A confidential report by U.N. sanctions monitors revealed that Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanon's Hezbollah have enabled the evolution of Yemen's Houthi rebels "from a localized armed group with limited capabilities to a powerful military organization."
According to an independent panel of experts who report to the United Nations Security Council annually, Houthi soldiers are receiving tactical and technical training outside of Yemen, traveling on fake passports to Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq.
The UN panel of experts found that several testimonies from military experts, Yemeni officials, and even individuals close to the Houthis suggest that the organization lacks the capacity to develop complicated weapon systems without external assistance.
The sanctions monitors likened the weapons systems operated by the Houthis to those deployed by Iran and the Tehran-backed "Axis of Resistance," adding that the scale, nature and the extent of transfers of diverse military materiel and technology provided to the Houthis from external sources is unprecedented.
The U.N. sanctions monitors also expressed concern about an increasing collaboration between the Houthis and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. They noted that increased smuggling activities involving small and light weapons have been observed between the Houthis and Al-Shabaab, with indications of shared military supplies or a common supplier.