domingo, 11 de outubro de 2026
Riyadh international airport reportedly hit again in second strike
1h ago
15.48 BST
Riyadh
international airport reportedly hit again in second strike
The
Saudi-led coalition in Yemen says an “unidentified projectile” hit Riyadh’s international airport on Sunday – the same site targeted in Saturday’s strike which injured hundreds of
people and killed 12.
Coalition
spokesman Major General Turki al-Malki said the projectile struck Terminal 4 at
King Khalid International Airport, causing a fire, AFP reported.
Al-Malki
said air defences also “intercepted and destroyed a cruise missile” in the
vicinity of the airport.
The
airport has been closed today following yesterday’s deadly attack.
Houthi attack on Riyadh airport forces swift rethink of Trump’s new strategy
Analysis
Houthi
attack on Riyadh airport forces swift rethink of Trump’s new strategy
Patrick
Wintour
US
president’s plan to park the wars in Iran and Yemen, while blaming Ukraine for
diesel prices, looks unsustainable
Sun 11
Oct 2026 14.23 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/11/houthi-attack-riyadh-airport-donald-trump-strategy
The
reckless missile attack on King Khalid international airport in Riyadh on
Saturday did not just export the death and misery inside Yemen to Saudi Arabia,
it also left Donald Trump forced to reconsider his diplomatic and political
strategy designed to take him into the midterm elections next month.
The US
president’s plan had only been unveiled on Friday. He said it was the result of
“a world problem” – spiralling diesel prices – which he blamed on Volodymyr
Zelenskyy’s attacks on Russian oil refineries. He was going to keep the
political temperature down on his war of choice in Iran and its spillover in
Yemen until after the midterms.
In
pursuit of this strategy, he claimed the Iranian blockade in the strait of
Hormuz was in effect broken, producing figures on daily oil barrel exports to
assuage the markets. As a further insurance he also claimed it was impossible
to negotiate with the Iranians since there was no single leadership in Tehran.
Saudi
Arabia, in conjunction with Turkey, and Pakistan, were largely to be left to
sort out the Houthis along the Red Sea. The fate of Yemen, the poorest country
in the world according to the International Monetary Fund, was not going to
shift votes in Kansas or Alaska.
Now,
after the Riyadh airport attack, it is doubtful, for a basket of reasons, that
this anyway threadbare strategy, largely born of desperation, can hold.
For all
the talk of the Gulf becoming responsible for its own security, it is doubtful
that Saudi Arabia can be left to fend for itself after the carnage in Riyadh.
One of the the 12 dead is an American and there may be more among the severely
injured. Something is clearly wrong with Saudi defences since the Houthis are
firing rockets from 500 miles away, and they are reaching their target too
often.
The US
has had a unilateral ceasefire with the Houthis since 2025, and once the
hostilities between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis recommenced in the summer, the
pact was quietly renewed. Trump has twice rejected Saudi appeals for help. Can
he spurn them three times? The pressure to act as allies are expected to may
prove overwhelming.
But “the
blame Zelenskyy, trade with Russia” strategy is anyway unlikely to work. The
amount of additional diesel Vladimir Putin will put on the market is not enough
to bring down prices at the pump. Russia accounted for about 12% of global
diesel shipped by sea. Exports have fallen by about a third, according to
calculations by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
The deal
has also reawakened Europe’s worst fears about Trump’s relationship with Russia
only weeks after Congress had passed a sanctions package against Moscow
authorising Trump to penalise buyers of Russian energy.
Europeans
know full well that the inflation problem helping to drive populism is caused
by the Iran war and not by Zelenskyy’s tactics. The only question is who will
say so. The former UK Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson did not hold
back, writing: “It is sickening that the USA is now lifting sanctions on
Russian fuel, and transparently ridiculous to blame Ukraine for the spike in
prices that obviously began with the closure of the strait of Hormuz. Putin is
murdering innocent Ukrainian civilians every day. The Ukrainians are fighting
for their lives. And yet the White House is apparently determined to force
American drivers to bankroll Putin’s slaughter.”
The
German education minister and a member of the CDU, Karin Prien, said: “For a
few litres of diesel. What moral bankruptcy.”
Mark
Rutte, the Nato secretary general and Trump ally, will this week travel to
Estonia, one of the countries most supportive of Ukraine. He will have some
explaining to do. Estonia’s foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, vowed that EU
foreign ministers on Monday will impose the biggest package of sanctions in its
history, and he, along with Sweden, now wants to revisit using frozen Russian
assets to help Ukraine.
What is
worse, it looks as if the political damage to the Republicans caused by the
Iran war is irrecoverable. Polls show the ship has sailed. The war has already
been weaponised as a pocketbook issue by every Democratic candidate in every TV
debate. Republican candidates, challenged to disown the war, are scrambling for
the relative safety of identity politics.
The
Iranians are also trying to maximise the damage they cause in the strait of
Hormuz, countering the Trump narrative that the blockade has been broken.
Scenes of tankers on fire are proliferating.
So Trump
post-Riyadh needs to rethink. He can rejoin the war against the Houthis, ending
the unilateral US ceasefire, but, if so, he knows from experience this will be
costly. The first three weeks of the war against Iran cost $1n a day. Many of
the US president’s advisers say he may as well also attack Iran, the Houthis’
backers, as Tehran expects him to do. The Iranian military nevertheless still
believes it has escalation dominance, and what happened in Riyadh can be
repeated across the Gulf.
The
alternative is that his team can negotiate discreetly and indirectly with
Tehran as is occurring in Doha. Some Iranians are urging their leadership to
seize the chance, arguing Trump is uniquely vulnerable in the run-up to the
midterms.
A deal
could be done, including on uranium enrichment, but it would not be palatable
for the US – or for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s
re-election chances.
China and
Russia are trying to sort out the Houthis diplomatically, but the Houthi
objectives are broadening, while the south of Yemen is split about its future
inside the country, a division that harms the country’s ability to be the
ground component that Saudi Arabia needs to supplement its air-power dominance.
Taiz, the third city of Yemen, is struggling to overcome a Houthi siege. The
Saudis can deliver retribution, but retribution is not a solution to a
decade-long civil war.
So for
the moment the twin Trump strategy – to park the Iran and Yemen conflicts while
blaming Zelenskyy – is now so transparent, so morally craven, and in its own
terms so ineffective, that it looks unsustainable. The only question is whether
the strategy will be jettisoned by the president or instead just rejected by
the American people at the ballot box.
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