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For months, Saudi Arabia managed to avoid direct fallout from the escalating regional conflict triggered by the war against Iran, even as smaller neighboring nations became engulfed in rising tensions. The kingdom’s state-owned oil giant, Saudi Aramco, even posted record-breaking profits over the summer, leveraging its strategic East-West Pipeline to route crude exports away from the high-risk Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian-aligned forces had targeted commercial shipping. That safe position has now collapsed entirely.

The critical East-West Pipeline is now out of commission following a drone strike carried out by Iran-aligned militias based in Iraq. Simultaneously, Houthi forces in Yemen have unleashed a wave of missile and drone attacks targeting population centers across Saudi Arabia, including an incident where a Houthi drone was intercepted over Mecca—Islam’s holiest site, whose stewardship forms a core pillar of legitimacy for the ruling House of Saud. The Houthis have denied intentionally targeting the city. These concurrent attacks have left Saudi Arabia fighting on two separate, high-stakes fronts.

On one front, the kingdom’s allied Yemeni forces are scrambling to repel a sweeping Houthi ground offensive across Yemen, while on the home front, Saudi Arabia defends its own territory against non-stop aerial attacks. The timing of the Houthi blitz could not be worse for Riyadh: global stockpiles of the U.S.-made interceptor missiles that form the backbone of the kingdom’s air defense network are running critically low.

Long reliant on the U.S. security umbrella it accepted after World War II, Saudi Arabia now finds Washington unwilling to step up. U.S. President Donald Trump recently confirmed that Houthi representatives had contacted the U.S. to state they have no interest in conflict with America, and Reuters has reported that U.S. officials held secret talks with Houthi delegates mediated by Oman, a major development that sidelines Saudi interests.

In response to shifting U.S. commitments and regional instability sparked by the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, Saudi Arabia moved to expand its own security alliances, most notably through the Mecca Pact with Turkey and Pakistan. But like the U.S., these new partners have shown zero willingness to enter direct conflict with the Houthis, a movement that has already proven its ability to sustain heavy battlefield losses and continue fighting. Today, neither Turkey nor Pakistan have deployed any support to Saudi Arabia, leaving the kingdom isolated.

“Saudi Arabia is in a huge bind right now. They are pretty alone,” explained Neil Quilliam, a Gulf research expert at London-based Chatham House, in an interview with Middle East Eye. “The U.S. isn’t there. The Mecca Pact states haven’t showed up. They have few cards to play.”

The Houthi advance along Yemen’s Red Sea coast has already placed the strategically vital Bab el-Mandeb Strait firmly under the group’s control. This waterway is the primary chokepoint for Saudi oil shipments bound for Asian markets. Combined with the disabling of the East-West Pipeline, which fed crude to European markets through the Red Sea, the Houthi advances now threaten both major Saudi export routes. The group is currently advancing on two key Yemeni inland cities, Taiz and Marib; if these fall, the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized Yemeni government faces collapse.

On the ground, Saudi Arabia—which refuses to deploy its own ground troops into Yemen—has no reliable local partners to back. The National Resistance Forces, a militia previously funded by the United Arab Emirates that held the Red Sea coastline, disintegrated almost immediately during the Houthi advance. The only Yemeni faction with proven combat capability is the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is committed to restoring an independent state in southern Yemen. The UAE’s open support for the STC earlier this year sparked a major rift between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, and the STC’s demands for major concessions in exchange for fighting the Houthis run directly counter to Saudi Arabia’s core regional interests.

“The UAE knows how to fight in Yemen, but they want concessions to come back in. Saudi Arabia views those demands as anathema to its national interest,” a anonymous diplomat familiar with bilateral talks between the two nations told Middle East Eye.

The economic damage of the recent attacks is already tangible: Saudi Arabia was forced to cancel multiple crude oil shipments to Europe this week, and all loading operations at Yanbu, the Red Sea terminal that serves as the endpoint of the disabled East-West Pipeline, have been suspended. More broadly, the escalating conflict threatens to derail Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship Vision 2030 initiative, which aims to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil dependence. The kingdom is set to host a major global investment conference next month, where it hopes to attract billions in foreign investment for new projects including AI data centers and tourism infrastructure.

Saudi and allied Yemeni forces have launched limited retaliatory strikes against Houthi targets, but Riyadh has not committed to the large-scale intervention it launched at the start of the Yemen civil war a decade ago. The kingdom spent years working to extricate itself from that protracted conflict, and a 2022 ceasefire between the Houthis and Saudi-aligned forces reduced open fighting. However, Saudi Arabia has maintained a strict blockade on Houthi-controlled Yemeni ports and airports throughout the de facto truce.

“A return to full-scale ground war offers little that eight years of campaigning failed to deliver,” noted Hesham Alghannam, director general of the Strategic Studies and National Security Programmes at Riyadh’s Naif Arab University for Security Sciences. Western officials based in Riyadh confirm that Saudi leadership has no appetite to re-enter the Yemeni quagmire, mindful of the damage it caused to Saudi Arabia’s international reputation and arms supply chains.

Analysts widely agree that Saudi Arabia’s hesitation to deploy its own powerful air force to halt the Houthi advance stemmed directly from Riyadh’s reluctance to act without explicit U.S. backing. That indecision, experts say, allowed the Houthis to seize vast swathes of territory in a matter of weeks.

The dual attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure and regional influence do not exist in a vacuum: the Houthis are a core member of Iran’s “axis of resistance” aligned against U.S. and Gulf interests in the region. While the movement maintains it retains operational independence, Middle East Eye confirmed earlier this summer that Iran has supplied the Houthis with new military equipment and advisory support to ramp up their campaign. This offensive comes as Iran was set to hold talks with Gulf states this week to de-escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, leaving Saudi Arabia as the last major Gulf oil exporter operating at full capacity—now vulnerable on two maritime fronts.

The current frozen conflict in Yemen dates back to the 2022 UN-brokered ceasefire, which called for lifting the Saudi blockade on Houthi-held territory in exchange for political negotiations. Those talks never gained meaningful momentum, and the Houthis have grown increasingly frustrated under the ongoing economic isolation. Regional diplomats say the current offensive is driven in part by the Houthi goal of imposing shipping tolls in the Red Sea, mirroring the leverage Iran already holds in the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis have publicly stated their blockade of Saudi shipping will only end when their own ports and airports are allowed to operate without restrictions.

Military analysts say Saudi Arabia has a range of escalation options available, from calibrated air strikes to a full return to large-scale intervention. The most expedient short-term option would be to pay financial concessions to the Houthis in exchange for a new truce, but experts say that outcome is politically untenable for Riyadh.

“It would look like complete capitulation. Saudi Arabia sees itself as an emerging middle power. They can’t afford to lose face and just give in to Houthi terms,” Quilliam said.

This leaves Saudi Arabia with the path of gradually increasing military pressure, though the kingdom is determined to avoid being dragged back into a years-long ground war that would derail its economic transformation plans. Many Saudi security experts argue for a measured approach: incremental military action to raise the cost of Houthi attacks, paired with negotiations that offer the Houthi leadership a face-saving political resolution.

Other analysts argue a return to large-scale air campaign, modeled on the 2015 Decisive Storm offensive, is the most likely outcome, particularly as no genuine Yemeni political dialogue appears possible in the near term. One key proposal being discussed is an effort to internationalize control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, to draw greater support from the U.S., European nations, and other Arab partners for Saudi Arabia’s campaign.

In the end, the future of the conflict and Saudi Arabia’s next move will depend largely on whether its key international and regional allies choose to step in—and for now, that support remains missing in action.

For Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, the ceasefire that was meant to halt large-scale violence and bring a measure of stability last October has failed to deliver on its promises. Instead, repeated Israeli violations of the US-brokered agreement have left millions trapped in a cycle of constant fear, displacement, and hunger that mirrors the worst days of active conflict. The personal toll of this ongoing crisis is vividly captured in the accounts of two Gaza residents, whose stories lay bare the human cost of unrelenting pressure on civilian communities.

It was just an ordinary evening in early September when Om Siraj al-Muzeini, a widowed mother originally from Gaza City’s eastern Shujaiya neighbourhood, was making soup for her sick child inside her tent in western Gaza City’s al-Abbas block. Suddenly, panicked shouts cut through the quiet of the displacement camp: residents were running between shelters, asking one another frantic questions about how much time they had left to leave. The sound was all too familiar, and Muzeini quietly prayed her worst fears would not be confirmed. They were. A displaced neighbour soon brought word of a mandatory evacuation order for the entire block. With seconds to spare and no time to sort through her few belongings, she grabbed her sick son and fled the tent, with no clear destination in mind.

“I ran with my son to nowhere. I couldn’t decide where to go. I wasn’t prepared for this, especially since the last evacuation order in my area was issued before the ceasefire,” Muzeini told Middle East Eye in an interview. “The entire neighbourhood fled, including long-term residents and people displaced in tents. Some went to relatives’ homes. I waited with my son in another neighbourhood until the threatened area was bombed.” Shortly after the evacuation order was issued on September 8, an Israeli fighter jet carried out an airstrike on a local building.

This forced evacuation was not an isolated incident. It is one of dozens of similar expulsion orders the Israeli military has issued across the war-ravaged Gaza Strip in recent weeks, with multiple additional orders for different areas released the same day as al-Abbas block’s evacuation. Under the terms of the October 2024 ceasefire, these mass displacement orders were supposed to end, alongside daily offensive operations, while allowing critical humanitarian aid to flow freely into the enclave. Instead, Israel has breached the agreement repeatedly, conducting near-daily attacks and maintaining strict restrictions on the entry of life-saving aid. Now, nearly a year after the current phase of conflict began, Gaza residents say systematic violence against civilians continues, even as global media attention has faded.

Evacuation orders have become a key tool of this ongoing pressure, worsening a displacement and shelter crisis created by Israel’s widespread destruction of residential infrastructure over the course of the war. These orders typically give residents no clear timeline for when, or if, they will be able to return to their homes. Civilians often have only minutes or hours to pack and flee, with no warning of how long the evacuation will last. Even areas that receive no advance warning are regularly targeted by airstrikes, leaving civilians dead and injured with no chance to escape.

“The evacuation orders are meant simply to disrupt our lives and keep us in a constant state of insecurity, even during the ceasefire,” Muzeini said. She has already lost one family member to post-ceasefire violence: “My sister was killed in an Israeli strike near her tent in eastern Deir al-Balah during the ceasefire. So there is really no purpose to these evacuation orders other than keeping the state of war going. Honestly, I feel like we are reliving the war all over again.”

Just five days before al-Abbas block’s evacuation, on September 3, Israeli forces carried out a sudden incursion past their self-declared “yellow line” boundary into the area around Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, forcing a full-scale evacuation amid heavy gunfire. The attack left at least two Palestinians dead, including one child, and dozens more wounded. Official data from Gaza’s Palestinian Ministry of Health underscores the scale of ongoing bloodshed: since the ceasefire took effect, 1,381 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, an average of roughly four civilian deaths per day, with an additional 4,757 wounded.

For Ahmed Jendiya, a 31-year-old resident of eastern Gaza City who lost his home to Israeli bombing in the first year of conflict and now lives with his family in a tent on the rubble of his former property, the bombardment is only one of three ongoing horrors facing Gaza’s population. “The other two sides are still ongoing: the constant incursions and forced displacement, and the starvation that continues to haunt us every day,” Jendiya explained.

Two months ago, Jendiya packed an emergency evacuation bag, bracing for the day when Israeli forces would extend the “yellow line” into his neighbourhood. The unilateral military boundary, established and marked by Israeli forces inside Gaza immediately after the US-brokered ceasefire, creates a de facto no-go zone that bars Palestinian access to large swathes of northern, southern, and eastern Gaza, with civilian intruders met with lethal force. Since the ceasefire was signed, the line has steadily pushed westward into populated civilian neighbourhoods, and now covers roughly 70 percent of the entire Gaza Strip. Each new expansion is marked by the placement of yellow concrete blocks directly in residential areas. When Jendiya and other displaced residents returned to the area from the south after the ceasefire, the yellow line sat roughly one kilometer from his tent. Today, it is just 200 meters away.

“Every night, it feels like the war has returned. The Israeli occupation forces open intense fire towards our areas, and we barely survive the bullets. The entire area turns into a battlefield, and all we can do is lie on the ground and cover our children’s heads,” he said. The creeping expansion of the yellow line has completely shifted daily life for local residents: where evening community discussions once centered on hopes of rebuilding destroyed homes after the ceasefire, conversations now revolve solely around where people will flee when the boundary reaches their blocks.

“Every evening, the men in the neighbourhood gather to chat and discuss daily matters. In the first weeks of the ceasefire, our conversations revolved around whether our homes would be rebuilt, and whether we would rebuild them ourselves,” Jendiya said. “For the past six months, our discussions have turned to asking each other whether we have somewhere to go and when we should decide to leave. These are the same discussions we used to have during the genocide before the ceasefire, exactly the same.”

For Jendiya, the greater fear is not displacement itself—it is the return of mass starvation that already devastated Gaza before the ceasefire. Even with the partial reopening of border crossings for aid and goods after the truce, 1.4 million Gazans—64 percent of the enclave’s total population—still face crisis-level or worse acute food insecurity, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system. Before the ceasefire, Gaza’s Ministry of Health recorded at least 453 deaths from severe malnutrition, including 150 children. Hundreds more continue to struggle with malnutrition-related chronic health conditions months after the truce took effect.

Over the past months, Israeli authorities have repeatedly alternated between banning and permitting basic food items, leaving residents in a state of perpetual uncertainty. “Whenever we eat something today, we fear we may not find it tomorrow,” Jendiya said. “Most of the farmland has already been destroyed and there is no livestock left. We are completely dependent on aid and goods permitted by the occupation. We know that if the borders are closed again, we will fall into starvation even faster this time.”