Arms Research "Watchdog Group" Lobbies For War On Yemen And Iran

moon  of  alabama

This Associated Press story has quite a slant.

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Looking into the AP report we find that the "watchdog group" is actually a for-profit company with an anti-Iran agenda and paid by the United Arab Emirates. The UAE, together with Saudis, the U.S. and Britain, is waging war on Yemen and sees Iran as an enemy:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Roadside bombs disguised as rocks in Yemen bear similarities to others used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and by insurgents in Iraq and Bahrain, suggesting at the least an Iranian influence in their manufacture, a watchdog group said on Monday.The report by Conflict Armament Research comes as the West and United Nations researchers accuse Iran of supplying arms to Yemen’s Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who have held the country’s capital since September 2014.
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“What we’re hoping this does is make plausible deniability not very plausible,” said Tim Michetti, head of regional operations for Conflict Armament Research. “You can’t really deny this anymore once the components these things are made with are traced to Iranian distributors.”
Michetti’s organization, an independent watchdog group that receives funding from the United Arab Emirates, Germany and the European Union to research weaponry recovered in Yemen, said it examined a fake rock bomb in January near Mokha, some 250 kilometers (150 miles) southwest of the capital, Sanaa.

Conflict Armament Research is not an "independent watchdog group" but a dully established British for-profit company registered at the British government's Companies House under company number 07762809. The sole owner is James Bevan, a British national born in 1977.

In 2002 James Bevan started to work for the well regarded Swiss NGO Small Arms Survey. He then worked for the UN and in other publicly financed arms research projects.

His own company started to grow around 2015, right when the war on Yemen started. It also runs some arms research under public grants but is also a for-profit consultancy. In the business year ending March 31 2017 the company had a turnover of £1.4 million from grant funded projects and £710,000 from consultancy projects. Seven people were working for the company including the owner, James Bevan. That year Bevan, besides his unknown salary as director, took out £177,593 in dividends.

The CAR researcher Tim Michetti, quoted by AP, is also a co-author of the "Pushback - Exposing and countering Iran" report by the Atlantic Council. The United Arab Emirates is at the top of the Atlantic Council's Honor Roll of Contributors with more than $1,000,000 in yearly donations.

The UAE is at war in Yemen and is regularly accusing Iran of supporting the Houthi resistance against the invaders. Yemen is under blockade and there is little evidence that any Iranian help reaches the Houthis.

The actual CAR report is titled Radio controlled, Passive Infrared-inititiated IEDs - Iran’s latest technological contributions to the war in Yemen (pdf):

This report presents comparative findings on explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) documented by Conflict Armament Research (CAR) in Yemen and similar devices documented by CAR field investigation teams elsewhere in the Middle East.The IEDs recovered in Yemen feature EFPs, which have been camouflaged to resemble natural rocks. These devices are armed by radio control (RC) and initiated using passive infrared (PIR) switches. They can be classed as radio-controlled IEDs (RCIEDs).

Garage door openers and light-barrier triggers are obviously sophisticated high-tech that no Yemeni could use for bomb building without intensive Iranian help. (Not!)

The easiest way to learn how to build improvised explosive devices with explosive formed penetrators and various arming and triggering devices is to read declassified CIA manuals. I recommend to start with "Explosives For Sabotage" available at archive.org.

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To find the inspiration for hiding stuff in 'rocks' made out of fiberglass and foam one can read British newspapers:

Britain was behind a plot to spy on Russians with a device hidden in a fake plastic rock, a former key UK government official has admitted.
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A diplomatic row was sparked six years ago after Russian state television broadcast a film claiming British agents had hidden a sophisticated transmitter inside a fake rock left on a Moscow street.

The CAR report shows some similarities between the trigger of an IEDs found in Yemen and another one allegedly found in Bahrain. But how does that lead back to Iran? Why not reasonably assume that various groups simply work from the same set of ideas and use the same manuals?

The report never investigates that thesis. Instead we get this claptrap:

The electronics kits used in the RCIEDs feature heatshrink wire coverings, which are manufactured by the Chinese company WOER. WOER-brand heatshrink wire covering is a constant feature of Iranian origin materiel recovered in Yemen and Bahrain, including RCIEDs, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and dual-use equipment suspected to be used in the production of rocket propellant.

WOER is one of the bigger global producers of heatshrink wire coverings. Its website says that it has 3,000 dealers and 40 official sales offices including in:

Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Palestine, Qatar

Some WOER products are available on Amazon. 

This brand is well known and so widely available in the Middle East that it is outright laughable to attribute WOER material to Iran.

The report lists some similarities between IEDs found in Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen and elsewhere. But the IED types it describes have also differences. Hizbullah is the only group using aiming devices in its IEDs. At a first glance the trigger electronics from Bahrain, pictured in the report, look similar to those in Yemen but they use slightly different components and wiring.

By empathizing the similarities CAR makes it look as if the bombs come from the same source. It is more plausible that they were locally build from widely available materials by following the same manual or instruction set. A search in Arab forums would probably turn up an equivalent of the old CIA manual with blueprints for the such bombs and their triggers.

An earlier report by CAR about Maritime Interdiction of Weapon Supplies to Somalia and Yemen (pdf) was likewise slanted. It insinuated that Iran was smuggling arms to Yemen but did not analyze alternative explanations. It provided that some private dhows were smuggling small arms from maybe(!) Iran to Somalia. There is some murky evidence to support that conclusion. But the report then went on to claim that those weapons were transported further and shipped from Somalia to Yemen. Zero evidence was provided for that claim. There are several ongoing wars in Somalia. Many parties there will purchase any weapon they can get. The Houthi in Yemen though have all the small arms they need. They simply capture or buy those stashes the Saudis and the UAE provide to their own local proxies.

But aside from all those details is it really newsworthy that a UAE lobbyist harps about some IEDs and AK machine guns used by Yemeni people when Saudi Arabia and the UAE invade the country with heavily armed forces and for three long years bomb the s*** out of its starving people?

The [Yemeni Data Project]’s data shows the Saudi-led coalition carried out an average of 15 air raids* per day. A total of 16,749 air raids were recorded from 26 March 2015 to 25 March 2018. Nearly one third of all air raids (31%) targeted non-military sites.

The vital Yemeni port of Hodeida is still not functioning:

Fuel deliveries amounted to only 24 percent of Yemen's needs in February, while food met 51 percent, causing sharp price rises of both."For whatever reason, the amount of food and fuel required to meet needs in Yemen is not coming in through Hodeida and it is likely there are some deliberate actions being taken to cause it," said van Meegen, [an adviser with the Norwegian Refugee Council.]
"We can't say the blockade is in place. The de facto blockade is still in place." and people are starving because ships with aid can not be unloaded.

I for one would not mind if Iran would provide the Yeminis with everything they need to shoot down the attacking Saudi bombers and to kick the invaders out of their country. Unfortunately Yemen is under a tight blockade and Iran seems unable to break it.

To then point the fingers to Iran with little evidence and slanted reports, as the UAE paid CAR and other lobby shops provide, has only one purpose: to widen the war and to prepare the peoples' minds for illegal aggression against yet another nation.

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h/t: Sam Tamiz

Posted by b on March 27, 2018 at 03:10 PM | Permalink

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/ap-sells-anti-iranian-lobbying-firm-as-independent-watchdog-group.html