The attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport is portrayed as a panicked Houthi response after the militia lost control of Bab al-Mandab and faced a broader Yemeni government offensive aimed at dismantling its ministate.

The author argues that the Houthis function primarily as an Iranian proxy whose core mission is to strike Saudi Arabia, which has blocked Tehran’s efforts to overturn regional order by supporting legitimate governments in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

With Mojtaba Khamenei yet to appear publicly and IRGC influence unclear, the piece questions whether Iran will escalate through its proxies or seek an exit from the economic and naval blockade, warning that further overreach risks exploding in the regime’s hands.

The horrific crime committed against travelers at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh requires little investigation or scrutiny. There is no need to collect fingerprints. The perpetrator had already threatened to carry it out. Such an act is hardly out of character, given its rhetoric, methods and history. It is, after all, an arsenal in search of a confrontation to justify its existence and convince its sponsors that it is worth the money spent on it. An arsenal that has brought about repeated wars and airstrikes as though it can survive only in the turbulent waters of conflict. It instinctively understands that peace is its foremost enemy and that stability leaves it no place. It was created to fight both peace and stability.

The crime came after the Houthi militia lost its ability to maintain a presence in the Bab Al-Mandab Strait. Control of the waterway would have greatly enhanced the militia’s value to its sponsors. It had hoped to offer Iran a way to compensate for the serious damage inflicted by the US military on Tehran’s plans to close the Strait of Hormuz. But the Houthis’ push into the wider region proved to be something of a booby-trapped role that exploded in the hands of the one playing it.

Rarely........

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