Yemen’s Tehran-backed Houthis attacked four cities in the south of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, wounding more than 70 people and setting oil installations ablaze in what appeared to be a major expansion of the six-month-old Middle East war.
The Houthis, who control most of Yemen’s populated areas including the capital, said they had launched a broad operation deep into Saudi territory.
They used drones and missiles to strike a Saudi airbase in the southern city of Khamis Mushait, and targets belonging to Saudi Arabia’s state oil company in nearby Abha, Najran on the Yemeni border and Jazan, a major Red Sea port city that houses a large refinery and power plant.
Saudi authorities reported fires at the sites and said women and children were among the 73 people injured. The reports of such large numbers of wounded suggested the attacks were among the biggest carried out against Saudi Arabia since the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran in February.
The Houthis released pictures showing thick smoke and explosions of what they said were trucks from Saudi Arabia that they had hit in separate strikes at the border in another area further east on Monday.
After a month of calm in August, fighting in the Gulf has resumed, with Iran and the US exchanging fire, sending global oil prices back up to levels unseen since July. Brent crude prices were up more than 2 per cent on Tuesday, above $99 a barrel.
Houthi attacks on southwestern Saudi Arabia have the potential to worsen the war’s global economic impact by disrupting Middle East energy supplies beyond the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.
The International Organisation for Migration said more than 18,500 people had fled their homes because of fighting along Yemen’s west coast over the past three days.
“The coalition will take all necessary operational measures to deter this terrorist militia and resolutely confronts its hostile approach,” Colonel Turki al-Malki, spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition, said in a statement on X.
The wider war in the Gulf has turned into a test of wills between the US and Iran, with each side hoping that economic pressure from competing blockades will force the other to yield.
Washington is trying to increase the flow of oil to world markets by guiding ships through the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, while cutting off Iran’s exports with a blockade just beyond it.
Tehran has announced new measures to seal off the strait, saying it will soon unveil details of a “maritime exclusion zone” that will extend from the perimeter of the US blockade, through the strait and into the Gulf itself.
Washington fired at Iranian tankers over the weekend in retaliation for Iranian fire at US warships. Iran said it had used new, more capable ballistic missiles to attack American ships.
“In recent days, Washington has received a clear warning from Iran’s new missiles,” Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said on X.
“Economic warfare will be met by a maritime exclusion zone across the Persian Gulf to the blockade perimeter. The operational posture towards US warships and bases has been fundamentally recalibrated.”
Despite US barrages that have degraded Iran’s conventional forces and punished its already ailing economy, Iran still possesses missiles and drones that can threaten oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz and have been used to attack US military bases scattered throughout the region.
About a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments passed through the strait before the war.
The fighting has caused global shortages of crude oil and, even more acutely, the fuels that are produced by refining it. Diesel fuel in the United States is now at a record average retail price of more than $5.90 a gallon, harming the political prospects of President Donald Trump’s Republicans.
“Oil prices will drop precipitously, like everything else is dropping (but more!), when we WIN the war with Iran. Three Dollars a gallon, but ultimately, below Two Dollars a gallon. It will all happen quickly, and Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump said on social media.
