The war between the United States and Iran is not one conflict. It is a cascade. Every time one front goes quiet, another ignites elsewhere.
The latest flare-up is in the Red Sea. Tehran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen fired missiles and drones at two of Saudi Arabia’s most strategically important oil facilities on the coast, the refinery in Jizan and the export terminal in Yanbu. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree claimed responsibility. A large column of smoke was seen rising from Jizan. In Yanbu, a Greek-operated Patriot battery intercepted two ballistic missiles aimed at oil installations.
The Houthis had declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia a week earlier. Riyadh responded by launching air strikes on the Houthi-held port city of Hodeidah. Now the two adversaries are back in direct confrontation for the first time since a truce ended Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen’s civil war in 2022. That truce has now collapsed.
The timing is not coincidental. The US paused its bombing campaign against Iran on Friday after 13 consecutive nights of strikes. But the pause covers only US-Iran direct hostilities. Iran’s proxies are not on pause.
The Houthis are the most capable of Iran’s allied militias. Unlike Hezbollah, which is tied down by Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon, the Houthis control swaths of territory and can threaten shipping in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the southern entrance to the Red Sea. If both the Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz were blocked, global oil supply chains would take a hit far worse than anything seen so far.
Saudi Arabia is caught in the middle. It is a US ally, an oil exporter, and the Gulf state most exposed to Houthi retaliation. It also shares maritime borders with Iran across the Gulf. Riyadh has tried to stay out of the US-Iran war, but geography and the Houthi alliance make that impossible.
The cascading logic of this war is simple: the US and Israel attacked Iran in February. Iran attacked shipping in Hormuz. The US bombed Iran for 13 nights. The US paused. Iran’s proxies escalated elsewhere. There is no off-ramp visible, only the next front.