JAKARTA - The British Royal Navy announced on Thursday it had seized Iranian weapons, securing a surface-to-air missile for cruise missiles, after its warship caught smuggling in Iran's southern international waters earlier this year.
A helicopter from the frigate HMS Montrose saw the speedboat move away from Iran's coast on January 28 and February 25, with dozens of packages containing advanced weapons seized, the Royal Navy said in a statement.
Iran's foreign ministry rejected Britain's claim that it was involved in the war against Yemen by selling weapons to a Saudi-led coalition.
"By continuing to sell state-of-the-art weapons to a self-proclaimed military coalition against the helpless Yemeni, Britain has been a partner in war and aggression against Yemen, and is not in a position to make such baseless accusations about the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran and consider the face of humanity," the ministry said in a tweet, citing spokesman Nasser Mikili.
Therefore, he said, Britain "does not have the moral authority to make claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran."
Meanwhile, the British Royal Navy said: "The confiscated packages were returned to the UK for technical analysis that revealed the shipment contained multiple rocket engines for Iran that resulted in 351 ground-attack cruise missiles and 358 surface-to-air missiles."
It did not say where the missile was stored, but said the 351 cruise missile, with a range of 1,000 km (620 miles), was often used by Yemen's Houthi groups to target Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
US Navy destroyer USS Gridley backed the February confiscation, the Royal Navy said. The two seizures occurred when HMS Montrose carried out routine maritime security operations, he added.
"This action shows that we will not allow irresponsible and aggressive actions by Iran to be out of control on land, sea and air," US Central Command spokesman Colonel Joseph Buccino said in a statement.
Separately, Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and Abu Dhabi (UAE) have been at war with Iran-aligned Houthi since 2015, in a conflict widely seen as a proxy war between two Western-backed Gulf Arab states and Iran.
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