Yemen Monitor/Aden/Exclusive:
The Iranian ship “Behshad”, which is suspected by the Yemeni government and the United States to be a spy ship gathering intelligence for Houthies in Yemen to target ships in the Red Sea, has sailed back to its home country.
According to news sources including Bloomberg and NBC News the ship Behshad was transiting from the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf early on April 18.
According to Bloomberg, it is likely that the ship is sailing home to avoid a potential Israeli attack in response to Iran’s attack on Israel on April 14. Israel responded with a strike in Isfahan on Friday morning.
Stratfor Center for Security Studies in the United States said: This means that in the next few weeks, Houthi targeting of ships in the Red Sea may decline and become intermittent as they try to compensate for the loss of intelligence provided by the Iranian ship Behshad.
He added: As a result, shipping lanes in the Red Sea remain dangerous, despite a decrease in attacks following US and British airstrikes.
The Houthis claimed this week that they had carried out at least 14 attacks on commercial and military ships in the Red Sea over the past two weeks.
Behshad, which Iran describes as an “intelligence and logistics” vessel, left its location near the Yemeni coast on April 4, then stopped broadcasting its location until April 18 when it appeared near the Strait of Hormuz, according to Bloomberg. The ship was expected to arrive at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas late on April 18.
In February, the New York Times reported that Behshad was subjected to a cyberattack by the US military as part of Biden’s administration revenge for the killing of its soldiers in Jordan.
Behshad’s presence has been continuously tracked since June 2021. It spent a long time in the Red Sea between Eritrea and Yemen before heading to the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
In February, it docked near a Chinese military base in Djibouti and disappeared until early April, when it returned to the Gulf of Oman.
Iranian military officials have repeatedly warned against striking Behshad, calling it a “floating weapons depot” and stating that any attack on the ship would pose a serious threat to the security of international sea lanes.
The United States has accused Iran of being heavily involved in Houthi attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
The ship Behshad replaced another cargo ship, called Saviz, which is suspected of being used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard off the coast of Yemen since the start of the war in 2015 and remained for years supporting the Houthis until it was damaged by limpet mines in 2021, which Iran claimed Israel was behind the operation.
