A month ago I compared Donald Trump’s and Mohammed bin Salman’s predicament to the trap in Richard Clarke’s 2005 novel Scorpion’s Gate: a strategic position in the Persian Gulf that is cheap to enter and expensive to leave. Trump had already been stung at the Strait of Hormuz. MBS had not, but his proximity to the gate made him vulnerable. The sting has now come at the second pincer, the Bab el-Mandeb, and it landed within a day of a strike on the pipeline that Saudi Arabia built to avoid the first gate. Both men now face constraints that follow directly from decisions each made on instinct, against advice.

The Sting Arrives in Stages

The Houthis resumed attacks on Saudi Arabia in mid-July and declared a blockade of Saudi ports and ships in the Bab el-Mandeb on July 20. On September 8 they fired ballistic missiles and drones at Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran, and Saudi authorities reported civilian injuries and disruption at oil facilities. A Houthi offensive along Yemen’s western coast, which AP reported killed more than 1,500 government soldiers, took the port of Mokha and then reached the strait itself. Reports place the fall of Perim Island, the small island that divides the strait into two shipping lanes, on September 10 or 11. The first report rested on a single outlet, but a Houthi official later confirmed it, and AFP reported that the Houthis now hold Yemen’s entire Red Sea coast.

The Houthis claim navigation remains safe for all companies except Saudi ships. Traffic through the strait was nonetheless reported to have roughly halved as the Houthis closed on Perim. Whether the ban covers Saudi-flagged hulls or Saudi cargo on foreign-flag tankers has not been settled in the public reporting, and it matters a great deal for Saudi exports. Insurers and shipowners will price the ambiguity long before a navy or air force resolves it.

On September 19 the attacks reached Riyadh. Saudi Arabia said it intercepted a ballistic missile aimed at the capital. The Houthis claimed strikes on “sensitive” sites there and on an Aramco installation in Yanbu, and AFP reported a fire at an Aramco fuel tank near King Khalid International Airport. It was the first Houthi launch at Riyadh since July.

The Bypass Meets the Second Gate

The most consequential event of the week may have come a day before Perim fell. On September 10–11, drones launched from Iraq’s Maysan province struck the East–West pipeline, the 1,200-kilometer line that carries crude from the Eastern Province to Yanbu on the Red Sea. With Hormuz largely closed since the war began, the pipeline had been moving roughly five million barrels a day. Saudi Arabia shut it down, and officials told AP that repairs could take three to five weeks, with partial operation possible in the meantime. Kpler estimated that the Yanbu tanks held about fifteen million barrels, roughly four days of exports at normal withdrawal rates.

The pipeline was Riyadh’s hedge against the first gate,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)