A missile strike by Houthi rebels on King Khalid international airport in Riyadh has killed at least 13 people and injured 300, according to reports at the time of writing. The attack on Saturday is the deadliest on any Gulf country since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran in February, and it marks a significant escalation in a regional conflict that is intensifying.
In Saudi Arabia, a country unaccustomed to such fatalities, the death toll is bewilderingly high and likely to prompt a bloody response. The attack underscores a new era of instability in the Gulf that is not temporary and cannot be reversed, according to Nesrine Malik, a Guardian columnist.
A region under siege
Over the past year, the gradual erosion of peace and security in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE has changed the region more dramatically than its leaders would like to acknowledge. The first audacious event occurred just over a year ago when Iran fired missiles at an airbase in Qatar that hosts American troops, in retaliation for US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. That attack, which lit up Doha’s skies, was a dismaying moment for Qataris, though it came with some warning and coordination, signalling a face-saving measure by Iran.
Later in 2025, Israel struck Doha without similar warning, targeting Hamas members and killing five Palestinians and one Qatari. That was the beginning of the end of a longstanding norm that Gulf lives and sovereignty were sacred, secured by managed relations with Iran and alliances with the US. Then came Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran, which drew the Gulf fully into the fray.
Economic and strategic fallout
In retaliation for what Iran perceives as political, military and logistical support for the offensive, Tehran struck Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. Iran targeted military sites, energy facilities, and desalination plants—infrastructure that underpins the economies of these countries. The suspension of normal life, shuttering of schools for months, and closure of airports and airspace inflicted much damage.
The most disastrous consequence for Gulf rulers has been the disruption of their integration into the cosmopolitan international community as destinations for tourism, entrepreneurs, sports, and entertainment. They spent billions securing Formula One, golf, and boxing franchises, only for a flurry of cheap drones to put it all at risk.
Houthi resurgence and Yemen's war
Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels took over the capital, Sana’a, seeking greater autonomy. In 2015, a Saudi-led coalition launched a brutal campaign to dislodge them, intensifying a war that killed hundreds of thousands and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe. The war deescalated in 2022 with a de facto division of the country, followed by rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
But the 2026 war against Iran opened strategic opportunities for the Houthis. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz shifted more commercial traffic along Yemen’s coastline, prompting the Houthis to seize territory to control the Bab al-Mandab strait. Five months into the war, Saudi Arabia escalated strikes against the Houthis, and the Saudi-backed government bombed its own airport in Sana’a to prevent an Iranian plane from landing.
The Houthis are backed by Iran but are not empty proxies; they have domestic ambitions and sharp animosities, particularly against the House of Saud. A senior Houthi official said Saturday’s attack took place “so that the world understands” that Yemeni civilian infrastructure has been targeted by the Saudis, gesturing towards a sense that Riyadh treats Yemeni lives as cheap.
Old alliances, new hostilities
The developments are another consequence of Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel and what followed in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. The final stabilising piece fell away when Trump decided that the safety of US Gulf allies was secondary to his Iran “excursion”. The limits of relying on the US security umbrella became clear to both allies and enemies.
Last month, the Trump administration refused to extend military assistance to Saudi Arabia to fight the Houthis, after US officials met with the Houthis, who assured them they would not attack US ships in the Red Sea, only Saudi vessels. Saudi Arabia now faces a long, intractable war with a resourceful antagonist willing to sustain high pain in ways Riyadh can’t match without orienting itself entirely towards war. If the 2015 campaign is any guide, it will claim thousands of lives with only a remote possibility of a decisive outcome.
Saudi Arabia and the entire Gulf are pulled further into the storm. Trump cannot bring the Iran war to an end, Gaza remains an open wound, and Israel continues to strike and occupy parts of Lebanon. The Houthi resurgence represents a new reality in a region bewildered and losing lives and capital, stuck between old alliances that no longer work and new hostilities too calamitous to confront.
