Yemen’s armed forces say Houthi-modified Iranian missiles threaten civil aviation over Red Sea
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — Yemen’s armed forces said on Sunday that the Houthis are converting Iranian air-defence missiles into loitering weapons that endanger civilian aircraft over the southern Red Sea.
Col. Majed al-Nuzaili, the armed forces spokesman, made the claim in a statement carried by regional outlets on 27 September.
He said the converted missiles can remain airborne for up to 25 minutes.
They use thermal tracking and will strike any heat source, he said, without distinguishing a military aircraft from a civilian one.
Al-Nuzaili said the conversion work is done inside Yemen by experts from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
He said the weapons are launched from Hodeidah governorate, on Yemen’s western coast, toward international air corridors above the southern Red Sea.
The account rests on al-Nuzaili’s statement. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of it.
No aviation regulator, airline or multilateral body has published a matching assessment.
There was no comment from the Houthis or from Iran on the claim, according to reports of the statement.
Al-Nuzaili tied the development to remarks by senior Iranian officials who he said had threatened to disrupt aviation services in the region after sanctions were imposed on Iranian airlines. He did not name the officials or date the remarks.
Arab News, the Turkish broadcaster A News and the Yemeni outlet Yemen Monitor carried the statement on the same day. Each attributed it to the spokesman, and none reported separate confirmation.
Al-Nuzaili is a recent appointee to the spokesman’s post, according to the Yemeni outlet Almahriah Net.
Loitering weapons circle over an area before striking, rather than following a ballistic path. Al-Nuzaili said that difference is what makes the converted missiles a hazard to aircraft in transit.
He did not say whether any civilian aircraft had been targeted or damaged. Yemen Herald found no report of a civilian aircraft being hit over the southern Red Sea.
He gave no figure for the number of converted missiles he said had been produced.
The statement followed weeks of reported Houthi movement toward the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
Khaled Khiari, the UN assistant secretary-general for the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, told the Security Council on 15 September that the Houthis had continued to advance toward the strait.
They had reportedly captured several islands in the southern Red Sea, he said.
Navigational rights and freedoms in and around the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab must be fully restored and respected by all, Khiari told the council.
Commercial shipping flows through the Red Sea appeared to remain unaffected for the time being, he said.
He said the advance had added to market concerns while disruption continued at the Strait of Hormuz.
Khiari said the UN humanitarian office had recorded at least 125,000 people displaced across Yemen since the start of September.
The UN Human Rights Office had recorded 40 civilian casualties in the same period, he said. Eight people were killed and 32 were injured.
Women and children accounted for half of those killed and more than half of those injured, according to his briefing.
About 2,300 people had reached Djibouti’s Obock region by 14 September, fleeing the escalation, he said.
Hodeidah, the governorate al-Nuzaili named as the launch area, holds Yemen’s main Red Sea port. It has been under Houthi control for most of the war.
The United States designated Ansarallah, the Houthis’ formal name, a foreign terrorist organization in March 2025.
The State Department and the Treasury have since announced repeated rounds of sanctions on Houthi financial and weapons-procurement networks.
A State Department action in January 2026 targeted what the department called the group’s illicit revenue generation networks.
Yemen’s internationally recognised government is seated in Aden. The armed forces spokesman speaks for its military command.
The UN humanitarian response plan for 2026 lists more than 22 million people in Yemen as needing assistance.
It records 18.3 million people as acutely food insecure and more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished. Of those, 516,157 are classed as severely malnourished.
The plan puts the number of internally displaced people at 5.2 million. It seeks 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.
The Saudi-led coalition said on 24 September that it had intercepted six Houthi ballistic missiles. Al Jazeera reported the interception claim the same day.
Rajeh Badi, Yemen’s ambassador to Qatar, told Al Jazeera on 9 September that the Houthis were attempting an offensive to seize ground along the Red Sea coast in Taiz province.
He said the group had advanced on al-Makha and al-Waziyah. Badi described the Houthis as the aggressors.
If the Houthis managed to choke maritime traffic in the Red Sea, the region would be looking at another Hormuz in those waters, he said.
Badi said the group wanted commanding positions from which to strike ships and disrupt navigation.
The Houthis have not accepted the government’s account of the fighting on the west coast. They describe their operations there as defensive.
Badi spoke in his capacity as envoy to Qatar and not for the military command.
Government units said on the same date that they had repelled Houthi attacks in Taiz.
The Houthis have not confirmed either account.
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