Yemen’s Houthis said on Monday they attacked Saudi East-West pipeline pumping stations and Riyadh airport, with no Saudi confirmation, as officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan were set to meet Iranian officials in Tehran.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement said on Monday it had attacked pumping stations on Saudi Arabia’s East-West crude oil pipeline and Riyadh airport, Reuters reported, in the latest claims in an escalating confrontation between the movement and the kingdom.
There was no immediate Saudi confirmation of the attacks. The Saudi-led coalition said it had destroyed two ballistic missile launchers in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, including one it said fired a missile toward Riyadh that was intercepted, and later said it destroyed five tunnels used to store ballistic missiles, four launchers and a missile storage facility, pledging continued deterrent operations.
The pipeline at the centre of the claims runs about 1,200 kilometres from the Abqaiq area in eastern Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, and has served as a key export route while the Strait of Hormuz has been largely shut by the wider war. Saudi Arabia temporarily shut the pipeline in September as a precaution after a drone attack that Riyadh and Baghdad said originated in Iraq. Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport resumed operations at two terminals on Sunday after an attack claimed by the group earlier this month killed 13 people, which Reuters described as the deadliest in the kingdom in more than a decade. The Houthis also said on Saturday they had targeted the pipeline, an Aramco facility in Yanbu and the Rabigh refinery, again without Saudi confirmation.
The claims themselves rest on Houthi statements as reported by Reuters, and the coalition’s strikes rest on coalition statements as reported by Reuters; neither side’s account of Monday’s events has independent confirmation. The planned Tehran meeting rests on two unnamed people with knowledge of the matter, not on a named official confirmation. Nothing in the reporting confirms damage to the pipeline or the airport from Monday’s claimed strikes, and the reporting does not say oil flows through the pipeline have changed.
Top officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan were set to meet Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday to discuss regional coordination, which Reuters described as the first high-level contact between Iran and all three members of the Mecca Pact bloc since Saudi Arabia came under escalating Houthi attacks. The outcome of that meeting, and any Saudi statement on the claimed strikes, are the next things to watch in a confrontation that has effectively ended a United Nations-brokered truce that had largely held since 2022.