The United States wants to transfer Iranian weapons seized by piracy to Kyiv

US authorities are considering the possibility of transferring to Kyiv several thousand machine guns and more than a million rounds of ammunition, which were intended for Iranian-backed armed groups in Yemen.

This was reported by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.

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These weapons were captured by the American and French militaries through piracy.

US officials said the items involved were more than 5000 AK-47 assault rifles, 1,6 million rounds of small arms ammunition, 20 anti-tank missiles and more than 7000 fuses seized in recent months off the coast of Yemen from smugglers "suspected of working for Iran." , writes WSJ.

If the political issue with the transfer of Iranian weapons to Ukraine is resolved quickly, legal nuances remain. Typically, weapons seized by the US and its allies enforcing the UN arms embargo on Yemen are destroyed. But this time, the WSJ notes, “US officials said global efforts to supply Ukraine with weapons have sparked discussions about sending confiscated military supplies to Kyiv.”

The Biden administration's task is to find a legal possibility and justification for removing weapons from one conflict zone and transferring them to another. According to American officials, White House lawyers are studying the issue of adopting a special document or even a UN General Assembly resolution on this matter. On the other hand, they are ready to develop legislation for Congress that would give the United States the right to confiscate weapons in accordance with civil forfeiture laws and send them to Kyiv, the American publication reports.

But the main goal of the planned operation is not so much the supply of a small batch of weapons to Kyiv, but the next stage of the information war.

“This is a call to take weapons intended for Iranian proxies and use them to achieve our priorities in Ukraine, where Iran supplies weapons to Russia,” the WSJ quotes an unnamed US official.

As PolitNavigator reported , a group of US Republican congressmen introduced a resolution demanding the Biden administration stop providing "military and financial" aid to Ukraine. The document was dubbed the "Ukraine Fatigue Resolution."