Saudi military airbase hit as Houthis launch fresh attacks

Arab states in the Gulf called off a meeting with Iran planned for Monday, while Yemen’s Houthis launched a new attack on Saudi after fighting that has extended the war in West Asia to another theatre.The Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen said they fired dozens of missiles and drones on Monday at a Saudi military airbase in Khamis Mushait, near the border, hitting aircraft hangars, radar systems, runways and ammunition depots. They described the attack as retaliation for hundreds of Saudi airstrikes on Yemen in recent days.Saudi authorities announced brief emergency alerts in three other southern cities which have previously come under Houthi fire. The Houthis launched a lightning advance last week in Yemen, culminating in the seizure of an island in the mouth of the Red Sea Friday. A separate attack that day, which Riyadh blamed on Iran-backed fighters in Iraq, knocked out Saudi Arabia’s east-west pipeline, the main route for West Asian oil bypassing the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.

Oil prices jump

Crude oil prices rose over 3% Monday, when the market reopened after the weekend, while the retail price of diesel in the US hit a new all-time high above $6.23 a gallon. Traders say the closure of the Saudi pipeline could cut off as much as 4% of global oil supply unless it is reopened within days.Oman had been due to host a meeting on Monday with Iran and Gulf states to discuss negotiations aimed at reopening Hormuz, the world’s most important oil shipping lane, largely closed since the US and Israel attacked Iran at the end of Feb. But Oman’s foreign minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi announced overnight that the meeting had been postponed “in the interests of consensus”. Iran said the postponement was at the request of Saudi Arabia.Meanwhile, Iran issued a list of 77 ships it said had violated its protocols for operating in the Strait of Hormuz. Any ship on the list would face “curbs on future passages”.

Dilemma for Trump

The upsurge of fighting in Yemen poses a dilemma for Washington, which is under pressure to aid its Saudi allies but anxious not to expand the costly war to a new theatre. Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition battling the Houthis for more than a decade, after the mountain fighters captured Yemen’s capital in 2014.Aisha Muhammad, an elderly woman burning twigs to heat a kettle in govt-held territory near Taiz, said she had left behind two daughters and three sons who had been unable to escape. “They can’t even go out to the market to get food and drinking water. They are being blocked and shot at, so they are trapped inside their homes,” she said.Three sources have said that Washington has so far rebuffed requests from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to intervene in Yemen. Trump confirmed over the weekend that he had spoken to the prince, and said the Houthis had also asked Washington to keep out of the dispute.

Saudi discovers uranium-bearing ore in Medina

Saudi Arabia has discovered 110 million tonnes of raw materials containing uranium concentrations in Medina, the kingdom’s energy minister said at the IAEA conference in Vienna, Saudi state TV reported on Monday. Reuters