Houthi missile at Riyadh airport killed 13, wounded more than 300
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, called President Donald Trump multiple times in September urging him to launch US airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi militia, which is allied with Iran, according to a column by Mohamad Bazzi, a Guardian US columnist who directs the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. Bazzi wrote that Trump’s war against Iran over the summer rekindled a years-long conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, and that the militia had intensified its attacks on Saudi territory and the kingdom’s Yemeni allies. Trump has so far resisted the prince’s appeals to draw American forces into the Houthi-Saudi battle, Bazzi wrote.
On October 10, the Houthis fired a cruise missile at the international airport in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, killing at least 13 people and wounding more than 300, according to the column. Afterward, reporters in Washington asked Trump whether he would be more willing to order US strikes against the Yemeni rebels. “We may. We’re going to look at it,” Trump said. “We just found out about the recent attack. So we’ll make a decision.”
Bazzi described the Houthi-Saudi conflagration as the latest illustration of Trump’s decision to attack Iran spiraling into an unpredictable regional conflict, which he wrote Middle East experts and some US intelligence officials had warned would happen. He wrote that Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf countries cannot rely on the Trump administration to protect them even after spending tens of billions of dollars to buy American weapons and build US bases, some of which, he wrote, were decimated by Iranian attacks over the past seven months. Bazzi wrote that Prince Mohammed, like the leaders of other Arab petrostates who have invested billions of dollars to appease Trump, “is learning a hard lesson: never count on Trump to protect you.” He called Trump’s resistance “one of the best foreign policy decisions of an otherwise disastrous second term.”
The relationship between Trump and the Saudi monarchy dates to Trump’s first term. In May 2017, Trump chose Saudi Arabia as the first stop of his maiden overseas trip as president, upending tradition, and the Saudis feted him with banquets in gilded palaces and awarded him the kingdom’s highest civilian honor, Bazzi wrote, adding that the Saudis realized Trump craved flattery. At the time, Prince Mohammed was consolidating power as the monarchy’s de facto ruler under his ailing father, King Salman, after presiding over a Saudi-led invasion of Yemen in 2015 and a campaign to blockade neighboring Qatar, according to the column.
In October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi journalist who was a US permanent resident and a contributor to the Washington Post, was assassinated inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team that dismembered his body with a bone saw, according to the column. Bazzi wrote that US intelligence agencies quickly concluded Prince Mohammed had ordered the killing, but that Trump protected the prince from US sanctions and from pressure from outraged members of Congress.
After a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in January 2021 in an attempt to overturn the presidential election results, US banks and several large companies distanced themselves from the Trump Organization. Bazzi wrote that Saudi Arabia stood by Trump while he was out of power, generating real estate deals and new golf partnerships that helped the family business “at one of its weakest points.”
Days after Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Prince Mohammed pledged to expand investment and trade with the US by $600 billion over four years, according to the column. Bazzi wrote that the prince later promised to increase that investment to nearly $1 trillion, although it was not entirely clear how Saudi Arabia would manage to invest a sum close to the kingdom’s entire annual GDP into a foreign economy over a few years.
On a visit to Washington last November, Prince Mohammed sealed a defense cooperation agreement with the US and signed a deal for the monarchy to buy dozens of F-35 stealth fighter jets, described in the column as America’s most advanced warplane. Bazzi wrote that behind the flurry of deal-making, the prince expected the US to defend the kingdom if it was attacked, as Washington had done in the past. Trump hosted the prince for lunch with top administration officials at the White House and held a black-tie dinner with business executives eager to solicit investments from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, which the crown prince controls.
During that visit, Trump defended Prince Mohammed when a reporter asked about Khashoggi’s killing. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Trump said, referring to the murdered journalist. “Things happen,” Trump added as he sat next to the Saudi leader in the Oval Office. He insisted the prince “knew nothing about” the assassination — despite the CIA reaching the opposite conclusion during Trump’s first term, Bazzi noted.
Bazzi wrote that billions of dollars in Saudi investments have been directed into the private equity firm of Trump’s son-in-law and former top adviser, Jared Kushner, and into the Trump Organization, the president’s family business. He wrote that Trump’s resistance to ordering US attacks on the Houthis has been particularly embarrassing for Prince Mohammed given those investments.
Bazzi wrote that Trump “seems worried about expanding the US role in a regional war that is deeply unpopular among Americans, including segments of Trump’s own Maga base that believed his repeated promises not to start new wars.” The Iran conflict has increased gasoline and other energy prices, driving up the US inflation rate to 3.7% in September, weeks before midterm elections where Republicans are facing widespread anger over the cost of living, he wrote.
Bazzi wrote that it is unclear whether Trump will continue to resist launching airstrikes against the Houthis after next month’s elections, when Democrats could win control of both houses of Congress. If the Houthis keep up their attacks on Saudi infrastructure and capture more territory held by Yemen’s Saudi-aligned government, he wrote, Trump could face more pressure to intervene from the Saudis and hawkish Republicans, and would be less constrained by worries about expanding the Iran war shortly before the midterms.
Prince Mohammed, who is reeling from the war’s impact on Saudi oil exports, could also ratchet up pressure on Trump by threatening to withhold Saudi investments in the US economy and the president’s family business, according to Bazzi. He argued that rather than bombing one side to help another, there is a clear US interest in promoting diplomacy and de-escalating the Houthi-Saudi conflict.