Saudi cabinet says it will not allow threats to Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab navigation
Yemen Herald News 
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia will not allow threats to its security or to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, its cabinet said on Tuesday.
The Council of Ministers met in Riyadh under the chairmanship of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is also prime minister.
Media Minister Salman al-Dossary read the statement after the meeting.
The cabinet said the Houthi movement would face the consequences of what it described as repeated attacks on the kingdom’s airports and on Makkah and Madinah.
The account of the meeting rests on the Saudi government’s own statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. Yemen Herald found no independent account of the cabinet’s deliberations.
The council commended operations by the Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen, which it said were intended to neutralise threats posed by the Houthis.
Those threats affected the Yemeni people, international peace and security and global trade, the statement said.
The cabinet offered condolences to the families of those killed in attacks on the kingdom. It praised the armed forces.
It also said flows through the East-West Pipeline had been restored. The statement did not say when they had been interrupted.
Bab al-Mandab separates Yemen from Djibouti and Eritrea on the Horn of Africa. The strait is about 30 kilometres wide at its narrowest point and runs for roughly 100 kilometres.
It links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, and is one of the routes by which Gulf oil reaches Europe.
Published energy-market data put traffic through the strait at about 9.3 million barrels a day of crude and petroleum liquids in 2023, close to 12 percent of seaborne traded oil.
Flows fell to about 4.1 million barrels a day in 2024, after Houthi attacks on shipping. Carriers rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope.
Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, told the Security Council on Oct. 9 that Houthi threats against Saudi-linked commercial vessels erode freedom of navigation for every country.
Those threats were becoming enmeshed with a broader confrontation over control of maritime trade routes, he said.
Grundberg said Yemen had slid back into full-scale war, with hostilities spreading across multiple frontlines.
Houthi forces had advanced on Mokha and the Bab al-Mandab coast, he said. The government had launched a counter-offensive and reported retaking areas around the strait.
Mokha lies on Yemen’s Red Sea coast north of the strait. Hodeidah, further north on the same coastline, holds the country’s main Red Sea port.
Fighting had also intensified in Marib, al-Jawf and Hajjah, Grundberg said, with heavy clashes in the uplands west and south of Taiz city extending into Lahj.
Civilians, especially women and children, were again bearing the brunt of the violence, he said.
Grundberg echoed a condemnation by the UN secretary-general of Houthi attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, and repeated his call on the group to stop them.
He said war and diplomacy were not mutually exclusive.
Gains on the battlefield could not substitute for the negotiations that would be required to settle the conflict, he told the council.
He noted that the International Monetary Fund has ranked Yemen the world’s poorest country.
The East-West Pipeline carries crude across Saudi Arabia from the Eastern Province to the Red Sea coast at Yanbu, away from the Gulf.
The kingdom has leaned on its Red Sea outlets to ship crude to Asia.
Combined flows through the Suez Canal and the Suez-Mediterranean pipeline fell from about 8.8 million barrels a day to about 4.8 million over the period of the shipping attacks.
A day after the cabinet met, the Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said the group had targeted Aramco facilities in Dhahran, Riyadh’s airport and a refinery in the Saudi capital.
Ansar Allah is the Houthi movement’s formal name.
Saree’s claims followed an attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport earlier in the month.
The coalition has backed Yemen’s internationally recognised government since 2015.
Saree said the group used ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. Operations toward what he called Saudi depths would continue in the coming days, targeting airports and oil facilities, he said.
A Saudi energy ministry official said an Aramco building in Dhahran had been hit, causing a limited fire with no casualties.
Saudi officials also reported a strike on a building in Riyadh housing Aramco’s operations centre. The coalition said it intercepted a missile fired toward Riyadh.
Turki al-Malki, the coalition spokesman, said its aircraft had struck oil sites across western Yemen that it said supplied the Houthis.
On the day of the cabinet meeting, the coalition ordered the evacuation of the Yemen Petroleum Company’s Al-Sabaha central station in Sanaa ahead of an operation, the Houthi-run broadcaster Al-Masirah reported.
The Houthi-run health ministry said two people were killed in an attack on an oil company in Hodeidah province, and attributed it to Saudi Arabia. There was no immediate Saudi confirmation, and Yemen Herald could not verify the account.
Grundberg has served as the UN special envoy for Yemen since 2021.
Grundberg told the council that 72 United Nations staff remain detained in Yemen. He said one detainee had been released.
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