On Oct. 10, a Houthi missile struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing 13 people and wounding more than 300. The dead included Saudi citizens alongside nationals of Bangladesh, the US, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Sudan, and India. It was the third attack on the airport in a week and the deadliest strike on the Kingdom in more than a decade. Since the Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi shipping in July, missiles and drones launched from Yemen have been aimed at Aramco refineries from Jazan to Yanbu and at airports from Abha to the capital. The Royal Saudi Air Defense Forces have intercepted wave after wave. On a single day this week, the coalition reported destroying eight projectiles, including a ballistic missile fired at Dhahran.
When the war with Iran choked traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in March, the East-West Pipeline from Abqaiq to the Red Sea port of Yanbu became the most important bypass in the global energy system. Before drone strikes forced its temporary closure in September, it was carrying around 4 million barrels per day, roughly 4 percent of world supply. Gulf flows through Hormuz have since partially recovered, yet tankers there are still being attacked, and Yanbu remains the market’s insurance against a renewed closure. Much of the crude and diesel loaded there sails north to Europe. Every interceptor fired over western Saudi Arabia is defending supply that consumers far beyond the Kingdom’s borders depend on.
Those consumers are already paying for insecurity. They are simply paying the wrong bill. Brent crude traded at about $73 a barrel before the Iran war. It now sits above $100, and rose a further 2 percent on the first trading day after the Riyadh airport strike. Goldman Sachs estimates the geopolitical risk premium at just over $20 a barrel. That premium functions as a security tax on every importing economy, collected at the pump and the factory gate, and none of it funds the defenses that would bring it down. Aviation tells the same story. Air France-KLM, Lufthansa, Delta, Air India, and Qatar Airways are among the carriers that suspended flights to the region after the airport attacks. The disruption is global, and so is the interest in ending it.
Burden sharing is already underway, and its early results are encouraging. Greece has operated a Patriot battery in the Kingdom since 2021 under an international initiative to support Saudi air defense. Greek crews intercepted two ballistic missiles aimed at the Yanbu refineries in July, and engaged further missiles and drones from Yemen in September. On Sept. 24, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would send troops and air defense systems to Saudi Arabia, describing the mission as strictly defensive.
The largest buyers of Saudi crude are in Asia, and China, India, Japan, and South Korea have as much at stake in Yanbu as any European capital
Zaid M. Belbagi
The international community already accepts that keeping sea lanes open is a shared responsibility, and naval coalitions have escorted merchant shipping through the Red Sea in recent years for precisely that reason. A pipeline that replaces a strait is a sea lane on land. The logic that sends frigates to the Bab Al-Mandab should send air defense batteries and interceptors to the installations that now carry the same oil. What is needed is a standing framework for the integrated air and missile defense of critical energy infrastructure, with contributing states rotating capabilities and sharing early warning data across the Red Sea basin.
Saudi Arabia’s own investment is substantial. The Kingdom spends tens of billions of dollars on defense each year and fields Patriot and THAAD systems alongside advanced European equipment. Spending, however, is no longer the binding constraint. The Houthis, armed with Iranian assistance, now combine ballistic and cruise missiles with long-range drones fired from mobile launchers in Yemen’s mountains, a saturation method resembling the tactics Russia has used against Ukraine. The defender must protect cities, holy sites, airports, and 1,200 km of pipeline at once, while the attacker needs only to choose a target. Interceptor stocks were drawn down by Iranian fire earlier this year, and global production cannot replace them overnight. Europe recognized this arithmetic when it launched the European Sky Shield Initiative to pool air defense procurement. The same reasoning applies with greater force to infrastructure on which Europe itself depends.
Skeptics will argue that foreign air defense risks entangling outside powers in Yemen’s war. The distinction between defensive and offensive operations answers that concern. Shielding civilian airports and refineries from missile attack is a separate act from striking targets in Yemen, and Paris has drawn exactly that line. International law points the same way. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the Riyadh strike as a violation of international law, and the UN envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, called the wider campaign a grave escalation.
Burden sharing should also extend beyond batteries on the ground. The largest buyers of Saudi crude are in Asia, and China, India, Japan, and South Korea have as much at stake in Yanbu as any European capital. Their navies can help enforce the arms embargo under UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the UN, Abdulaziz Al-Wasil, urged the council to uphold last week. Every shipment of missile components intercepted at sea is one fewer missile Saudi crews must shoot down over Riyadh.
Macron has said France will raise energy security with its G7 partners in the coming weeks. That conversation should end in a commitment rather than a communique. Saudi Arabia has shown, night after night, that it will hold the line. The countries whose economies run on the oil behind that line must now decide whether they are prepared to step in.
Zaid M. Belbagi is a political commentator and an adviser to private clients between London and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
X: @Moulay_Zaid
Zaid M. Belbagi is a political commentator, and an adviser to private clients between London and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Twitter: @Moulay_Zaid