In this episode of Iran Watch Listen, we sat down with Wolf-Christian Paes, an expert on arms and maritime security who served on the U.N. Panel of Experts on Yemen from 2018 until 2023. We discussed Iran’s support for the Houthi rebel group, the ways in which arms are smuggled into Yemen, and the challenges of enforcing the arms embargo imposed on the Houthis by the U.N. Security Council—as well as what that bodes for the outcome of the current crisis in the Red Sea.

Expert Bio

Wolf-Christian Paes is a Senior Fellow for Armed Conflict at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). From 2018 until 2023, he served as the arms expert on the U.N. Panel of Experts on Yemen, where he monitored the sanctions regime imposed by the U.N. Security Council and reported on maritime security. Prior to that, he was the Head of Advisory Services at the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies (BICC).

Related Resources

Wolf-Christian Paes, “Assessment of the Response to Illicit Weapons Trafficking In the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea,” U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, March 2024.

Reports of the Panel of Experts on Yemen

“Iranian Technology Transfers to Yemen,” Conflict Armament Research, March 2017.

“Evolution of UAVs Employed By Houthi Forces in Yemen,” Conflict Armament Research, February 2020.

Jay Bahadur, “Following the Money: The Use of the Hawala Remittance System in the Yemen–Somalia Arms Trade,” Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, September 17, 2020.

Credits

Intro/Outro music by AudioCoffee (Denys Kyshchuk): https://www.audiocoffee.net.