Houthi attack on Riyadh airport forces Trump to rethink midterm strategy

European officials reject blaming Ukraine for diesel price spike

The Guardian reported that the attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday forced Trump to reconsider the diplomatic and political strategy he had unveiled the same day — a strategy the newspaper described as “threadbare” and “largely born of desperation.” The plan was to blame spiralling diesel prices — what Trump called “a world problem” — on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying his attacks on Russian oil refineries were the cause, and to keep the political temperature down on the war in Iran and its spillover in Yemen until after the midterms.

In pursuit of the strategy, Trump claimed the Iranian blockade in the strait of Hormuz was in effect broken, producing figures on daily oil barrel exports to assuage the markets, The Guardian reported. He also claimed it was impossible to negotiate with the Iranians since there was no single leadership in Tehran.

Under the plan, Saudi Arabia, in conjunction with Turkey and Pakistan, was largely to be left to sort out the Houthis along the Red Sea. The fate of Yemen — the poorest country in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund — was not going to shift votes in Kansas or Alaska, The Guardian reported.

For all the talk of the Gulf becoming responsible for its own security, The Guardian reported, it is doubtful that Saudi Arabia can be left to fend for itself after the attack in Riyadh. One of the 12 dead is an American, and there may be more among the severely injured. Something is clearly wrong with Saudi defences, the newspaper reported, since the Houthis are firing rockets from 900km away, and they are reaching their target too often.

The US has had a unilateral ceasefire with the Houthis since 2025, and once hostilities between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis recommenced in the summer, the pact was quietly renewed, according to The Guardian. Trump has twice rejected Saudi appeals for help; the newspaper reported that “the pressure to act as allies are expected may prove overwhelming.”

The Guardian reported that Europeans know full well that the inflation problem helping to drive populism is caused by the Iran war and not by Zelenskyy’s tactics, and that the only question is who will say so. Johnson, the former UK Conservative prime minister, wrote: “It is sickening that the USA is now lifting sanctions on Russian fuel, and transparently ridiculous to blame Ukraine for the spike in prices that obviously began with the closure of the strait of Hormuz. Putin is murdering innocent Ukrainian civilians every day. The Ukrainians are fighting for their lives. And yet the White House is apparently determined to force American drivers to bankroll Putin’s slaughter.” Karin Prien, the German education minister and a member of the CDU, said: “For a few liters of diesel. What moral bankruptcy.”

Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general and a Trump ally, will this week travel to Estonia, one of the countries most supportive of Ukraine; The Guardian reported that he will have some explaining to do. Estonia’s foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, vowed that EU foreign ministers on Monday will impose the biggest package of sanctions in the bloc’s history, and that he, along with Sweden, wants to revisit using frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.

The deal has also reawakened Europe’s worst fears about Trump’s relationship with Russia, The Guardian reported, only weeks after Congress had passed a sanctions package against Moscow authorising Trump to penalise buyers of Russian energy. The newspaper reported that the amount of additional diesel Vladimir Putin will put on the market is not enough to bring down prices at the pump: Russia accounted for about 12% of global diesel shipped by sea, and exports have fallen by about a third, according to calculations by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

The Guardian reported that the political damage to the Republicans caused by the Iran war looks as if it is irrecoverable, with polls showing “the ship has sailed.” The war “has already been weaponised as a pocket book issue” by every Democratic candidate in every TV debate, the newspaper wrote, and Republican candidates, challenged to disown the war, are “scrambling for the relative safety of identity politics.” The Iranians are also trying to maximise the damage they cause in the strait of Hormuz, countering Trump’s narrative that the blockade has been broken, and “scenes of tankers on fire are proliferating,” The Guardian reported.

Trump now faces two courses, The Guardian reported. He can rejoin the war against the Houthis, ending the unilateral US ceasefire, but he knows from experience this will be costly: the first three weeks of the war against Iran cost $1n a day. Many of the US president’s advisers say he may as well also attack Iran, the Houthis’ backers, as Tehran expects him to do. The Iranian military nevertheless still believes it has escalation dominance, and what happened in Riyadh can be repeated across the Gulf.

The alternative, the newspaper reported, is that Trump’s team can negotiate discreetly and indirectly with Tehran, as is occurring in Doha. Some Iranians are urging their leadership to seize the chance, arguing that Trump is uniquely vulnerable in the run-up to the midterms. A deal could be done, including on uranium enrichment, but it would not be palatable for the US — or for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection chances.

China and Russia are trying to sort out the Houthis diplomatically, but the Houthi objectives are broadening, The Guardian reported. The south of Yemen is split about its future inside the country — a division that harms the country’s ability to be the ground component that Saudi Arabia needs to supplement its dominant air power. Taiz, the third city of Yemen, is struggling to overcome a Houthi siege. The Guardian reported that the Saudis can deliver retribution, but that retribution is not a solution to what the newspaper called “a decade-long civil war.”

For the moment, The Guardian reported, the twin strategy — to park the Iran and Yemen conflicts while blaming Zelenskyy — “is now so transparent, so morally craven, and in its own terms so ineffective, that it looks unsustainable.” The only question, the newspaper wrote, is whether the strategy will be jettisoned by the president or instead just rejected by the American people at the ballot box.