Iran is feeding Yemen's Houthi rebels targeting intelligence and tactical guidance for their escalating drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing intelligence from Saudi Arabia and Yemen's anti-Houthi alliance. The Iranian support has helped the Houthis mount their most potent attacks yet on the kingdom, including the deadly strike on Riyadh's international airport on October 10.
What the intelligence shows
Iranian assistance goes beyond weapons supply, according to the report: Tehran is helping the Houthis target drone and missile strikes, alongside training, intelligence and tactical guidance. Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch for Israeli defense intelligence, described the operational link as "very, very strong on the operational level," noting a shared strategic interest: it harms Saudi Arabia and raises oil prices.
Adam Baron, a Yemen expert and fellow with the Washington-based policy institute New America, told the WSJ the Houthis' recent military gains were "undeniably" based on external Iranian assistance, while the Soufan Center said the strikes are "helping Iran project power."
The Riyadh airport strikes and the deadly toll
The heaviest blow fell on October 10, when a Houthi missile hit King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, striking a passenger terminal crowded with travelers — many of them Umrah pilgrims headed for Mecca. Saudi authorities initially reported 12 dead and 309 injured; at the coalition's October 15 briefing, spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki said there had been 20 attacks on Riyadh airport since October 1, with 17 killed and 333 injured in the capital alone between October 7 and 11, and 19 killed and 364 injured across all Saudi airports including Abha.
Security footage released by the Saudi-led coalition shows a bright orange flash erupting in the terminal, passengers scrambling for their lives as chunks of the ceiling rained down. The Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree declared Saudi airports and airspace "a theatre of operations for our forces," threatening new attacks except on Mecca and Medina. On Thursday, the group struck the presidential palace complex in Riyadh, killing five, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Denials, condemnation and oil pressure
Iran denied any role on Friday, October 16 — a day after Saudi deputy minister for public diplomacy Dr. Rayed Krimly accused Tehran of having "encouraged" the escalation. "The Islamic Republic of Iran rejects any claim that Iran has played a role in Yemeni (Houthi) operations," foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said, while reiterating an offer to mediate.
The attacks are already moving markets: the Houthis have hit Saudi oil tankers, energy facilities and the Red Sea coast they now control along the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, while Iran's continued strikes on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz — closed since the wider Middle East war began in February — have pushed oil prices higher. China condemned the attacks on October 12, and the UN Security Council condemned the Houthi campaign "in the strongest terms." President Trump, who is trying to wind down the war with Iran on favorable terms, said on his Truth Social platform that the Houthis were behaving "very badly."
Why this matters
Saudi Arabia has fought the Houthis on and off for more than a decade, since the group seized Yemen's capital Sana'a in 2014. But this round is different: Yemen's civil war flared back to life in July, and a lightning Houthi offensive in September — which UN figures say forced more than 145,000 people to flee — has given the group the territory and, with Iran's targeting help, the precision to threaten the heart of the world's largest oil exporter. The coalition says it has destroyed 127 Houthi missile warehouses near Sana'a in response. With civilian airports now on the target list, the next weeks will test whether the war stays regional — or drags in the United States directly.
🎥 Watch: Smoke, Blasts, Destruction — new footage of Houthi attacks on Saudi airports (Firstpost Live), showing the CCTV and damage from the October attacks on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Volatile Reaction (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Sources: The Wall Street Journal, The Jerusalem Post, Channel NewsAsia, The Times of Israel.