Houthi militants fired ballistic missiles at Israel on Saturday morning, marking their entry into the month-long war with Iran that has already wreaked havoc on energy markets and killed thousands.
According to the US military, about 3,500 sailors and marines arrived in the region on an amphibious assault ship. Israel continued to bomb Iran overnight and into Saturday, while Tehran stepped up airstrikes across the region and wounded more than a dozen American personnel in an attack on a Saudi base, according to multiple media reports.
The Houthis, based in Iran-backed Yemen, have said they will continue operations until US-Israeli attacks on the Islamic Republic and its proxy militant groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, end.
Israel’s military said it had identified a missile fired from Yemen toward its territory, but did not immediately say whether the missile had been intercepted.
The Houthis’ move – announced via a statement on Telegram – opens a new front in the war and raises new risks for the oil market. The group has not launched strikes against Israel since a ceasefire in the war against Hamas in Gaza began in October.
While the Houthis have not said they will target tankers or other vessels passing through the southern Red Sea and the Bab El-Mandeb Strait, they have the capability to do so. The group effectively closed the waterway to most Western shipping after the Gaza war began in 2023, forcing vessels to reroute and disrupting a key shipping corridor.
Saudi Arabia’s port of Yanbu, which the kingdom uses to bypass the closed Strait of Hormuz for oil exports, is within range of Houthi missiles.
For now, the Houthis are likely to avoid targeting Saudi oil sites, New York-based policy consultancy Eurasia Group said in a note to clients. The Islamist militants agreed to a truce with Saudi Arabia in 2022 that largely held and included the Saudi government making some payments to areas under Houthi control.
While the Houthis “must be seen as participants in the war effort, they remain inclined to minimize the downsides of further involvement in the war and maintain their tacit understanding with Saudi Arabia,” Eurasia analysts including Firas Maksad said on Saturday. “The Houthis may still target Saudi oil exports under pressure from Iran in the event of an escalation.”
According to him, Iran launched retaliatory attacks on the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and Israel after Friday’s US-Israeli attacks on its nuclear facilities and steel plants.
The United Arab Emirates reported fires at its Kezad industrial complex in the emirate of Abu Dhabi on Saturday. This was followed by the interception of ballistic missiles, injuring at least six people.
Emirates Global Aluminum, the largest producer in the Middle East, said its Al Taweelah plant in Kezad was significantly damaged by Iranian drone and missile attacks.
Friday’s strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia left at least 15 American soldiers injured, including five seriously, and damaged several refueling planes, the Associated Press reported. One of the damaged planes was an E-3 Sentry, which is equipped with an onboard radar warning and control system that helps track drones and missiles, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Iran fired six ballistic missiles and nearly 30 drones at the base, it said, citing unnamed officials. The US military has not yet commented publicly. He also said more than two dozen US troops were wounded in Iranian attacks on the same base – about 60 miles southeast of Riyadh – last week.
Kuwait said its airport was the target of several drone attacks on Saturday, with a radar system badly damaged. In Oman, the port of Salalah was targeted by several drones, halting operations and injuring one person.
According to Israeli emergency services, one person was killed in the Iranian attack on Tel Aviv. The Israeli military also said nine soldiers were wounded in southern Lebanon on Friday, at least one of them seriously.
The US military said in a social media post on Saturday that it had struck more than 11,000 targets and destroyed more than 150 Iranian vessels since the start of the conflict.
The escalation raises fears that the conflict will drag on. There is still no sign that Iran and the US will meet for peace talks anytime soon, despite President Donald Trump pushing for talks this week. He pushed back an April 6 deadline for Tehran to agree to reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz or demolish its power plants.
Iran rejected a 15-point proposal from Trump that essentially offered Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for it dismantling its nuclear facilities and reducing its missile arsenal, as well as reopening Hormuz. The waterway – which normally carries a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies – has been all but closed since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28 with strikes against Iran.
For its part, Iran insists on war reparations, recognition of some form of control over Hormuz, and promises that the US and Israel will not attack it in the future.
The foreign ministers of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt will meet in Islamabad on March 29-30 to discuss efforts to defuse the conflict. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian for more than an hour on Saturday as part of those mediation efforts.
Pakistan emerged as a key mediator and offered itself as a venue for negotiations between the US and Iran.
In a post on X, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said Iran had agreed to allow 20 Pakistani-flagged ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and would allow two a day in the future. “It is a harbinger of peace,” he said.
Oil has continued to rise over the past few days, with traders’ optimism about a near-term ceasefire fading. Brent crude closed above $112 a barrel on Friday, extending the international benchmark’s gain since the start of the conflict to more than 55%.
The conflict has caused fuel shortages and led to fears of lower growth and faster inflation, or stagflation, across the global economy.
The war has claimed over 4,500 lives, according to governments and non-governmental agencies. About three-quarters of the casualties were in Iran, while nearly 1,100 people died in Lebanon, where more than a million people were displaced. Dozens of people were killed in Israel and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
Airstrikes by the US-Israeli alliance on Friday targeted a heavy-water research reactor that is part of Iran’s Arak nuclear complex, as well as a yellow cake factory in Yazd province. Iran’s two largest steel producers were also hit.
Fars reported explosions in several neighborhoods of Tehran early Saturday, including strikes near Mehrabad Airport west of the capital. It is a major hub for domestic flights.
For all that Trump says Iran should negotiate for peace, he also says the US can continue to attack the Islamic Republic. He said on Friday that more than 3,500 targets remained in Iran and “that will be done pretty quickly.”
“They’re talking now, they want to make a deal,” Trump told reporters in Miami. “Iran is decimated.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told his Group of Seven counterparts on Friday that the war would last several weeks, but not months, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Trump’s extended deadline of April 6 gives the US more time to assemble troops in the region, with speculation growing about the deployment of land.
Still, his administration is signaling to allies that it has no immediate plans for a ground invasion of Iran, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified to discuss the private negotiations.
With help from Galit Altstein and Alex Newman.
This article was generated from an automated news agency source without text modification.
