Iran-Backed Houthis Target Saudi Oil, Airports, Investors

Houthi missiles and drones struck Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport and Saudi Aramco over the past week, killing people at the airport and setting off a fire that spread across several floors of an Aramco facility. The attacks also disrupted the Future Investment Initiative, Riyadh’s flagship annual investment forum, where top oil executives withdrew and organizers offered remote participation instead.

Saudi, Iranian and regional sources describe the strikes as part of a campaign targeting infrastructure and investment events central to the kingdom’s economic ambitions. They say the aim is to pressure Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman into meeting Houthi demands in Yemen and push US President Donald Trump to ease the US blockade on Iran’s economy.

Tehran’s Pressure Play

Michael Knights, of strategic advisory Horizon Engage, put the logic bluntly. Iran faces mounting economic and military pressure after the war the US and Israel launched on February 28. “The Iranians are in a chokehold,” he said. Unable to force Washington to change course directly, Tehran and the Houthis are “hammering Saudi Arabia, they’re hammering the weak point.”

A senior Iranian official made a similar argument from the other side. The attacks, the official said, form part of a broader strategy by Iran and its allies to reshape the regional balance of power by targeting energy infrastructure and key shipping routes. Riyadh can’t rely on US protection and should pursue negotiations, the official added. Houthi attacks would continue unless Saudi restrictions were lifted.

The confrontation now stretches from the Strait of Hormuz, at the Gulf’s mouth, to Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea. The Houthis have a direct stake: Iran is their principal regional backer, and the United States says the movement depends on weapons and cash flowing from Tehran. Easing pressure on Iran would likely bolster its ability to sustain that support.

Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam denied that the group acts at Iran’s behest. He said its demands concern longstanding humanitarian issues, including lifting restrictions on Yemeni ports, airports and the economy, and paying civil servants’ salaries from Yemen’s own resources. “Our humanitarian demands have nothing to do with Iran or anyone else,” he said.

The demands, as two Saudi sources and three regional sources familiar with Saudi thinking described them, go further. They include ending Saudi military operations, regular flights to Iran, war compensation and an end to Riyadh’s support for Yemen’s recognized government. Such terms would consolidate Houthi rule over much of Yemen. Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East analyst at the London School of Economics, called it what it is: “What the Houthis are asking now is a victor’s peace.”

A Dilemma in Riyadh

The Houthis have struck deep inside the kingdom before. Seven years after the 2019 attacks on Aramco facilities temporarily disrupted about 5% of global oil supply, the vulnerability remains. Riyadh intervened in Yemen in 2015 after the Houthis took the capital, Sanaa. The war became a bloody stalemate before a 2022 ceasefire, now in its fourth anniversary year.

A Saudi-backed peace roadmap from 2023 offered the Houthis a path to political legitimacy and reconstruction funding, with Riyadh set to help pay public-sector salaries and fund rebuilding. Yemen analyst Farea al-Muslimi said the Red Sea conflict derailed that process as the Houthis deepened their alignment with Iran.

Sources familiar with Saudi thinking say bin Salman faces a hard choice. Escalation risks a wider war that could undermine his transformation agenda; concessions risk strengthening a movement that has challenged Saudi power for years. Abdulaziz Sager, chairman of the Saudi-based Gulf Research Center, said Saudi leaders now see military pressure as their only viable option. “They reached a point of no negotiations,” he said. “They have no other choice except military action.”

Washington’s Reluctance

The United States has shown little appetite for another sustained campaign against the Houthis since bombing them last year over Red Sea shipping attacks and then agreeing to a ceasefire, according to the sources. At the start of the campaign, bin Salman asked Trump for help, but Trump didn’t agree to US strikes, sources told Reuters last month. Washington offered targeting assistance and intelligence-sharing instead. Trump later said he was considering possible action while appearing to defer a response until after the US midterm elections. Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the attacks.

Former US negotiator Aaron David Miller described the imbalance favoring the attackers. The Houthis sit near the Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint, and “Saudi infrastructure is much more valuable than Houthi infrastructure,” he said. “They have so much less to lose than the Saudis.”

Al-Muslimi warned of the endgame. “We’re heading toward the worst outcome imaginable,” he said. “A war worse than 2015. This time it will be bloodier, and Saudi Arabia will enter it with fewer allies.” He said no successful campaign against the Houthis is possible without Gulf unity, mainly between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “This is not simply a Saudi war. It is a Gulf war.”

The Saudi government media office, Iran’s foreign ministry and a Houthi spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the broader reporting. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Why This Matters: The campaign shows how Iran uses proxy forces to open pressure points when it can’t confront Washington directly. Strikes on an airport, an oil giant and an investor conference target the economic core of a Gulf state that Tehran’s allies want to coerce. If Riyadh concedes, a movement armed and funded through Iranian networks gains legitimacy and territory; if it escalates, the Gulf risks a war broader than 2015. For Israel and its Arab neighbors alike, the lesson is that Iran-aligned groups exploit gaps in deterrence, and hesitation in Washington carries strategic costs for allies across the region.