A mysterious Iranian vessel in the Gulf of Aden faces intensifying scrutiny among maritime experts concerned that the ship is helping Houthi rebels target commercial sea traffic.
The Behshad, which outwardly looks like a standard dry bulk carrier, moved to the Gulf of Aden in January after years in the Red Sea, just as attacks on vessels surged in the vital waterway off Yemen.
It has since followed an unorthodox, slow and meandering course around those waters close to the entrance to the Red Sea. Experts also noted a drop in Houthi attacks during a period last month when the Behshad was seemingly out of action.
Jon Gahagan, president of maritime risk specialist Sedna Global, said that for a supposed cargo vessel, the behaviour of the Behshad, registered and flagged in Iran, was “extremely unusual”.
“It does ask major questions about her role in the current crisis,” he said of its movements and the links to the attacks. “If she isn’t providing the Houthi regime with intelligence on vessel movements, then just what is she doing?”
Concerns that the Behshad is involved in providing targeting information to the Houthis have heightened since an attack this week on the True Confidence, carrying steel and trucks from China to Saudi Arabia, killed three of the vessel’s crew. The fatalities were the first since the Houthis began attacking commercial shipping in November in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
The Behshad was 43 nautical miles away when the True Confidence was struck. That attack followed six others in the Gulf of Aden or at the entrance to the Red Sea over just 15 days.
Experts also point to a lull in the frequency of Houthi attacks in February following a cyber attack on the Behshad reported by the US’s NBC News. Data from vessel tracking site MarineTraffic from around that time shows the ship spent more than two weeks away from its normal cruising area.
UK defence secretary Grant Shapps last month highlighted concerns about Iranian ships loitering off Yemen. “The whole world needs to carry on piling the pressure on Iran to cease and desist from this behaviour,” he told the House of Commons.
The Behshad is registered as an ordinary dry bulk carrier, and outwardly looks like any of the thousands of such vessels that ply the oceans.
But a video posted on an Iranian army-linked Telegram channel last month, in English, described the vessel as a “floating armoury” and insisted it had a role in combating piracy. The video, which did not address the contradiction between the Behshad’s presentation as a commercial ship and its strategic role, featured a warning against attacking it.
A voiceover accompanying images of both the Behshad and US aircraft carriers said: “Those engaging in terrorist attacks against the Behshad or similar vessels jeopardise international maritime routes, security and assume global responsibility for potential future international risks.”
The Houthis, who control much of Yemen, are one element of the Iran-linked Axis of Resistance that has come to the fore since the October 7 attack that sparked the Gaza war. Hamas, the militant group that carried out the assault on Israel, and Lebanon’s Hizbollah are also part of the same grouping. They share the same anti-Israel, anti-US ideology and say their actions are in support of the Palestinians.
US officials have accused Iran of providing “tactical intelligence” to the Houthis to support its attacks on shipping, and Washington and Gulf states have accused Iran of supplying the rebels with drones and missiles.
Iranian officials, who insist the militants they back are acting independently, have praised the Houthis’ attacks, but have rejected US claims that Tehran has been involved in the planning or supplied the group with weapons.
Yet maritime security experts have long commented on the close link between the Behshad and the Houthi attacks. After years nearly stationary in the Red Sea, the vessel sailed south on January 11 through the narrow Bab-el-Mandeb strait into the Gulf of Aden, information from MarineTraffic shows.
Immediately after the move, there was a string of attacks on vessels in that sea, south of Yemen. The Gulf of Aden’s greater size makes it harder to spot and target vessels there than in the far more constrained Red Sea.
The container ship Gibraltar Eagle was targeted on January 15, as was the Genco Picardy two days later, the Maersk Detroit on January 24 and the Marlin Luanda on January 26.
Gahagan pointed to the links between the Behshad’s movements and the attacks as implausible coincidences. “While I understand Tehran has continued to deny the vessel’s involvement in the current situation, it’s a difficult circle to square,” he said.
A period of relative calm in attacks followed the reported cyber attack on the Behshad. Between February 2 and 19, around the reported time of the incident, the Behshad sat off Djibouti, where China has a large naval base.
There were few effective attacks on ships during that period, and a sudden upsurge around the time that ship-tracking data shows it returning to the Gulf of Aden.
This included the February 18 attack on the Rubymar, which subsequently became the first to sink as a result of a Houthi strike. Two more ships were attacked the following day.
Gahagan said that if Iran gave weapons to the Houthis, the Behshad’s suspected role in spotting ships was not implausible. “Is it such a stretch to imagine they’re also supplying the Houthis with intelligence to support target profiling?” he asked.
Yet it remains unclear what action the US-led coalition trying to counter the Houthi threat to shipping is willing to take against the contentious vessel. The UK defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request to say what it planned to do about such ships.
Martin Kelly, senior Middle East analyst at maritime security practice EOS Risk Group, suggested Tehran would likely regard a physical — or kinetic — attack on the Behshad as crossing a “red line”. For this reason, it was hard to see how the threat could be immediately countered by the US and its allies.
“Whilst I’d like to see some kind of kinetic action against the Behshad, I’m not sure we’ll see that in the near term,” he said.
Additional reporting by John Paul Rathbone in London