The U.S. is considering sending seized weapons and ammunition bound for Iran-backed fighters in Yemen to help Ukraine in its war against Russia, which is nearing its one-year anniversary.
The report by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday comes as the U.S. and NATO allies met in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss ways to increase the flow of weapons to Ukraine as it begins facing supply shortages. Ukraine reportedly is using up ammunition faster than its allies can supply it.
"Ukraine has urgent requirements to help it meet this crucial moment in the course of the war," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in Brussels on Tuesday during his opening remarks at the Ninth Ukraine Defense Contact Group. "And President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy underscored Ukraine's need for more equipment at our last meeting in Ramstein [Air Base in Germany on Jan. 20]."
The U.S. began to consider the idea about the seized weapons late last year after the U.S. Navy found a million rounds of ammunition on a fishing boat traveling from Iran to Yemen, the Journal reported.
Soon after that, the U.S. military seized more than 2,000 AK-47s from a small fishing boat in the Gulf of Oman. And in mid-January, French forces found 3,000 rifles, nearly 600,000 rounds of ammunition and more than 20 antitank rockets on another fishing boat in the Gulf of Oman.
U.S. officials are looking at sending Ukraine more than 5,000 rifles, 1.6 million rounds of small arms ammunition, a small number of antitank missiles, and more than 7,000 proximity fuses seized from smugglers suspected of working for Iran, the Journal reported.
The problem for the U.S. is finding a legal justification for transferring weapons seized from one conflict to be used in another. The United Nations Security Council in April 2015 placed an arms embargo on Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, and it requires any seized weapons to be destroyed, stored or transferred to another nation to be destroyed.
Sending the weapons seized from Iranian smugglers would be an ironic twist in Ukraine's war, considering Russia has used Iranian drones to attack Ukraine's energy sector.
"It's a message to take weapons meant to arm Iran's proxies and flip them to achieve our priorities in Ukraine, where Iran is providing arms to Russia," a U.S. official told the Journal.
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