Red Sea & Gulf
Maritime security, shipping corridors and Gulf-Horn relations shape a critical geopolitical theatre.
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Missiles Hit Riyadh's Main Airport Three Times in Four Days, Killing More Than a Dozen People. Trump Says the US 'May' Join the War Against Whoever Fired Them.
Yemen's Houthi movement struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh three times in four days, on 8, 10 and 11 October, according to Saudi officials and reporting by Al Jazeera, NBC News, CBC and the Washington Post. The 10 October strike alone killed at least 12 people, by some counts 13, including an American citizen, and wounded roughly 300 to 309 others, forcing the airport's closure and the cancellation of more than 600 flights; Saudi authorities and Western outlets called it the deadliest attack on the kingdom in more than a decade. The Saudi-led coalition's spokesman, Brigadier General Turki al-Maliki, called the strike a "full-fledged war crime" and said the coalition would respond "decisively," while UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned it as a violation of international law. President Trump called the attack "terrible," said he would speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and told reporters the United States "may" join Saudi strikes against the Houthis directly: "We're gonna look at it ... We'll make a decision. We'll move very quickly." Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree did not claim the strikes outright but said airports and airspace are a legitimate "theatre of operations," framing the campaign as an "airport-for-airport" response to Saudi-backed strikes on Sanaa's and Hodeidah's airports during a government offensive, Operation Dawn of Yemen, launched days earlier. Somalia and Djibouti are founding members of the Saudi-led Multinational Maritime Defense Alliance, built in July specifically to counter the Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping; its mandate covers tanker escorts, not missiles landing on a member state's own civil aviation terminals, a gap FIKIR Institute has tracked widening since a September strike on a Saudi oil refinery went unanswered by either regional coalition.
12 October 2026
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Called Trump Twice Asking Him to Bomb the Houthis. Twice Trump Said No — Then Sent His Own Negotiators to Cut the Houthis a Deal That Leaves Saudi Arabia Out.
President Trump twice declined Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's direct requests to strike the Houthis last week, even as the group completed its capture of Yemen's Red Sea coastline and closed in on the Bab el-Mandeb strait. Rather than intervene militarily, Washington sent officials to the US embassy in Muscat, where they met Houthi representatives around 15 September in talks brokered by Oman. The Houthis assured the Americans they had no intention of attacking US or Israeli vessels, and said their restrictions on Red Sea shipping would apply only to ships linked to Saudi Arabia. The arrangement leaves Riyadh, which asked twice for American strikes and was twice refused, facing a collapse of all three of its main oil export routes at once, and leaves the Horn of Africa's littoral states watching a great power decide the safety of their shared waterway through a channel that does not include them.
20 September 2026
Somalia and Djibouti Joined a Coalition Built to Escort Ships Past Houthi Missiles. On Friday the Houthis Took the Strait Those Ships Sail Through.
Yemen's Houthi movement completed a rapid territorial offensive along the Red Sea coast on 11 September, seizing the strategic island of Perim, also called Mayun, a day after capturing the port city of Mocha, as the forces of Yemen's internationally recognised government withdrew from the last towns they held on the coast. Perim sits at the narrowest point of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and divides its shipping lanes; Houthi control of it, combined with the Mocha capture, gives the group physical command of the chokepoint through which Reuters estimates roughly 7 percent of global oil output passes. Oil prices closed above $100 a barrel on the news, the first time since mid-May, and US diesel prices crossed $6 a gallon. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pressing President Trump for military action against the Houthis, while the EU's own Djibouti-coordinated naval mission and the Saudi-led alliance Somalia and Djibouti joined in July both remain built around escorting ships past missile fire, a threat this week's fighting has now moved past.
12 September 2026
Saudi Arabia Built Two Coalitions in Six Weeks to Cover Exactly This Scenario. When Houthi Missiles Hit Its Oil Fields, Neither One Fired a Shot.
Yemen's Houthi movement fired dozens of ballistic missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia's Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran on 8 September and again on 9 September, wounding 73 civilians and igniting fires at Aramco energy facilities and a Saudi air base, the first strikes to reach so deep inside the kingdom since a 2022 truce collapsed in July. The attack arrived five weeks after Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, an Article 5-style mutual defense pact; Riyadh did not invoke it, and Ankara offered only a statement of condemnation. It arrived six weeks after Saudi Arabia stood up the 14-nation Multinational Maritime Defense Alliance that Somalia and Djibouti joined specifically to help secure the Red Sea; that alliance, built around ship escorts and tanker threats, had no mechanism to respond to a missile strike on Saudi soil, and Somalia's own condemnation recycled language about commercial vessels and freedom of navigation for an attack that struck an oil refinery and an airbase instead.
10 September 2026
Fourteen Countries, Somalia and Djibouti Among Them, Joined a Coalition to Guard Bab el-Mandeb From the Houthis. This Week the Houthis Tried to Just Take It.
Yemen's Houthi movement launched a major ground assault on 3 September, backed by rocket and drone fire, to seize elevated positions overlooking the government-held port of Mokha and territory bordering the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. An AFP tally of military and medical sources put the two-day death toll at 129 by 4 September, including 66 government soldiers and at least 62 Houthi fighters, before Yemen's government answered on 5 September with its own air force, not the Saudi-led coalition's, flying at least fifteen strikes against Houthi positions in Taiz and Hodeidah. Somalia and Djibouti are founding members of the fourteen-nation Multinational Maritime Defense Alliance Saudi Arabia assembled in July specifically to secure this stretch of water. Until this week, the threat it prepared for was missiles fired at tankers. This week, for the first time, Houthi fighters tried to seize the high ground the strait's security actually depends on.
7 September 2026