Saudi Arabia Intercepts Missiles Aimed at Its Red Sea Oil Hub
The Saudi-led coalition says it shot down two Houthi missiles heading for Taif and Yanbu, and civil defence briefly warned four western regions including Mecca to seek shelter before rescinding the alerts. Yanbu is the Red Sea terminal through which Riyadh bypasses the Strait of Hormuz.
That is what gives the attempt its significance: with Hormuz effectively closed to much Saudi crude, the east-west pipeline to Yanbu has become the workaround, and the company’s chief executive says its capacity has been raised from two million barrels a day to seven. A missile aimed at Yanbu is aimed at the detour. Everything here is one party’s account, and the claims run both ways. The interception is the coalition’s own, unverified independently. The Houthis separately claim to have struck a naval base and a camp at Aden, and their health ministry claims nine people were killed in Yemen over two days, which it blames on Saudi Arabia; Riyadh did not respond and the figures could not be verified. Iran’s president, meanwhile, spoke unusually plainly about the cost at home: “There are many people in this society who are struggling to put food on the table because of the war.” He called for an end to a state of “neither war nor peace” without saying how.