Riyadh Airport Attack: Saudi Arabia’s War Is Only Beginning

The Houthis are not aiming at the air bases that launch Saudi jets over Yemen. They are aiming at a civilian airport full of travellers, pilots and cabin crew. A campaign that picks passenger terminals as targets has stopped being a military campaign. It is terrorism, and it should be named as such.

The coalition called the strike “a full-fledged war crime” and promised to “respond decisively to this terrorist attack.” Saudi aircraft struck Houthi weapons depots at Mount Attan in Sanaa, along with communication towers and the Bani Hushaysh area. The strikes on airports also reach far beyond Riyadh. They threaten the pilgrim traffic that carries millions of Muslims to Hajj and Umrah every year, and nearly every Muslim family knows someone waiting to make that journey.

There is no off-ramp for Riyadh. Suppose Saudi Arabia announced tomorrow that it was done with Yemen. It would change nothing, because the Houthis do not want to negotiate yet. They want Taiz first. If they take it, they will talk, on their own terms, and no Saudi government can accept a settlement dictated from that position. So Saudi Arabia has one road left, and it runs forward: keep escalating against the Houthis until they lose the ability to strike.

The ground war in Yemen explains the missiles in Riyadh. The fighting is in Yemen; the shockwaves land in Saudi Arabia. Yemen’s government launched a major counteroffensive on October 4, the same day the Houthis cut the main road between Taiz and Aden at al-Safiya. Government forces have since advanced on the coast, taking Perim island (known in Arabic as Mayun) at the mouth of the Bab al-Mandab Strait and pushing the Houthis back from the strait; Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed Al Jaber, says Bab al-Mandab has been cleared of them, which the Houthis deny.

The Houthis are answering with repeated assaults on the last open road between Taiz and Aden. Taiz is the government’s most important city in the north. If it falls, the government’s supply lines break. The Giants Brigades, for their part, are trying to cut the Houthis’ own main supply routes. Above them, Saudi jets are bombing Houthi missile stores. Israeli researcher Ben Tzion has reported that Saudi aircraft are hitting the same missile depots that American jets struck during Washington’s earlier air campaign against the group.

For a closer look at the battle for the city, see why Taiz will decide Saudi Arabia’s war on the Houthis.

Saudi Arabia’s problem in this war is not attack. It is defence. When missiles keep reaching the airports of the capital, the plain conclusion is that the kingdom does not have the air defences it needs. Saudi jets can hit Yemen every night; that does not stop the next missile reaching a terminal in Riyadh.

Help is arriving along exactly that line. Türkiye’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, has confirmed Turkish military support for the kingdom focused largely on air defence. That is where the gap is, and it is where Riyadh’s allies can help most.

Many in the region reach for a familiar explanation: America is conspiring to weaken Saudi Arabia and is letting Iran and the Houthis do the work. That theory is wrong. Washington is not plotting against the Gulf. It is bogged down in its war with Iran and far weaker than most people imagine. When Donald Trump wants to bring a government down, he uses sanctions, not conspiracies; he gutted USAID on taking office.

The country that wants to punish Saudi Arabia is Iran. For years Tehran answered every blow by blaming “the Americans and the Zionists.” Now it has moved its war onto Saudi soil, through the Houthis, at a moment that has nothing to do with Bab al-Mandab alone. Iranian-backed forces are hitting Saudi oil, Saudi airports and Saudi people. In this war, Iran is the great Satan.

Trump’s response confirms how little Washington will do. He called the attack “not acceptable”, said “the attack was a terrible thing,” and, asked whether the United States would join Saudi strikes, answered: “We may. We’re going to look at it.” Last month he said Washington was in communication with the Houthis and that they had agreed not to fight the United States. Those statements contradict each other. Trump is washing his hands of the fight while offering himself as a mediator who can ask the Houthis to leave Saudi airports alone. The Houthis will not listen.

If American forces do join, expect Trump to present it as part of the Iran war. Hitting the Houthis now serves Washington better than hitting Iran: Trump has promised not to return to the Iran war until after the midterm elections. The compass is already swinging toward Yemen. The coalition Riyadh has built instead, through the Mecca Pact with Türkiye and Pakistan, matters more than anything Washington says.

Egypt will not send ground troops into Yemen. Neither will Türkiye or Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia will not go in on the ground either. Ground losses in Yemen are as brutal as anything a modern army can face, and very hard to replace. Egypt knows this better than anyone: it fought in Yemen through the 1960s and lost Sinai in 1967. That is a choice, not an inability. The war on the ground will rest on Yemen’s government forces, possibly reinforced by Syrian fighters or hired foreign fighters, but the bet now is on Yemen’s own army.

The air war is another matter. The New York Times reported that Pakistani jets are taking part in strikes on the Houthis, and Pakistan called the report “fake and fabricated”. Pakistani aircraft are striking Yemen. Islamabad keeps denying it because Iran threatens it. If Pakistan’s role becomes official, the response will come from Tehran, not from the Houthis. Pakistan has a large Shia minority, around a fifth of its population, and a long border with Iran, and the two countries exchanged strikes in January 2024. A war between them is not unthinkable.

There is a twist in all this that is hard to believe. Early in 2025, Trump said Gaza’s Palestinians should move to Sinai and Jordan and insisted Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, would accept. Sisi refused and went to the Gulf’s leaders to find another way. A war that looked certain to land in Sinai became a war on Iran, and the Iran war spread into the Gulf. The fight many expected on Egypt’s soil is now being fought on Saudi Arabia’s.