CNN: Saudi Arabia is getting dragged into a war it has tried desperately to avoid

Saudi Arabia has spent five months trying not to get dragged into a regional conflict, keeping open channels of communication with Tehran even as Iranian drones targeted its oil industry, CNN reports.

Now it appears hemmed in, facing enemies in three directions.

In the last week, the kingdom has faced missile attacks from the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, drone attacks from pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and renewed threats from Tehran.

Early Tuesday local time, it became clear restraint was no longer an option –– its fighter jets, along with US planes, carried out strikes across eastern Iraq.

But the stakes are high.

Getting embroiled in a broader conflict would be a risky and potentially costly option for Riyadh. Over the last decade it has been focused on opening the kingdom up to foreign investment and making it the regional economic powerhouse. That in part drove its policy of détente with Iran long before the war, which led to an agreement mediated by China in 2023.

That strategy is now on life support, as Saudi Arabia finds itself in the eye of a storm. Confronting unpredictable adversaries well-versed in asymmetrical warfare from three directions is a military planner’s nightmare.

Saudi Arabia has spent tens of billions of dollars modernizing its military and buying state-of-the-art missile defenses, but it has a huge landmass (about one-fifth the size of the United States), coastlines to defend and its oil infrastructure is widely dispersed.

The Houthi threat

At the weekend the Houthis fired missiles at two Saudi oil complexes on the Red Sea coast. Satellite images and geolocated video suggest extensive damage to one of those facilities, at Jazan near the border with Yemen.

The missile strikes followed Houthi attacks on two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea after the group announced a blockade of Saudi shipping transiting the Bab al-Mandeb chokepoint. The Houthis claimed a further attack on a Saudi vessel Monday.

For the Saudis, who have re-routed much of their oil exports through Red Sea ports such as Yanbu as Hormuz remains paralyzed, the blockade represents a major escalation.

They are planning a further expansion of oil exports via the Red Sea – to about 9 million barrels a day over the next three years. But tankers leaving Yanbu for Asian markets must transit Bab al-Mandeb, leaving about three-quarters of exports through the Red Sea exposed to Houthi disruption, analysts say.

Saudi Arabia spent seven years trying and failing to dislodge the Houthis from northern Yemen, launching a large-scale offensive against the militant group in 2015. The ensuing conflict provoked one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

A truce was arranged in 2022, but it never became a peace. Saudi Arabia maintained an economic and air blockade against Houthi-controlled areas.

Earlier this month, the Houthis accused Saudi Arabia of bombing the airport in the capital, Sanaa, to stop a direct flight from Tehran landing after it had ignored warnings to divert.

The flight was carrying a Houthi delegation returning from the funeral of Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But “attention was also focused on what else may have been transported aboard the aircraft,” says Nawaf Obeid of the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

That set off the new cycle of violence, culminating in the missile attacks over the weekend.

But for now, the Saudi response is more likely to comprise air strikes, analysts say. On Friday, the Saudi air force targeted the port at Hodeidah, the largest under Houthi control, in retaliation for the tanker attacks.

While Iran has not targeted Saudi Arabia directly since April, its foreign ministry claimed again this week that “some countries of the Persian Gulf independently participated in military attacks on Iran. The US is responsible for the attacks, but the role of some regional countries cannot be ignored.”

A rough neighborhood

Ultimately, Saudi Arabia is in the middle of a neighborhood that looks more threatening and volatile than it did on February 28, the day the war started.

Saudi officials have been taken aback by the whiplash style of US President Donald Trump’s Iran and Gaza policies.

While Saudi-US military-to-military cooperation remains close, there’s a broader apprehension in Riyadh of being left alone to face a more belligerent and assertive Iran once US interest wanes.

The kingdom and its allies are at a crossroads. It doesn’t help that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are only now beginning to repair relations scarred by the UAE’s sudden departure from the OPEC oil cartel, differences over the conflict with Iran, and a falling-out over who to back against the Houthis in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has clearly now decided that there is only so much punishment it can absorb before striking back.

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