Wall Street Journal: Notorious Russian arms dealer preparing to strike a deal with the Houthis in Yemen

Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is suspected of preparing a small arms deal with Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Viktor Bout gained notoriety in 2005 after a film called "Lord of War" was made, which allegedly depicted his decades-long career selling weapons to clients in the Middle East, South America and Africa before he was arrested in 2008 and imprisoned in the United States.

The arms dealer was released about two years ago in a prisoner swap with Russia for American basketball star Brittney Griner.

When a Houthi delegation visited Moscow in August “to negotiate the purchase of $10 million worth of automatic weapons, they encountered a familiar face: Bout,” according to a European security official and other people familiar with the matter who spoke to the Journal.

The arms delivery to the Houthis has not yet taken place, and came after the Biden administration expressed concerns about the sale of Russian anti-ship or anti-aircraft missiles to the Houthis, posing a major threat to the US military's efforts to protect shipping in the Red Sea from attacks by the Iran-backed group.

Washington feared that Russia would deliver these advanced weapons to the Houthis, in response to US support for Ukraine, but there is no evidence that the missiles have been sent so far, or that Bout was involved in the deal.

For its part, the Kremlin said on Monday, commenting on the report, that it "appears to be fake." A Houthi spokesman declined to comment to the American newspaper.

The report explained that the first two shipments will most likely be AK-74 rifles, an upgraded version of the AK-47 assault rifle.

But during their trip to Moscow, Houthi representatives also discussed other weapons with the Russians, including Kornet anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft weapons, according to a European official and others familiar with the matter.

They said that the deliveries "may begin this month... and will arrive at the port of Hodeidah under the cover of food supplies, as Russia is already carrying out several grain deliveries."

It is noteworthy that Bout (56 years old) was serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States, after being arrested in Thailand in 2008, and convicted in 2011, on charges including conspiracy to kill Americans, and supporting a terrorist organization.

Bout is accused of "taking advantage of the chaos that followed the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 to buy weapons at low prices from out-of-control military bases, before creating his own fleet of cargo planes to deliver his cargo around the world."

If completed, the deal would be his first arms shipment since his prison sentence, but it would not include anti-ship or anti-aircraft missiles that could threaten U.S. military efforts to protect international shipping from Houthi attacks, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Reuters reported earlier that Tehran, which has deepened ties with Moscow and supplied Russia with drones and ballistic missiles for use against Ukraine, is brokering a deal to supply Russian Yakhont (Onyx) hypersonic missiles to the Houthis.