Ongoing Transfers of Iranian Ballistic Missiles Enhance Ansarallah’s Long-Range Strike Capabilities

***The following text is an excerpt from a longer SPAS Consulting report examining the evolution of Ansarallah’s ballistic missile capabilities***

Expanding the Reach of Ansarallah’s Ballistic Missile Arsenal

In September 2022, Ansarallah held a military parade in Sana’a that featured a diverse array of long-range strike systems. Included among these was an apparent mockup of a ballistic missile labelled the Hatem. Hatem is Ansarallah’s designation for the Iranian Kheybar Shekan, a then relatively new ballistic missile design with a separating maneuverable reentry vehicle that Iran itself only unveiled in February 2022. Given its reported maximum range of 1450 kilometers, the deployment of the Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) in Yemen would allow Ansarallah to target most of the Arabian Peninsula and appeared to constitute Ansarallah’s longest-range ballistic missile.

For Ansarallah, which previously operated versions of the liquid-fuelled Soviet R-17 Elrbus “Scud” including its much-evolved Iranian derivations from the Qiam family (designated as the Burkan and Zulfiqar in Yemen), the Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) amounted to a major qualitative upgrade. As a solid-fuelled ballistic missile, it did not have to be fuelled prior to launch and this facilitated faster launch cycles and reduced the vulnerability of the launcher and launch crew to aerial attack. Being equipped with a separating maneuverable reentry vehicle, the Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) was also a much more accurate ballistic missile. As a result, the new ballistic missile could be used to target specific aimpoints as opposed to being aimed at a sprawling airport or military base with a low probability that the point of impact would align with a specific coordinate. The Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) was, as such, no terror weapon, but a means of inflicting punishing blows on Ansarallah’s enemies. Iran, it seemed, had major ambitions for Ansarallah’s strike capabilities and the transfer of the Kheybar Shekan under the guise of the Hatem to Yemen appeared poised to help Iran reshape the regional military balance in its favour.

Beyond allowing Ansarallah to hold at risk targets across much of the Arabian Peninsula, the large-scale transfer of long-range ballistic missiles in the vein of the Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) would permit Ansarallah to expand upon its sporadic if high-profile ballistic missile attacks against Riyadh and other distant locations far removed from Yemen’s battlefields. Moreover, the forward deployment of the Kheybar Shekan in Yemen helped Iran to further dilute the Gulf Arab states’ ballistic missile defences. With none of the systems deployed by these countries offering 360-degree coverage, the redeployment of finite and expensive ballistic missile defence systems to face the expanding threat from the south and southwest indirectly enhanced the capabilities offered by ballistic missiles deployed on Iranian territory. This dynamic was put on stark display during Iran’s undeclared September 2019 (surprise) attack on Saudi oil facilities, which involved the use of propeller-driven strike drones and cruise missiles, at a time when a significant portion of Saudi Arabia’s air defence capabilities had been reoriented to defend against far more modest threats originating in Yemen.

In September 2023, Ansarallah held another parade in Sana’a and used the occasion as an opportunity to put on display an even wider range of primarily Iranian-origin strike systems than it had the year prior. This included the Toufan, Ansarallah’s designation for the older Iranian liquid-fueled Ghadr ballistic missile, which is ultimately derived from the Soviet R-17 “Scud” by way of the North Korean Hwasong-7. If taken at face value, the unveiling of the liquid-fuelled Toufan (Ghadr) appeared to be a regressive development given that the solid-fuelled Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) unveiled a year prior constitutes a far more sophisticated and more accurate ballistic missile design. Until the unveiling of the Toufan, however, Ansarallah’s strike capabilities appeared to be oriented toward targets in the Gulf Arab states. With the unveiling of the Toufan, Ansarallah appeared to possess a ballistic missile with sufficient range to target Israel.

Although Ansarallah was, and remains, occupied with persevering against its domestic and foreign opponents in the Yemeni Civil War, the Yemeni armed group’s guiding ideology has, like that of Iran, long been characterized by hostility toward Israel and support for the Palestinian cause. Israel is, however, very distant from Yemen. To make good on its longstanding threats to target Israel and do so with ballistic missiles as opposed to cruise missiles and propeller-driven strike drones, Ansarallah required a ballistic missile with a range of at least 1650 kilometers to attack just the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat. With Iran having disclosed that the liquid-fuelled Ghadr has a maximum range of 1950 kilometers (when equipped with a lighter payload), the transfer of this older and less sophisticated ballistic missile design offered, in principle, Ansarallah the ability to target nearly the entirety of Israel when launched from northern Yemen. Northern Yemen is, however, very mountainous, and the road infrastructure in areas closer to the border with Saudi Arabia is very poor following the sustained aerial bombardment undertaken by the Saudi- and Emirati-led coalition intervening in the Yemeni Civil War. As a result, the Toufanmay be a modified extended-range Ghadr equipped with a lightened warhead and/or a version of the Ghadr configured with a larger fuel tank so as to be capable of targeting Israel from locations further removed from the Saudi-Yemen border.

While the September 2023 military parade in Sana’a highlighted sustained growth – relative to the September 2022 parade – in Ansarallah’s strike capabilities emanating from transfers of ballistic missiles from Iran, observers could only speculate as to whether the March 2023 Chinese-brokered detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia would alter the trajectory of Ansarallah’s long-range strike capabilities. With the involved parties keeping quiet on the details of detente as it concerned Iranian support for Ansarallah, observers had to consider the possibility that the solid-fuelled Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) paraded by Ansarallah in September 2022 was a mockup intended to intimidate the Gulf Arab states and improve Iran’s position in any negotiations with Saudi Arabia. There was, after all, no publicly available information at the time of detente indicating that Ansarallah had ever launched the Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) or even received live specimens of this relatively new ballistic missile design which Iran itself only unveiled in February 2022.  As for the older liquid-fuelled Toufan (Ghadr) that Ansarallah unveiled at the September 2023 parade, this ballistic missile design may have been transferred to Ansarallah much earlier than it was unveiled, perhaps before Iran and Saudi Arabia reached an agreement under Chinese mediation. As with the Hatem (Kheybar Shekan), publicly available information at the time did not indicate that Ansarallah had ever launched a Toufan (Ghadr) or that it received a militarily significant quantity of this ballistic missile design. For these reasons, there were grounds for considerable analytical circumspection as to whether the ballistic missiles Ansarallah put on display during the September 2023 military parade were truly reflective of the qualitative and quantitative growth of Ansarallah’s fielded military capabilities.

A Second Trial by Fire

Uncertainties about the effects of detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia notwithstanding, it is likely that any plans made by Iran and Ansarallah for the future of the Yemeni armed group’s strike capabilities were upended by the HAMAS-led offensive into Israel on 7 October 2023 and the latest and currently ongoing phase of the Gaza-Israel conflict that followed. While publicly available information indicates that Iran and Ansarallah, among other actors in the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance, were not fully aware of the events that would transpire on 7 October 2023, the Axis of Resistance did not remain on the sidelines for long. From 8 October 2023, Iran’s network of non-state allies and partners across the Middle East mobilized to harass Israel in support of HAMAS and other Palestinian groups in Gaza while attempting to avoid a situation in which other members of the Axis of Resistance, above all Hizballah in Lebanon and Iran itself, would enter into a major conflict with Israel.

Although Iran’s plans for the qualitative and quantitative growth, if any, of Ansarallah’s strike capabilities following the detente with Saudi Arabia are not public knowledge, the nature and scope of the HAMAS-led offensive into Israel, which resulted in extensive casualties among Israeli civilians, and the nature and scope of Israel’s subsequent offensive into Gaza, which resulted in extensive and ever-growing casualties among Palestinian civilians, created a situation in which Ansarallah entered into an informal and, so far, low-intensity conflict with Israel, with the ballistic missile arsenal it had as opposed to the ballistic missile arsenal it might have planned.

On 19 October 2023, Ansarallah openly intervened in the latest phase of the Gaza-Israel conflict by launching a wave of extended-range versions of Iranian-origin cruise missiles and propeller-driven strike drones (that it previously operated) to target Israel. These were reportedly intercepted by the United States military over the Red Sea. This intervention on the part of the United States put into motion a sequence of events that culminated in the ongoing Red Sea Crisis, a primarily maritime conflict between Ansarallah and an American-led military coalition that has, over time, not only increasingly overlapped with but also interfered with Ansarallah’s operations against Israel.

Seemingly unable to rely upon its Iranian-supplied extended-range cruise missiles and propeller-driven strike drones to target Israel in the face of a significant American naval presence in the Red Sea, which has typically included dozens of carrier-borne fighter aircraft capable of intercepting such strike munitions heading toward Israel, Ansarallah turned to its ballistic missile arsenal. On 31 October 2023, Ansarallah launched for the first time a ballistic missile, reportedly a liquid-fuelled Toufan (Ghadr), toward the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat. This was reportedly intercepted by an Israeli Arrow-2 endo-atmospheric ballistic missile defence system in the Israeli system’s first combat use. On 9 November 2023, Ansarallah undertook another ballistic missile launch toward Eilat, with this ballistic missile reportedly intercepted by an Israeli Arrow-3 exo-atmospheric ballistic missile defence system also undertaking its first combat use.

While Ansarallah has claimed to have launched ballistic missiles to attack Israel on several more occasions since October 2023 – claims that have been mostly corroborated by Israeli media reports and disclosures made by the Israeli military – Ansarallah’s attacks against Israel have primarily encompassed the use of cruise missiles and propeller-driven strike drones. The vast majority of these attacks involving cruise missiles and propeller-driven strike drones have been unsuccessful, and the damage inflicted in southern Israel has been negligible. As a result, these attacks have been primarily of nuisance value – tying up Israeli air defence systems and fighter aircraft and forcing the expenditure of surface-to-air and air-to-air munitions. Much the same can be said of Ansarallah’s employment of ballistic missiles to target Israel, which reports notably indicate entails the launch of a single ballistic missile per attack.

In a world without ballistic missile defence systems, Ansarallah could perhaps get a lot of mileage from attacks against Israel involving ballistic missiles whatever the accuracy of said ballistic missiles. In a world with ballistic missile defences, however, particularly the dense network of ballistic missile defences deployed by Israel, a single ballistic missile is unlikely to penetrate defences, and such attacks are unlikely to be effective in terms of hitting intended aimpoints irrespective of the accuracy of the ballistic missiles used. As a result, Ansarallah’s employment of ballistic missiles against Israel has also, as of this writing, been primarily of nuisance value – tying up Israeli ballistic missile defences and forcing the expenditure of ballistic missile defence interceptors. With Israel operating more air defence systems and fighter aircraft than ballistic missile defence systems, and with Israel’s Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 systems not offering 360-degree coverage and only being capable of targeting ballistic missiles, however, Ansarallah’s seemingly modest long-range ballistic missile arsenal has at a minimum forced Israel to redeploy a portion of its substantial but finite ballistic missile defences to face the new threat emanating from the south. To increase the effectiveness of its ballistic missile arsenal against Israel and for this arsenal to be more than a nuisance, Ansarallah required from Iran a substantial quantitative and/or qualitative expansion of its ballistic missile capabilities to which the new wartime environment – with both Israel and the United States – was far from conducive.

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A New Long-Range Solid-Fuelled Ballistic Missile

The first evidence of a substantial intra-war qualitative improvement in Ansarallah’s long-range ballistic missile arsenal emerged in June 2024. On 3 June 2024, video footage posted on social media by Israeli civilians in the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat indicated that the Israeli military had intercepted another unspecified ballistic missile seemingly launched from Yemen. On 5 June 2024, Ansarallah claimed responsibility for a ballistic missile launched toward Eilat two days prior and released footage of the launch of a solid-fuelled ballistic missile with the designation of Filasteen (i.e., Palestine). Ansarallah, it seemed, had not only unveiled but employed a previously unseen weapon to attack Israel.

While the Filasteen has a first stage that resembles the Hatemballistic missile, which is a rebranded Iranian Kheybar Shekan unveiled at a September 2022 military parade in Sana’a, it has a differently shaped reentry found on a version of the Kheybar Shekan family seemingly designated as the Kheybar Shekan-2. This appears to be a modification of the baseline Kheybar Shekan related to another (further) evolution of the baseline design equipped with a powered maneuverable reentry vehicle that is designated as the Fattah-1 by Iran. Previously identified on the basis of a single picture from an apparent exhibition in Iran and a statement made by a senior Iranian military officer in the aftermath of Iran’s April 2024 retaliatory air and missile attack on Israel, little is publicly known about the enigmatic Kheybar Shekan-2. The 3 June 2024 launch video, ostensibly filmed by Ansarallah in Yemen, constitutes the first and, so far, only evidence that the Kheybar Shekan-2 is a functional ballistic missile design. The appearance of Filasteen (Kheybar Shekan-2) in Yemen was, as such, unexpected, and seemingly indicated that Iran was willing to transfer one of its latest ballistic missile designs to Ansarallah and that it may have done so following Ansarallah’s entry into active conflict with both Israel and the United States in October 2023.

The appearance and launch of a Filasteen (Kheybar Shekan-2) in early June 2024 left many questions unanswered, not least the question of range. To target even the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat from northern Yemen, Ansarallah requires a ballistic missile with a maximum range of at least 1650 kilometers. To avoid challenging deployments of large and heavy truck trailer-based launchers to the poor road network found in the rugged and mountainous terrain of northern Yemen, Ansarallah requires a ballistic missile with a maximum range of at least 1750 kilometers just to target Eilat. Iran claims that the baseline Kheybar Shekan, which Ansarallah designates the Hatem, has a maximum range of 1450 kilometers. This is more than adequate to target Israel from Iranian territory – Iran employed this ballistic missile during its April 2024 retaliatory air and missile attack on Israel – but wholly inadequate to target even Eilat from Yemen. As of this writing, Iran has made exceedingly limited disclosures about the version of the Kheybar Shekan seemingly designated as the Kheybar Shekan-2 and the maximum range of this discernibly different ballistic missile design is not public knowledge. Hence, it is not possible to determine whether Ansarallah’s Filasteen is a baseline Kheybar Shekan-2 or perhaps an extended-range version of the Kheybar Shekan-2.

Uncertainties notwithstanding, the appearance of some version of the Kheybar Shekan family with adequate range to target Israel from northern Yemen amounted to a significant enhancement of Ansarallah’s long-range strike capabilities. Unlike the Toufan (Ghadr), the Filasteen (Kheybar Shekan-2) is a solid-fuelled ballistic missile and does not need to be fuelled before launch. This facilitates faster launch cycles and reduces the vulnerability of the launcher and launch crew to aerial attacks. The Toufan (Ghadr), which appears to constitute the majority and perhaps the entirety of ballistic missiles Ansarallah has used to attack Israel between October 2023 and June 2024, lacks terminal guidance and, as such, leaves much to be desired in the area of accuracy. The Filasteen (Kheybar Shekan-2), on the other hand, is equipped with a separating maneuverable reentry vehicle and can be expected to hit its intended aimpoint with a high level of accuracy provided that it evades ballistic missile defences or is used against a target not protected by ballistic missile defences. The Filasteen (Kheybar Shekan-2) is, as such, not a mere terror weapon, and it enables Ansarallah’s long-range ballistic missile arsenal to approach the utility of its short-range and medium-range ballistic missile arsenal, which can be expected to reliably strike at the intended aimpoints.

Although limited scale and largely ineffectual use continue to characterize Ansarallah’s employment of ballistic missiles against Israel as of this writing, the Yemeni armed group nevertheless regularly turns to its ballistic missile force to signal resolve. On 20 July 2024, Ansarallah is reported to have launched an unspecified ballistic missile toward the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat in retaliation to Israeli airstrikes targeting the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah which had followed an unprecedented and seemingly partially successful Ansarallah attack on Tel Aviv on 19 July 2024 with a single propeller-driven strike drones. As with prior attacks on Israel involving ballistic missiles, Ansarallah was reportedly thwarted through the use of Israel’s Arrow-3 exo-atmospheric ballistic missile defence system.

Employing the Hatem Against Maritime Targets

As of this writing, Ansarallah has not disclosed whether the reported 20 July 2024 launch of a single ballistic missile toward Israel involved a Filasteen (Kheybar Shekan-2), a Toufan (Ghadr), or some other ballistic missile design. The Israeli military has been tightlipped about the specifics of ballistic missile attacks originating in Yemen and has not disclosed details about its interceptions of ballistic missiles. It is, therefore, possible that the 3 June 2024 launch of a single Filasteen (Kheybar Shekan) may have been a one-off event and that there may at this time be less to the unveiling of this ostensibly new addition to Ansarallah’s ballistic missile arsenal than meets the eye. In late June, however, Ansarallah released footage of another ballistic missile launch which suggests that versions of the Iranian solid-fuelled Kheybar Shekan family may be available to the Yemeni armed group in more than token numbers.

While the unveiling and launch of the Filasteen (Kheybar Shekan-2) in June 2024 was indicative of a major qualitative improvement in Ansarallah’s ballistic missile capabilities vis-a-vis Israel, there was at the time no indication that Ansarallah had ever launched the (baseline) Hatem (Kheybar Shekan), a ballistic missile had been unveiled at a September 2022 parade in Sana’a. Whereas Ansarallah has been able to use the Red Sea Crisis as a proving ground for many of the short- and medium-range strike systems, including ballistic missiles, that it has received from Iran in recent years, the geographies of the primarily maritime conflict in the Red Sea and Ansarallah’s undeclared war with Israel do not offer an opportunity to employ the Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) against a terrestrial target. On 24 June 2024, however, Ansarallah claimed responsibility for a reportedly unsuccessful attack on the MSC Sarah V, a container ship transiting eastward in the Gulf of Aden. Ansarallah has undertaken regular albeit mostly unsuccessful attacks against merchant and naval ships alike in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023 and the reported 24 June 2024 attack on the container ship was therefore far from unusual. The 24 June 2024 incident was, however, particularly notable because Ansarallah claimed to have undertaken the attack with a Hatem-2 ballistic missile, a claim that was backed by the subsequent release of previously unseen launch footage and visual observations reported by the crew of the container ship that came under attack.

Although the Hatem-2 (Kheybar Shekan anti-ship mod.) is an ostensibly new anti-ship version of an existing ballistic missile design, Ansarallah has not disclosed how it is different from the baseline Hatem (Kheybar Shekan). The launch footage released by the Yemeni armed group does not feature a ballistic missile equipped with a radio frequency sensor (whether active or passive), or a nose-mounted electro-optical sensor, which is a feature rather unique to Iranian anti-ship ballistic missiles including designs with much shorter range also employed by Ansarallah. There are, as such, major uncertainties as to how the Hatem-2 ballistic missile was employed on 24 June 2024.

Ansarallah’s employment of various strike munitions against maritime targets is beyond the scope of this report but it is nevertheless important to recognize that Ansarallah is reported to be highly reliant on Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmissions to locate and track merchant ships. AIS transmissions (voluntarily) identify a ship and share its position, course, and speed with the primary objective of reducing the potential of collisions. As a result, it is possible that Ansarallah selected the MSC Sarah V as its target, plotted its likely course (merchant ships often follow a straight line where possible in open water to economize on fuel consumption), and launched a ballistic missile at an aimpoint that the container ship was expected to be at a particular moment. Such an approach would help to explain how the Hatem-2 (Kheybar Shekan anti-ship mod.), a ballistic missile seemingly lacking an onboard sensor, could not only be used to attack a moving maritime target but also reportedly have a point of impact approximately 50 meters away from the actual position of the MSC Sarah V at the time of impact.

Regardless of the specifics of the 24 June 2024 attempted attack on a container ship reportedly involving a Hatem-2 (Kheybar Shekan anti-ship mod.), the incident appears to confirm that the Hatem (Kheybar Shekan) is part of Ansarallah’s deployed arsenal. When viewed alongside the reported launch of a Filasteen (Kheybar Shekan-2) on 3 June 2024 and notwithstanding uncertainties as to the effects, if any, of detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia on the trajectory of Ansarallah’s strike capabilities, the use of at least two specimens of the Iranian Kheybar Shekan family in June 2024 indicate that further transfers of Iranian ballistic missiles have, in at least purely qualitative terms, enhanced Ansarallah’s long-range strike capabilities well beyond what the group maintained in its arsenal during the active years (2014-2022) of Yemen’s internationalized civil war.

***The above text is an excerpt from a longer SPAS Consulting report examining the evolution of Ansarallah’s ballistic missile capabilities***