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Houthis' Non-Traditional War in Bab al-Mandab Includes Booby-Trapped Boats
(Asharq Al-Awsat-UK) Bandar Al-Qahtani - Some 25,000 ships annually pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, where they are vulnerable to attacks by Houthi and Saleh militias from Yemen. According to Abdullah al-Juneid, a political researcher at Jordan's CMT Studies Center, Iran is seeking to achieve geo-strategic goals in the Hormuz Strait, Arab Sea and Bab al-Mandab. To that end, it has employed the "Qader" rocket that the Houthis used in their attack against an Emirati relief vessel, Swift, in the Red Sea on Oct. 1, 2016. Similar rocket attacks targeted a U.S. destroyer and an Arab coalition ship. "Iran has even developed remote-controlled, booby-trapped boats that were used to attack a Saudi frigate near the Hodeidah coast," al-Juneid said. This same tactic was used to target a Saudi oil platform in the Red Sea.