Yemen’s Houthis claim attack on Aramco oil facility in Saudi Arabia, and other Middle East news
Yemen’s Houthis said they attacked an oil facility Sunday in southwestern Saudi Arabia, the latest attack by the Iranian-backed rebels on the kingdom. They also attacked a crucial port on the Red Sea, further escalating the conflict over strategic waterways.
Meanwhile, Iran has made new demands about the restart of negotiations and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the Pentagon is pressing the U.S. defense industry to accelerate production of weapons.
Here’s a look at developments across the Middle East on Sunday. Full coverage can be found here.
Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, said they targeted an Aramco refinery in the city of Jazan with a drone. The attack was in response to Saudi drones’ breaching Yemen’s airspace over the provinces of Hajjah and Saada, he said.
Early on Sunday, the Saudi Energy Ministry reported a fire at a facility belonging to the Aramco refinery without casualties. The ministry said the fire was extinguished but it didn’t describe its cause.
Sunday’s Houthi attack is the latest in a series of missile and drone attacks that targeted Saudi Arabia and its shipping in the Red Sea.
A Yemeni government official said Sunday that the Houthis also attacked a crucial port on the Red Sea.
Fayed al-Noman, assistant undersecretary of the information ministry, said the Houthis fired missiles and drones on the Mocha port. It's one of the main ports under Yemen's internationally recognized government, renovated in recent years to handle shipping that avoids the Houthi-held ports in Hodeida.
The Houthis later claimed the attack, saying they fired “a large number of ballistic missiles and drones” that targeted military enforcement and warehouses in the area.
The escalation threatens to reignite Yemen's civil war more than four years after a 2022 truce stopped major fighting in the impoverished Arab country.
— by Samy Magdy in Cairo.
The Strait of Hormuz, crucial to global supplies of oil and natural gas, was considered an international waterway before the war.
But Iran and Oman are working to finalize a temporary deal that would reopen the strait with ships entering the strait through a route close to Iran and exiting through a route close to Oman, according to two people familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Ships would cross the strait without paying fees or tolls during the interim period.
The agreement is designed to restore an earlier, separate agreement between the U.S. and Iran and restart a 60-day clock for the two countries to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program.
According to the two people who spoke about the talks, the deal is endorsed by members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and expected when finalized to be jointly announced by Iran, Oman, the U.S., and the International Maritime Organization of the United Nations. But the people stressed the terms could still change before the deal is final.
— by Michelle Price in Washington and Aamer Madhani in New York.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Saturday that the department was actively focused on boosting munitions acquisitions to provide “the weapons our warfighters need at the pace the threat demands.”
The war with Iran has used up more of the U.S. military’s already diminished stockpiles of advanced missile interceptors, says a new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Parnell said the push for speedier delivery was part of a broader modernization effort that predated the five-month-old conflict.
Speaking to reporters in Tehran on Sunday, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said negotiations with Oman about “new maritime routes” through the Strait of Hormuz were “in the final stages.”
“This, however, does not mean that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen,” Araghchi said. “An agreement on the routes may be reached, but reopening the strait is subject to a number of other conditions, which have been conveyed through intermediaries.”
Similarly, Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council has said the Strait of Hormuz will not open until the United States “corrects its behavior,” issuing new demands that could shake up talks on a deal to manage the waterway.
According the statement by the council’s secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, oublished by Iran's state broadcaster, the demands include that the United States never threaten Iran again, permanently end the war with Iran and its armed allies in the region, lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw its military from the area.
According to the U.S. Central Command, the blockade has redirected 53 commercial vessels, disabled two, and boarded two through Saturday.
About overall negotiations, Araghchi said that an “exchange of messages through intermediaries” is continuing with the United States, but that doesn't constitute negotiations.
“From our perspective, negotiations cannot resume until the violations of the memorandum of understanding have ended and the United States has remedied the provisions of the memorandum that it violated,” he said.
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