Late Saturday there was some speculations online about imminent U.S. strikes on Yemen or Iran. Allegedly B-1 long range bombers had taken to the air in Britain. Several air refueling tankers were flying over Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia had announced a strong retaliation strike for an Ansar Allah attack from Yemen on an air port near Riyadh:
Saudi Arabia’s retaliation to Houthi attacks from Yemen will be “massive” and coordinated with coalition partners, Nawaf Obaid, senior research fellow at King’s College London, tells Al Jazeera.
Flames and thick smoke were seen near the Saudi capital’s main airport after authorities issued alerts warning of potential danger around Riyadh on Saturday.
It seemed at that time that the U.S. was joining in with the Saudis.
Iran’s joint operational military command warned of retaliatory attacks on US positions and interests in the region:
In a statement on Sunday, the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said that if the US “commits any mistake” against Iran, “all its bases and interests in the region, without any limitation or consideration, will be targeted by sustained, effective and painful attacks.”
“Based on the information received, the criminal America, […,] has once again decided, with the green light of some regional countries, at a joint meeting in one of the European countries, to resume actions against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the statement read.
Everyone was ready for a new round of the conflict. However – no U.S. or Saudi attack followed.
According to the New York Times Trump has (again) chickened out (archived):
[O]n Thursday: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader and a major ally in the Iran war, called the president to implore him, again, to step in to help blunt the rapidly advancing group, administration officials said.
Mr. Trump had met with advisers just the day before and told them he did not favor strikes. But after speaking with the Saudi crown prince, he reversed himself and told the Pentagon to prepare for airstrikes against the Houthis.
But by midday Sunday, the president appeared to have reversed himself again. There would be no U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis — at least not for the time being, according to administration officials.
It seems like Trump’s people, for once, held him back:
Most of the president’s inner circle was either deeply skeptical or outright opposed to joining the Saudi fight against the Houthis, according to a senior administration official.
Mr. Trump’s decision to pull back from, or at least delay, striking Houthi targets came as commanders had approved target lists, troops were loading bombs onto U.S. warplanes selected for the missions and the wave of attacks was just about to begin, according to two people briefed on the operation.
It will be interesting to learn who or what has had the most influence on Trump’s decision.
A campaign against the ‘Houthi’ would almost certainly have included new strikes against Iran which would have hit back.
It is also useless to bomb Ansar Allah.
(Ansar Allah are not the ‘Houthis’. Houthi is the clan name of the late leader of the revolution against the Saleh government in Sanaa. Ansar Allah (Ansarullah), ruling the relevant parts of Yemen, is a coalition – a movement which includes many tribes, religious strains and supporters who are not ‘Houthi’ – that has evolved after the revolution).
The Saudis have since 2014 tried to bomb the Ansar Allah government into giving up its demands for recognition. Their strikes have killed thousands of Yemeni. Together with the UAE the Saudis had hired mercenaries, local Jihadis and some from Sudan, to fight on the ground against the so called Houthis. Neither campaign was successful. In the early 2025 the U.S. had joined Saudi Arabia and bombed Ansar Allah positions for more than 50 days without achieving any results.
Ansar Allah can not be beaten by air attacks. Ground campaigns in the mountainous western Yemen, where the majority of the population lives, are extremely difficult. Ansar Allah has modern means – missiles, drones and air defenses – which allow it to retaliate. It was sheer stupidity that led the Saudis into provoking another war with them by bombing Sanaa airport in July of this year.
It is reasonable for the U.S. to not (again) step into this mess:
Current and former U.S. diplomats and commanders who served in the Middle East expressed skepticism that a limited U.S. bombing campaign would compel the Houthis, who withstood nearly eight weeks of U.S. bombardment last year, to negotiate and drop their most hard-line demands.
The officials also voiced doubts about the efficacy of supporting a dysfunctional Yemeni force that has melted away at the first major contact with the Houthis in recent weeks.
“The anti-Houthi coalition is really a Frankenstein of all the leftover parts in Yemen that aren’t the Houthis,” Gregory Johnsen, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said about the Yemeni ground force that the air campaign is supposed to be supporting. “The disparate Yemeni groups have vastly different and, in some cases, diametrically opposed goals for what they want in Yemen, so they spend more time fighting one another than they do the Houthis.”
Trump’s war on Iran has led to the blockade of Strait of Hormuz and a sharp decrease of global oil supplies. The Saudi attack on Yemen has only increased the dilemma.
Record high gas and diesel prices will not come down until the U.S. and Saudi Arabia end their wars and make peace with their adversaries. Meanwhile motor oil and lubricants are getting scarce (archived):
A worldwide shortage of motor oil is becoming more acute, with prices of the car engine lubricant reaching new highs, oil-change shops running dry and a US retail group rationing sales to do-it-yourself customers.
The surge in the cost of base oil used for the full synthetic motor oil required for many newer cars far outpaces steep price rises for crude oil, petrol and diesel. The US price of so-called Group III base oil has almost quadrupled since February to a record $12.45 a gallon on Friday, according to Argus Media.
Retail chain Costco Wholesale raised the price for 10 quarts of one type of full synthetic motor oil to $57.99 and is now capping purchases at one per customer, according to its website. The brand was selling for about $30 last year.
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Base oil supplies were first disrupted after an Iranian strike in March damaged a huge Shell gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar in retaliation for the US and Israel’s war against the Islamic republic. The plant is a leading producer of Group III base oil.