounds, the United States and its allies have been searching for new ways to arm Kyiv.
The weaponry transferred by the United States to Kyiv on April 4 “constituted enough materiel to equip” a Ukrainian brigade, US Central Command said in a statement posted on social media platform X.
An infantry brigade typically comprises 3,500 to 4,000 troops, but the exact numbers were not known.
Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations said, “We cannot comment on weapons and armaments that have never belonged to us.”
CENTCOM said the hardware included more than 5,000 AK-47 assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades and more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition.
The munitions were taken from four “stateless” vessels intercepted by US naval ships and those of partner forces which were not identified between May 22, 2021 and Feb. 15, 2023, CENTCOM said.
The weapons were being sent by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the Houthis, CENTCOM said.
United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has command authority over US forces in the Middle East and West/Central Asia. The Department of Defense (DOD) formally established CENTCOM on January 1, 1983. CENTCOM denotes its area of responsibility (AOR) as 21 countries: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uzbekistan, and Yemen. CENTCOM is headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base (AFB) in Tampa, FL. Congress has engaged in CENTCOM oversight regularly, particularly during annual posture hearings.
As with other Combatant Commands, CENTCOM is a headquarters; no military units are permanently assigned to it. CENTCOM operates through component commands one for each of the US armed services, along with a joint special operations component. Each component command may or may not have military forces assigned to it in theater.
A potential oversight issue for Congress is whether DOD is devoting an appropriate level of resources to the CENTCOM AOR, and whether the Administration is properly balancing demands for force deployments to the CENTCOM AOR vis-a-vis other AORs, in particular the Indo-Pacific region and Europe. (Int’l News Desk)
