Iran sends shipment of enriched uranium to Houthis, al-Qaeda seizes it – details
A shipment of enriched uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons, has fallen into the hands of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization after Iran failed to send it to the Houthi militia in Yemen, Israeli newspaper Maariv reported.
The Danger of Iran
Informed sources revealed that the materials that Iran was planning to hand over to the Houthi militia in Yemen fell into the hands of Al-Qaeda, which controls some parts of southern Yemen. It is still not clear how part of the shipment was intercepted or diverted, which increases the risks of war in Yemen. The matter revealed the extent of the danger of the weapons that Iran is sending to its militias in Yemen, increasing humanitarian crises and escalating the tone of war with the legitimate government supported by the whole world, especially the Arab countries.
According to the US magazine “Newsweek”, Osama bin Laden established the foundation of Al-Qaeda, a terrorist group based in the Afghan-Pakistani border, in the 1980s. The group suddenly became a household name in the United States after Al-Qaeda elements hijacked and crashed four airplanes in American airspace in September 2001, targeting sites including the World Trade Center in New York, and killed about 3,000 people in the horrible incident that came to be known as “the events of September 11”.
The attack launched the decades-long controversial war on terror, and bin Laden was eventually killed in May 2011. The group began to dwindle in numbers, and a blood-thirsty splinter group like ISIS began to recruit jihadists and gain prominence instead.
The Return of Al-Qaeda
The US magazine confirmed that Al-Qaeda made headlines again in August this year when a US drone strike in Afghanistan killed Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who helped Bin Laden in the 9/11 plot and later replaced him as leader. The allegations that Al-Qaeda now had some enriched uranium come amid escalating tensions between the US and Iran over the country’s nuclear program, where talks on this issue collapsed two months ago, specifically in September.
It continued: At the time, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz claimed that Iran would be able to produce enough enriched uranium to make three nuclear warheads in a few weeks, and claimed to know 10 facilities in Syria that were producing weapons to arm Iran, which in turn were arming proxies like the Islamic group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
A UN watchdog agency warned earlier this year that Iran had violated the 2015 agreement by increasing its stockpile of nuclear weapons, while the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a statement in March saying Iran had 33.2 kilograms, or 73.1 pounds, of uranium enriched to 60 percent of its fissile material.
