Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said Saturday they fired missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia after Saudi airstrikes on Hodeida, the strategic Red Sea city where port infrastructure and state-run communications were hit and two people were injured, according to the Houthi-run health ministry.
Who Pays for the Power Plays
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, the Houthis’ military spokesperson, said in a prerecorded statement that the attack targeted facilities in the Red Sea cities of Yanbu and Jizan that belong to Aramco, the world’s largest oil company. Saudi Arabia’s civil defense said alerts sounded multiple times early Saturday in both cities, but the kingdom didn’t comment further. The people living under these exchanges get the sirens, the strikes and the risk. The institutions at the top get the stage.
The Houthis said they were answering Saudi airstrikes on Hodeida. The Saudi-led coalition opposing the rebels said Saturday that the strikes late Friday hit the port and the state-run telecommunications corporation, but the coalition said it didn’t hit the port and instead struck “legitimate military targets” in Hodeida province that “were linked to threats to commercial vessels in the Red Sea.” That’s the language of order from above: military targets, legitimate threats, commercial vessels. On the ground, two people were injured.
The Chokepoint Everyone Wants to Control
The Houthis have said they would close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Saudi-linked shipping in retaliation for the kingdom’s blockade on Yemen and a recent attack on the international airport in Yemen’s rebel-held capital, Sanaa. Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi-led Supreme Political Council governing rebel-controlled territories in Yemen, said, “Nothing short of ending the aggression and lifting the blockade, otherwise, it’s all illusion and mirage,” when asked what it would take for the Houthis not to blockade the Bab-El-Mandeb.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is a vital shipping chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Around 12% of the world’s trade, including a quarter of its container traffic, passes through the narrows. That’s the real prize here. Not people. Not peace. A narrow corridor where states and oil giants fight over who gets to move goods and who gets to choke them off.
The Houthis targeted two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea this week. In response, Saudi Arabia struck Hodeida, the Saudi-led coalition opposing the rebels said Saturday. The cycle keeps feeding itself, and ordinary people keep paying the bill in injuries, fear and disrupted shipping.
Peace Talks, War Machines
There were no reported strikes overnight in Iran, marking an apparent break from nearly two weeks of consecutive nights of U.S. attacks. Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesperson for Iran’s Health Ministry, posted on X, “Iran had a peaceful night.” U.S. Central Command didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Unlike the previous 13 nights, it didn’t announce new strikes.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called for “diplomacy and dialogue” to solve the Yemen conflict without “military confrontations” in an interview published Saturday by the state-run newspaper called Iran. That’s the familiar script: officials call for dialogue while armed institutions keep the pressure on ports, cities and shipping lanes. The words float above the wreckage.
Iran’s foreign ministry also condemned what it called a Ukrainian attack Saturday on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, saying one person was killed and another was hurt and calling it an act of aggression. In a separate statement, Araghchi said he spoke with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas about it and that Tehran demanded a response. Ukraine’s diplomatic representative to Iran was summoned, Iranian state media reported. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier said on X that Ukraine “achieved very strong results with long‑range strikes in the Caspian Sea — including vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran.”
While efforts at mediation between the U.S. and Iran continue, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to travel to the United States next week and meet with President Donald Trump in Washington on Tuesday, his office said Friday. They last met in Washington in February, weeks before they launched the war. The summit circuit rolls on. The violence doesn’t wait for it.
A tenuous ceasefire that halted major operations for weeks has seemed to unravel this month. The U.S. accused Iran of striking three ships in the Strait of Hormuz and responded by striking dozens of targets in Iran, which retaliated by firing at U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states. The U.S. military has renewed its blockade of Iran’s ports. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has advised residents of neighboring countries to stay away from bases with U.S. troops.
The war has killed more than 3,400 people in Iran, according to its Health Ministry. Eighteen U.S. service members, 24 civilians in Israel and smaller numbers of civilians including foreign workers and mariners have been reportedly killed across the region. In Lebanon, more than 4,000 people have been killed since Iran-backed Hezbollah militants fired at Israel in support of the Islamic Republic two days after the war began and Israel responded with strikes and ground forces. Thirty-eight Israeli troops have also died. Those numbers are the ledger of state power, written in bodies and wrecked lives while the commanders, ministers and oil executives keep talking about security, legitimacy and dialogue.