The Houthi campaign against Saudi shipping

Yemen's Houthis declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia on 20 July 2026, days after Yemeni government forces bombed Houthi-held Sanaa airport to block an Iranian plane from landing, then began carrying it out: missile and drone strikes on Saudi tankers in the Red Sea from 23 July, an advance that took the strategic island of Mayyun/Perim and the port city of Mocha in September, and a drone strike that forced a shutdown of Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline. Saudi Arabia has answered with hundreds of air strikes across Yemen, and the fighting has spread into a renewed ground war around Taiz. The campaign is entangled with the wider US-Israel war on Iran: with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, Saudi crude has been loading at Yanbu on the Red Sea and sailing south through Bab al-Mandeb, the strait the Houthis now partly control.

By mid-September the Houthis were striking Saudi cities directly, and on 16 September Saudi Arabia said it shot down a drone approaching Mecca, the first such threat to Islam's holiest city since 2017; the Houthis denied targeting Mecca, saying they hit only military and oil targets. The escalation reached the Saudi capital on the night of Friday 18 September, when the Civil Defence issued air raid alerts for Riyadh and several other regions - the first for the capital since the blockade was declared - and Reuters and AFP journalists reported explosions. Saudi Arabia confirmed on Saturday that a Houthi ballistic missile had been aimed at Riyadh and intercepted at dawn, with a plume of smoke seen near the airport and no casualties reported. The Saudi-led coalition said further attempts on Yanbu, Taif, Baysh and Farasan were thwarted. The Houthis claimed, without evidence, that they had hit sensitive sites in Riyadh and Aramco facilities at Yanbu; Aramco did not comment.

The exchange has intensified on both sides. The Houthis said Saudi Arabia carried out 26 strikes in 24 hours and around 300 over the past week, while the Saudi-backed Yemeni government said it had killed 30 Houthi fighters in the al-Wazi'iyah district of Taiz. Tens of thousands marched through Sanaa on Friday in support of the Houthis. Washington has held back: US officials met Houthi representatives at the US embassy in Muscat over the weekend, where the group reportedly assured them that vessels not linked to Saudi Arabia would not be targeted, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has personally asked Donald Trump for military action, which Trump has so far declined, offering intelligence and targeting support instead. Trump said in Ireland that the Houthis had told the United States they did not want to fight it. The EU's Kaja Kallas said the bloc's Red Sea naval mission, Operation Aspides, had raised its alert level.