A gun-selling network linked to Iranian-backed militants has been openly trading weapons on Elon Musk’s platform X.
Arms dealers based in Houthi-controlled Yemen have been using the social media site to buy and sell rifles, handguns and grenade launchers.
Dozens of arms dealers based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, controlled by the Houthis, are effectively using X as a shopfront, posting pictures of assault rifles for sale. Many are touting the guns under the Houthi logo that reads: “God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory to Islam.”
Some of the gun dealers’ X accounts have verified blue ticks, giving them increased prominence on the network.
The Houthis have been designated a global terrorist group by the United States after they attacked shipping in the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza. Washington has accused Iran of supplying the rebels with drones and missiles.
Selling weapons on X is against the platform’s terms of service and the company’s failure to detect the Houthi-linked trade could mean Musk’s company has broken US law, experts said.
American companies are prohibited from trading, giving material support and facilitating transactions with the Houthis. Penalties include fines and being cut off from the US financial system.
A US State Department spokesman said: “Unless the pertinent transactions are authorised or exempt, US persons are generally prohibited from conducting business with sanctioned persons. Persons that engage in certain transactions with the group may be exposed to sanctions risk. The United States takes very seriously the need to counter terrorists’ ability to use the internet to radicalise, recruit or inspire others to terrorism.”
Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy for Yemen, said: “We know that the Houthis are actively leveraging social media to raise money, purchase weapons and facilitate the transfer of weapons. This is in addition to their fundraising and recruiting on the platform.”
The arms dealers appear to have been trading on X for years. Some of their accounts pre-date Musk’s purchase of the platform in 2022. However, the billionaire has come under financial and political pressure since he relaxed content moderation and allowed terrorist content and banned extremists on to his network.
Edmund Fitton-Brown, the former British ambassador to Yemen who is now a senior adviser to the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based non-profit organisation, said: “To me, this is clear material support for terrorism. X has a lamentable history of failing to police itself properly against extremists [and] this is a problem that has clearly got worse since Twitter became X. The very fact that they sell blue tick marks to terrorist groups like the Houthis and the Taliban is obviously a breach of sanctions and a breach of the law.”
Jessica Davis, an expert on terrorist financing and president of Insight Threat Intelligence, said: “If the transactions are happening through X and its payment capabilities, then it’s likely in breach of sanctions against the Houthis. At the very least, this could be viewed as giving material support to the transactions. Any payment processors involved would also likely have liability here.
“I think one of the big questions here is: is X and any payment processor involved actually doing due diligence to make sure its platform and services isn’t used for terrorist financing and facilitation? The answer appears to be no, particularly since this is so overt.”
The traders encourage prospective buyers to contact them on messaging services such as Telegram and WhatsApp or the monetisation platform Patreon to complete sales using cryptocurrency.
Patreon, based in the US, appears to have disabled its service on the arms dealers’ X accounts, while Telegram is based in Dubai and promotes itself as a free-speech platform. Meta, which owns WhatsApp and is headquartered in the US, has taken down accounts flagged by The Times.
Jonathan Hall, the independent adviser on terrorism legislation, said that the legal situation in the UK was less clear, as Whitehall has not proscribed the Houthis. He said X would break British law if, under the Serious Crime Act, the company or its staff intentionally encouraged or assisted an offence or did so recklessly.
Under the Online Safety Act, which will come into force next year, X would have to remove this type of illegal content or face fines, disruption to its service or prosecution of its executives. However, Hall cautioned: “We’re not going to be able to prosecute Elon Musk because it would put the UK in such opposition to the US.”
The gun-sellers make no secret of what they are doing. “New arrival, Pakistani Glock. All colours and sizes and the lowest prices,” reads one post from a dealer under pictures of a handgun. Another advert for a Yemeni version of the AK-104 assault rifle, similar to the AK-47, boasts that it is “guaranteed to be better than the Russian”. It urges buyers to support the Yemeni arms industry, which is controlled by Houthis.
At least 68 arms dealers based in Houthi-controlled Sanaa have been identified on X. Many use the Houthi logo in their adverts and share the group’s propaganda on X feeds.
The Houthis, a Shia group also known as Ansar Allah (supporters of God), were named after their leader, Hussein al-Houthi, who was killed by the Yemeni military in 2004. They started an insurgency, seizing Sanaa and large parts of the country in 2014, prompting the intervention of a Saudi-led coalition which resulted in an eight-year war. They present themselves as a religious revivalist movement that aims to empower Yemen’s Zaidis and are virulently anti-western and antisemitic.
Dr Elisabeth Kendall, an expert on Yemen and head of Girton College at the University of Cambridge, confirmed that there were connections between the gun-sellers and the Houthis.
She said: “They would have to be linked because they are operating, we think, in Houthi-controlled territories. You can’t be doing business in those territories unless you have some kind of sanction from the Houthis, some kind of approval. Hence many of them brandish the Houthi motto.
“Typically, smuggling operations in this huge and very lucrative smuggling economy under the Houthis enriches the Houthi war machine. There’s a cut somewhere that will go to the Houthis, or you would be shut down.”
Gun culture runs deep in Yemen, which has one of the highest densities of weaponry in the world. Kendall said that when she went to a restaurant in Yemen they asked her: “What would you like for your breakfast, and which gun would you like?” She added: “There was a tray of guns, as well as eggs.”
Kendall said the weapons could find their way into the hands of other terrorist groups. She said: “There’s evidence that the Houthis are collaborating, where necessary, with al-Qaeda. The implication of that is that these weapons could be going to all sorts of characters, not just to this specially designated terror group [Houthis] but to a much broader constellation of militant jihadi actors.”
A report for the UN Security Council in November 2023 concluded that weapons from Yemen had been used by Somali terrorists from al-Shabaab in an assassination attempt.
Adam Hadley, the executive director of Tech against Terrorism, a UN-founded anti-extremism group, said: “We are alarmed that a designated terrorist organisation operates with such impunity online. So far the international community has targeted the Houthis through mainly military means. But this revelation demonstrates that terrorists must be countered online, not just through bombs and bullets.
“The Houthis have long relied on the internet as their most important strategic communications tool and now, it seems likely, as a dual-use marketplace to trade arms. Tech companies must comply with sanctions, swiftly remove content linked to the group and protect users from terrorism and extremism.”
X’s failure to take down extremist content has led to internal turmoil at the technology industry’s main anti-terror body, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFTC). X is a founder member of the organisation and sits on the board. However, X has become one of the most accessible sources for Hamas content and its lax content moderation policy has caused concern at GIFTC, for which the Home Office is an independent adviser.
The Counter Extremism Project this week wrote to Musk, urging him to take down Hamas and pro-Hamas content on X, some of which is spread by paid, verified accounts on the platform.
A WhatsApp spokesman said: “If we identify or are made aware of US-designated terrorist organisations attempting to use our service, we will take appropriate action — including banning accounts — to comply with our legal obligations and terms of service.”
X was approached for comment but did not respond. Telegram was approached for comment.
