Yemen’s internationally recognised government has accused the Iran-aligned Houthi movement of modifying Iranian air defence weapons into loitering cruise missiles with the help of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Al Jazeera reported on Monday.
Brigadier General Majed al-Nazili, spokesman for Yemeni government forces, said the weapons can stay airborne for up to 25 minutes each, track targets by heat and strike any heat source without distinguishing military from civilian targets.
This constitutes a direct and serious threat to the safety of civil aviation and the lives of passengers.
Al-Nazili said aircraft belonging to the United Nations and humanitarian organisations using air routes over Yemen could be in danger. He said the use of Iranian weapons from Yemeni territory “poses a direct threat to international air navigation routes and cannot be considered a purely domestic Yemeni issue,” and called on international authorities to take “urgent and decisive action.”
He said the escalation coincided with warnings from Iranian officials, including Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who had said regional airports could lose flights if they joined U.S. restrictions on Iranian aviation. Rezaei’s office later said Tehran was not planning military retaliation, although nonmilitary countermeasures against specific airports remained possible.
Eleonora Ardemagni, a senior associate research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, told Al Jazeera there was no conclusive evidence of the modification but said “a series of things suggest this can’t be ruled out.” She said research showed the Houthis receive Iranian-origin components rather than assembled missiles from Iran, giving them significant assembly expertise. She pointed to a 750-tonne weapons shipment bound for the Houthis, including advanced cruise, antiship and anti-aircraft missiles, that government-aligned forces seized in June 2025, and to media reports in July that an Iranian Mahan Air flight to Yemen carried IRGC commanders, military advisers and weapons, which Al Jazeera said it could not independently verify.
Yemeni military analyst Brigadier General Mohammed Al-Kumaim told Al Jazeera the Houthis had moved beyond Iranian ballistic missiles and drones to air defence technologies based on loitering cruise missiles that track targets from electrothermal emissions. Military expert Ali Al-Dhahab said such weapons create a “permanent threat” to anything moving in the air, potentially restricting military air movements. Al Jazeera also reported that U.S. artificial intelligence company Anthropic identified a weapons-development cell in northern Yemen, reportedly linked to the Houthis, that used its Claude model to develop guidance, navigation and control software for a guided rocket and several missile programmes.
The Houthis fought Yemen’s government and a Saudi-led coalition from 2014 until a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in 2022, but fighting has reignited in recent weeks, with the group taking the Red Sea coast, the city of Mocha and Mayyun Island in the Bab al-Mandeb strait, Al Jazeera reported. In July the Houthis declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea, where a European naval mission has been strained by the group’s attacks.
Saudi Arabia said on Thursday it intercepted six ballistic missiles aimed at Taif and the Yanbu port area, while Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group attacked “a sensitive target” in Riyadh and Saudi Aramco facilities in Yanbu with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones. With the Strait of Hormuz closed during the war between the United States, Israel and Iran, the Red Sea has become a vital Saudi export route; the kingdom’s East-West Pipeline to Yanbu is only restarting after a drone attack this month.
The Houthis’ known arsenal includes the Palestine-2, a missile the group says is hypersonic with a range exceeding 2,000 kilometres; the Toufan, estimated to fly 1,350 to 1,950 kilometres and assessed by the International Institute for Strategic Studies as a rebranded Iranian Ghadr; the Iranian-designed Burkan ballistic series; Quds cruise missiles; and older Scud-B, Tochka, Qaher-1 and C-802 missiles.
Saj Ahmad, chief analyst at StrategicAero Research, told Al Jazeera the direct risk to passengers was reduced because “air traffic around Yemen is almost nil,” but said the missiles were also launched north into Saudi Arabia, where commercial traffic operates. That posed “a huge dilemma for the Saudis, who will be very reluctant to close off airspace but equally be mindful of the risks of allowing air traffic through when missiles are inbound,” he said, adding that at the narrow Bab al-Mandeb strait, “any missiles that the Houthis have in their armoury can easily decimate ships at will on a much narrower waterway.”