Yemen’s Houthis said Saudi Arabia carried out more than 50 airstrikes on positions they hold in 24 hours. Saudi Arabia announced no new strikes.
The strikes followed a Houthi claim on Sunday that drones and missiles hit the Sharurah base in southern Saudi Arabia, a facility the group calls a command hub.
The clashes follow a week-long Houthi offensive that took Perim Island, at the mouth of the Red Sea, and the port of Mokha up the coast. Government forces are now striking the road out of Mokha in an effort to retake the city. The group holds the Yemeni side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern outlet for Saudi crude since the Iran war effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis also carried out their heaviest attack on Saudi Arabia in years last week, wounding 73 people and setting oil sites on fire. U.S. media reported that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman twice asked President Donald Trump to strike the Houthis, and that Trump declined. On Saturday, Trump said the Houthis had asked Washington to stay out.
The two chokepoints now form a single equation. Once Hormuz became unusable, Saudi Arabia was moving four million to five million barrels a day through the East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Crude leaves Yanbu north through Suez or south through Bab el-Mandeb. Riyadh shut that pipeline on Friday after drones from Iraq struck it, the day the Houthis took Perim Island. The redundancy Saudi Arabia built against one blockade now depends on a strait the Houthis overlook.
Tehran’s leverage over the Houthis does not amount to control. Wire reporting places direct guidance from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards behind the coastal advance, which Tehran denies. Houthi officials put the Saudi siege of the north at 12 years and say the pressure continues until it is lifted. Trump said the Houthis are letting most shipping pass and have singled out one country. A blockade aimed at a single state’s exports gives other maritime powers no reason to intervene, which is the method Washington has used against Iran at Hormuz.
The alliance test is already visible. Pakistan says no military response has been discussed under the Mecca defense agreement signed in August, and Turkey has condemned the attacks without committing forces. Washington has supplied about 100 advisers and intelligence support while withholding air power. States that answered the closure of one chokepoint by routing around it now find a gatekeeper on the alternative route, and that gatekeeper does not answer to Tehran alone. (EIR/Agencies)
