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In a bombshell report published this week, news agency Reuters has uncovered widespread claims that Arab monarchies across the Arabian Gulf have deliberately hidden the true scale of infrastructure damage inflicted by a series of coordinated attacks attributed to Iran and its regional allied militias. The disclosure has thrown into sharp question the accuracy of official statements from Gulf governments about the security of their energy and strategic assets in the escalating regional conflict that followed a February 28 cross-border strike targeting Iran by the United States and Israel.

After that US-Israeli strike, Iran launched retaliatory missile and drone operations against multiple Gulf states including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, while Yemen’s Houthi movement — an Iran-aligned group — has stepped up attacks on the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, in recent months. What makes the revelation more alarming is that the strikes deliberately targeted civilian and critical infrastructure, including energy processing facilities, oil and gas pipelines, and even a United Arab Emirates nuclear energy site, putting energy supplies and civilian lives at severe risk.

Reuters’ assessment highlights a consistent gap between official narratives and on-the-ground reality across all affected Gulf states. The most high-profile discrepancy involves Saudi Aramco’s headquarters in the eastern city of Dhahran. After a Houthi drone strike, Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry downplayed the incident, claiming only a “limited fire” had broken out at the site. But anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the damage told Reuters that the facility suffered “extensive damage”: the top three floors of the building, including the executive office of Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, sustained severe structural harm, with partial ceiling collapse and all windows and doors blown outward by the blast force.

The pattern of underreporting repeats across the region’s most strategic assets. At the UAE’s Barakah nuclear energy plant, a strike hit the roof of a critical electrical substation, forcing one of the plant’s four operational reactors to switch to backup emergency diesel generators to maintain safe operation. Two Gulf officials and one Iranian official confirmed to Reuters that Iranian operatives had detailed advance intelligence of the plant’s layout and the exact location of the substation, confirming the strike was a deliberate, precision targeting rather than an errant attack.

In Qatar, a strike on the Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility — one of the largest LNG production hubs on the globe that supplies a huge share of global energy demand — also showed sophisticated Iranian targeting. The strike hit specialized “cold boxes” that house the cryogenic cooling equipment required to convert natural gas into its liquid export form. Industry experts note that this custom equipment can take multiple months to manufacture and replace, making any damage to the facility a long-term disruption risk for global gas markets.

No site demonstrates the gap between official claims and actual damage more clearly than the UAE’s Fujairah Port, a vital chokepoint for global oil exports that handles millions of barrels of crude and refined products daily. According to Reuters’ investigation, based on satellite imagery and on-the-ground sources, Iran struck the port multiple times, even launching follow-up attacks after the UAE completed repairs to damaged infrastructure.

The first strike on Fujairah on March 3 left two large oil storage tanks burning for multiple consecutive days. A second strike targeted the port’s matrix manifold, a critical transfer system that connects 62 pipelines moving crude oil and refined petroleum products from onshore storage terminals to waiting shipping tankers. Emirati officials attempted to dismiss the damage from both strikes as nothing more than harm caused by falling debris from intercepted missiles or drones — but Reuters found this explanation directly contradicted independent damage assessments.

Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston, described the damage to the manifold system as a critical blow to the port’s core function. “This is a wound to the brain and heart of the facility,” he told Reuters, noting that the official explanation of incidental debris damage was not credible given the nature and location of the strike.

Follow-up strikes in March damaged the port’s second intact matrix manifold, forcing the UAE to launch an urgent round of emergency repairs to restore full export capacity. While UAE officials announced the port was fully operational by the end of March, Iran launched another drone strike on the site in May, targeting the same pipeline network that had been damaged in the initial March attack. According to export data cited in the report, shipments of refined petroleum products from Fujairah did not return to pre-attack levels until September, more than six months after the first strike.

The report’s findings are expected to deepen concerns about regional security and the vulnerability of critical global energy infrastructure amid escalating tensions between Iran and Western-aligned regional states, while also raising new questions about transparency around security incidents that can have global economic impacts.

In early October, a planned mass xenophobic demonstration targeting foreign migrants in Tripoli that had been weeks in the making failed to materialize at scale, overshadowed by a large-scale teachers’ strike demanding unpaid wages from the internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) that controls western Libya. But the failed protest did little to ease the rising tide of anti-migrant sentiment that has been building in the Libyan capital since spring 2025, leaving hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people facing growing threats of violence, discrimination, and exclusion. In the lead-up to the 1 October deadline for protests, dozens of social media groups and pages flooded platforms with openly xenophobic content, replete with racist slurs targeting Sub-Saharan African, Arab, and Asian migrants, in a coordinated campaign to push Libyans into the streets. Migrant rights organization Refugees in Libya even confirmed it received a handwritten threat targeting “black people” that included a bullet just days before the planned demonstration. While the 1 October protests drew barely any turnout, small factions of demonstrators did gather in Tripoli’s Martyrs’ Square on 2 and 9 October, chanting slogans including “Libya for Libyans” and “No to resettlement.” These small actions are part of a steady string of similar demonstrations that have taken place multiple times per month in central Tripoli since April, slowly amplifying hostility toward the large migrant population concentrated in the capital. Today, Tripoli is home to nearly 700,000 Sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, including 335,000 Sudanese people who fled the ongoing war in their home country. For years, the Libyan capital has served as a key transit hub for migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. Data from the first eight months of 2025 shows that roughly 80% of all migrants arriving in Italy via the Mediterranean departed from Libyan territory, with over 90% of those departures launching from western Libya’s coastline between Tripoli and Zuwara, a longstanding major departure point for migrant smuggling networks. Long before the recent wave of public anti-migrant protests, migrants in Libya already faced systemic abuse that the United Nations has labeled widespread and systematic human rights violations. These abuses include exploitation by smuggling networks, arbitrary detention, kidnapping, torture, enslavement, and violent interception by Libyan authorities at sea. But the rising tide of public hostility has added new layers of risk, with migrants facing growing threats in their homes, workplaces, and public spaces that did not exist at the same scale just a year ago. “I feel that Libyans are increasingly allowed to do whatever they want to us, without obligation to abide by the law,” explained Albert G, a 37-year-old migrant from Sierra Leone who resides in eastern Tripoli, in an interview with Middle East Eye. “Not only will torture and imprisonment continue to be a reality for migrants, which is already a well-known problem, but it also adds more common difficulties when there is no way for us to enter the public places or look for work to survive.” Albert told reporters that anti-migrant sentiment began growing after the first wave of public protests in spring, and became genuinely frightening by the start of summer. The first large, coordinated anti-migrant protest took place in June, when hundreds of demonstrators gathered to oppose what they claimed was a secret UN-backed “resettlement plan” to keep migrants in Libya permanently, rather than allowing them to continue their journey to Europe. Despite immediate and firm denials from both the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), protesters blocked the UNHCR headquarters in Tripoli on 4 June, accusing international aid agencies of seeking to alter Libya’s demographic makeup. The June protests were followed by widespread anti-migrant violence across multiple western Libyan cities, with police and armed factions aligned with the Libyan interior ministry launching waves of arrests targeting Sub-Saharan African people. Many members of the migrant community stayed locked inside their homes for days to avoid violence, as unrest spread. While large-scale unrest died down over the summer, small anti-migrant gatherings and sporadic violent incidents continued. Tensions flared again on 7 September, when a group of Libyan protesters stormed an IOM Migrants’ Response Centre in western Tripoli. While no one was killed or injured in the attack, the incident sent shockwaves through Tripoli’s Sub-Saharan African community. “If the authorities can allow an IOM camp to be attacked, many lives will be impacted because there will be no safe place for migrants,” Albert said. After the attack on the response centre, the GNU released a statement acknowledging that “the right to peaceful protest can never justify assault, vandalism or threats to life,” and warned that perpetrators would face legal consequences. But when Middle East Eye asked the Libyan interior ministry what concrete steps it had taken to hold attackers accountable or prevent future incidents, the ministry failed to respond. Meanwhile, the large social media pages and groups that launched the anti-migrant campaign earlier this year remain active on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), continuing to spread hate speech and call for future mobilization. Groups including “Libyan News – No to the Resettlement In Libya,” which boasts 76,000 members, and “The Tripoli Activists Movement,” with 39,000 members, publish hateful content targeting migrants on a daily basis. To date, the full extent of coordination behind the movement and its original origins remain unclear. An August investigation by the BBC found that the June large-scale protests were primarily fueled by unfounded online rumors spread to stoke public anger. On the ground, a small number of public Libyan figures including lawyer Thuraya al-Tuwaibi and journalist Salma al-Shaab have repeatedly led the protests, which they describe as “peaceful,” and have kept the movement’s momentum going. “These campaigns are still ongoing, even though they are based on false and misleading information,” said Ahmed Hamza, a Libyan human rights activist, in an interview with Middle East Eye. “The actions of those advocating for or coordinating this criminal movement constitute criminal acts punishable under the Libyan Penal Code.” Hamza pointed to a “state of complacency, complicity, and suspicious silence from the interior ministry and other authorities” that has allowed the anti-migrant movement to grow unimpeded. Migrants themselves echo this criticism, noting that while the GNU officially allows migrants to live and work in Libya – and even employs some in low-wage roles – it has never taken meaningful steps to guarantee the safety of migrant communities in Tripoli. Kingsley, a pseudonym for a Cameroonian refugee who has lived in Tripoli for four years, told reporters he has “never felt safe in Libya.” The 29-year-old was arrested twice by Libyan security forces in 2024 and 2025, and says he was only released after paying ransom to what he describes as his “kidnappers.” Human rights groups have repeatedly documented that armed groups affiliated with official Libyan state institutions, alongside independent criminal gangs, routinely hold migrant civilians for ransom. “Now, I see the vast majority of Libyans as a threat,” Kingsley said. While Sub-Saharan African people remain the primary target of online and offline anti-migrant hate, the movement’s rhetoric has also expanded to target Palestinian, Syrian, and Bangladeshi communities – groups that have long had a large presence in eastern Libya and are increasingly visible in Tripoli. Migrants report that even minor, everyday interactions with locals are now marked by increased disrespect and rights violations, even in incidents that are not directly tied to the anti-resettlement movement. “Last week, I worked at a construction site for two days and received no money. I had to go home on an empty stomach,” Albert said. While no new large anti-migrant protest dates have been announced publicly, tensions across Tripoli remain high, and human rights advocates warn the situation could escalate into widespread violence at any time. “Authorities must assume their responsibilities. Matters could escalate and get out of control,” Hamza warned. To date, the rising hostile climate has not forced large numbers of migrants to flee Tripoli, but many are now considering leaving for neighboring countries in search of safety. The IOM runs voluntary return programs for migrants, which assisted around 16,000 people in 2025, while Libyan official authorities deported more than 37,000 migrants last year. “Even if the situation is terrible there too, I would rather be in Tunisia, or Algeria,” Albert said. “I don’t know what the coming months have in store for us here.”

For nearly a decade, Yemen’s Houthi movement has proven it can strike deep into Saudi Arabia, targeting everything from critical energy infrastructure to the heart of the kingdom’s capital. But a recent wave of repeated missile and drone assaults on Riyadh’s primary international airport has reignited urgent debate over the fundamental limits of Saudi Arabia’s multi-billion-dollar advanced air defense network, as renewed fighting across Yemen pushes tensions to new highs.

Since October 6 alone, these cross-border attacks have left at least 20 people dead and nearly 400 injured. The deadliest single assault on October 10 claimed 12 lives and wounded more than 300 people. Following the barrage, Saudi authorities pledged a “serious” retaliatory response, and within 24 hours, Saudi airstrikes hit energy facilities in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, triggering large-scale fires and explosions that shook the city. This escalation begs two critical questions: How have Houthi projectiles repeatedly bypassed Riyadh’s defensive shield, and what does this reveal about the kingdom’s ability to safeguard its most vital assets?

Saudi Arabia has poured billions of dollars into assembling one of the world’s most cutting-edge air defense arsenals, purpose-built to counter exactly the kind of threats the Houthis now pose. Its inventory includes U.S.-manufactured MIM-104 Patriot systems, featuring the advanced PAC-3 variant with hit-to-kill interception technology, as well as the even more sophisticated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. Both platforms have a proven track record of intercepting ballistic missiles in combat. The kingdom also fields a modern, well-equipped air force with advanced F-15 fighters and Eurofighter Typhoons, designed to engage low-flying drones and cruise missiles.

Yet Houthi missiles and drones continue to evade or penetrate these defenses, laying bare the steep challenges of securing an enormous territory and its high-value targets against sustained, asymmetric attacks. Nicholas Heras, interim executive director of the Middle East Policy Council and senior director at the New Lines Institute, explains that Saudi Arabia’s massive landmass leaves it uniquely vulnerable to attacks launched from northern Yemen.

“Much of Saudi territory is desert, which makes it challenging to fully defend because of the distances that must be accounted for – and it costs more to have personnel maintain early warning systems in that terrain,” Heras told Middle East Eye. “The Houthis have a target-rich environment in Saudi Arabia that includes some of the most important oil infrastructure in the world that are more immediately exposed to the drone and missile attack capabilities that the Houthis possess.”

Heras added that the strikes on Riyadh were a deliberate calculated signal to the Saudi leadership amid the resumption of large-scale fighting. “The Houthis perceived a gap in Saudi capability and attention span and struck Riyadh to send a signal to Saudi Arabia that if Sanaa is hit, Riyadh will be hit,” he said.

Federico Borsari, a defense expert at the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), argues the recent assaults reflect a strategic escalation in the Houthis’ willingness to target core Saudi territory, rather than a sudden leap in entirely new military capabilities. The group has held long-range strike capabilities for close to a decade, and first targeted Riyadh back in 2017.

“Since then, their arsenal has further expanded to include increasingly sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles built with Iranian help,” Borsari told MEE. “But without evidence it is hard to tell whether some new capabilities were used.”

For Borsari, the most worrying development is not any new weapon, but the Houthis’ demonstrated ability to carry out coordinated, repeated strikes against heavily defended targets. He also noted the timing of the attacks lines up with a deliberate strategy to impose tangible economic and political costs on Saudi Arabia as fighting resumes across Yemen.

Freddy Khoueiry, lead Middle East and North Africa and defense analyst at risk intelligence firm RANE, echoed that uncertainty over whether the breaches stem from new Houthi technology.

“Based on publicly available information, it is still difficult to determine whether the Riyadh attacks represent a specific new technological upgrade or simply a decision to employ existing capabilities more aggressively against civilian aviation infrastructure,” he told MEE. “In either case, the escalation is significant because the Houthis are demonstrating both the capability and willingness to impose direct costs on the Saudi capital.”

Mohammed al-Basha, a risk analyst with the Virginia-based Basha Report, pointed out that the Houthis have spent years refining their long-range strike tactics through repeated practice, even on failed attacks. “For years, the Houthis have used their attacks on Israel to refine their long-range strike capabilities,” he told MEE. “What appeared to be failed attacks were also opportunities to learn and adapt.”

Al-Basha said the group has likely applied lessons learned from these regional attacks, as well as from Iran’s confrontations with the U.S. and Israel, to improve their ability to outmaneuver sophisticated air defense networks. “Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in Patriot, Thaad, and other systems, but its vast territory makes comprehensive protection difficult,” he said. “The Houthis do not need to overwhelm the entire network. One successful strike can cause significant damage and disruption.”

The repeated breaches have also sparked questions about whether Saudi Arabia maintains a large enough stockpile of interceptors to sustain defenses through a prolonged campaign. After years of steady use in the wider regional standoff with Iran, Riyadh’s interceptor supplies may now be depleted. Repeated waves of drone and missile attacks can rapidly consume the high-cost interceptors required to stop incoming threats, and the U.S. has also drawn down its own stocks of Patriot and THAAD interceptors to support other conflicts, creating supply chain pressures that could take years to reverse.

Borsari called interceptor depletion a “credible explanation” for the recent defensive failures, though he warned against framing it as the only possible cause. He noted recent media reports have already suggested Riyadh was facing shortages of ballistic missile interceptors ahead of the latest wave of attacks. “If true, this would create difficult operational trade-offs for air-defence commanders when deciding which threats to engage, how many interceptors to allocate, etc,” he said. “These decisions become even more problematic during mass salvos.”

Another factor that works in the Houthis’ favor is their tactic of saturating Saudi defenses by launching mixed salvos of different weapon types at once, combining one-way attack drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. Even the most advanced, layered air defense systems cannot guarantee 100% interception of every incoming projectile during a sustained bombardment.

Borsari said it would be “naive to deny” that the Riyadh strikes raise “serious questions” about the effectiveness of Saudi Arabia’s ballistic missile defenses, particularly their ability to protect fixed, high-value targets under repeated attack. Khoueiry similarly argued that the strikes are less evidence of “a fundamental deficiency” in Saudi air defenses than a stark reminder that even the most advanced systems have inherent limits.

“Saudi Arabia has to defend a very large territory and prioritize coverage around major cities, military sites and critical infrastructure, while interceptor availability is also under pressure,” he said. “Direct ballistic-missile impacts could reflect those constraints, but on their own they do not prove a severe interceptor shortage.”

“We don’t know what the specific cause of this failure is,” Borsari said of the recent breaches. He noted that an air defense network’s overall effectiveness relies on multiple interconnected components, not just advanced interceptors. “The effectiveness of a defensive network depends not simply on the sophistication of its interceptors but also on sensor coverage and integration, proficient C2 (command and control), ammunition availability, etc. So it could be any of these, or – most likely – a combination thereof.”

Saudi Arabia’s geography only amplifies these challenges. Its airports, oil facilities, ports, and military bases are spread across thousands of kilometers of land, making continuous, full-coverage protection extremely expensive and logistically difficult to sustain.

“The main challenge is detection, and for that you need to rely on various assets, including aircraft, to ensure proper early warning,” Borsari said. “But maintaining such a detection regime over time is very costly and a sustainment burden on both the equipment and personnel.”

While lower-cost options for countering drones do exist, including automated anti-drone turrets and low-cost short-range interceptors, these require supporting infrastructure and careful integration into existing defense networks to work effectively. “So I’m afraid we will continue to see drones penetrating Saudi territory for the foreseeable future,” Borsari added.

For Khoueiry, the latest Houthi strikes, paired with recent Iranian attacks on U.S. and regional targets, are part of a broader, coordinated learning curve for Iran and its regional partners, who are actively adapting their tactics to defeat layered air defense systems, rather than relying on luck. “Iran and its partners appear to be learning how to operate against layered air defence networks, adapting flight routes and tactics to improve penetration and impose higher interception and economic costs,” he said.

“The lesson for Saudi Arabia and the wider region is that increasingly sophisticated air defences still need dense surveillance, sufficient interceptor stocks and constant adaptation to keep pace with evolving missile and drone threats.”

On October 10, a devastating Houthi assault on Riyadh’s primary international airport left 13 people dead and hundreds more injured, marking the deadliest attack on Saudi soil since the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran in February 2026. The deadly opening strike was followed by successive, less lethal missile barrages in the subsequent days, and it landed just as Saudi Arabia prepared to host a landmark gathering of global oil producers. For long-time observers of Yemeni politics, this wave of violence is far more than an isolated militant incident: it lays bare both the deepening regional stalemate gripping the Middle East and the far-reaching spillover effects of Yemen’s decade-long civil war that extend far beyond the country’s borders.

The Houthi movement first emerged as a militarized political force in Yemen in 2004, and has fought a years-long civil war against the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized Yemeni central government. Today, the group controls roughly one-third of Yemen’s territory and is home to two-thirds of the country’s population, making it the most powerful armed faction in the nation despite its lack of an air force. Over years of conflict, it has built an advanced arsenal of long-range missiles and unmanned aerial drones. For decades, the Houthis have been widely labeled by their adversaries and many external analysts as a mere proxy for Iran, Saudi Arabia’s primary regional rival.

While it is accurate that the Houthi movement has maintained long-standing broad alignment with Tehran and shared many of its regional strategic goals, the relationship between the two groups is far more nuanced and complex than the simple proxy narrative suggests. Crucially, the Houthi movement’s evolution remains deeply rooted in Yemen’s domestic political landscape and a unique, centuries-old internal Yemeni feud, a reality long documented by regional scholars.

What makes the current escalation particularly significant is the deliberate strategic narrative shift Houthi leadership has pursued throughout 2026: the group is actively reframing its military campaign to distance itself from the perception that its actions are directed by Iran, a choice that reveals how Houthi leaders leverage narrative to build legitimacy for their operations both domestically and regionally.

After the United States and Israel launched their offensive against Iran on February 28, 2026, many regional analysts predicted the Houthis would quickly join the conflict. The group’s 2023–2025 Red Sea campaign in support of Palestinians during the Gaza war had already proven its ability to disrupt global maritime traffic, creating a clear blueprint for similar action through the critical Strait of Hormuz. That earlier campaign carried significant symbolic weight: it positioned the Houthis as defenders of Palestinian interests at a time when many Arab governments were seen as abandoning the Palestinian cause, while also demonstrating the movement’s capacity to upend global supply chains and international trade thousands of miles from Yemeni territory.

Yet despite widespread expectations, the Houthis remained on the sidelines for months following the initial strikes on Iran. The group even ignored reported requests from Iranian leadership in July 2026 to close the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb to commercial shipping. The assumption that the Houthis would automatically follow Tehran’s orders reflected a fundamental misreading of Yemeni politics and the identity factors that shape the movement’s legitimacy. While supporting Palestinians could be framed as an act of pan-Arab solidarity that resonated with Yemeni audiences, acting on behalf of a non-Arab, Persian Shia power was far harder to justify in majority Sunni Yemen, where Twelver Shia Islam has no significant presence.

When the Houthis re-entered open regional conflict in August 2026, they tied their campaign explicitly to their long-standing rivalry with Saudi Arabia, rather than Iran’s regional conflict. While Houthi actions may indirectly advance Iran’s own strategic goals, the movement frames its military campaign against Saudi Arabia first and foremost as an act of Yemeni national self-defense.

The catalyst for this escalation came in an incident that received almost no coverage in Western media earlier in the summer of 2026. Seeking to assert sovereignty over Houthi-controlled territory, the group facilitated the surprise departure and return of a commercial flight from Sanaa International Airport bound for Tehran. The capital’s airport had been closed since late 2024 following Israeli strikes, and its ongoing closure left movement in and out of Houthi-held areas restricted by the faction’s adversaries, including the internationally recognized government based in Aden. For the Houthis, this restriction represented an unacceptable infringement on their claimed sovereignty, limiting both civilian travel and the group’s ability to move personnel and military supplies.

On July 13, as the flight from Tehran approached Sanaa, Saudi warplanes bombed the airport’s runway, giving the Houthis a clear casus belli to reignite open confrontation with Riyadh. After more than three years of a de facto ceasefire and stalled negotiation efforts, Saudi Arabia had been seeking to extricate itself from the long-running Yemeni conflict, mirroring its efforts to de-escalate tensions with Iran. Sensing Riyadh’s desire for exit, Houthi leadership responded with a deliberate policy of tit-for-tat retaliation.

Today’s Houthi tactics directly mirror the 2015 Saudi-led bombing campaign and blockade that Houthi-held Yemen has endured for over a decade. The group now claims the right to impose reciprocal pressure on Saudi Arabia, targeting critical infrastructure including ports, energy facilities, and airports.

This new strategic framing serves two core political goals for the Houthis. First, it shifts blame for Yemen’s ongoing catastrophic economic and humanitarian crisis away from the group’s own governance failures, mismanagement, and corruption, and onto the Saudi-imposed blockade. Second, it provides a legitimate, popularly supported rationale for escalating conflict across the region.

The Houthis have already demonstrated pragmatic flexibility in recent years: after the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire, the group halted attacks on Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea despite repeated Israeli bombardments, and it suspended attacks on U.S. vessels under a May 2025 agreement with the Trump administration. These moves align with the movement’s pattern of balancing ideological rhetoric with practical strategic calculation, even as it resumed military engagement this year: U.S. diplomatic sources have reported that American diplomats met with Houthi representatives in Oman as recently as September 2026.

With Saudi Arabia, however, the Houthis have felt far less incentive to show restraint. Riyadh is already grappling with repeated missile attacks from Iran tied to its alliance with the U.S., and facing mounting pressure on its energy export operations. The high-profile attack on Riyadh’s airport, the Houthis calculate, has put Saudi Arabia in an intractable position, with ramifications that will ripple through the global economy.

This retaliatory strategy gained additional momentum in early September, when Houthi forces secured partial control over the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints for global trade. This position gives the group significant leverage over commercial shipping bound for and departing Saudi Arabia via the Red Sea. As the Riyadh airport attack demonstrated, the Houthis’ arsenal of drones and ballistic missiles also gives them the capacity to strike targets across nearly all of Saudi territory.

The targeting of civilian infrastructure, including major transportation hubs, highlights the retaliatory logic the Houthis now rely on to justify their escalating campaign. It remains impossible to predict the full consequences of this increasingly aggressive Houthi strategy. The Middle East appears poised for a new period of sustained, widespread conflict, and it remains an open question whether the United States – which has been reluctant to reengage in full-scale regional conflict – will be drawn back into the fray.

Amid all the focus on regional geopolitics, however, the ongoing suffering of Yemeni civilians must not be overlooked. This latest escalation serves as a stark reminder that a decade of war has devastated a population that was already the poorest in the Middle East before the conflict began, destroying what little infrastructure the country possessed.

On October 8, a peaceful demonstration targeting an Israeli-owned drone manufacturing facility in Leicester ended in widespread detentions, with at least five working journalists swept up in mass arrests under the UK’s Terrorism Act – an incident that has sparked fierce debate over police overreach and press freedom. The protest was held outside UAV Tactical Systems, a UK-based subsidiary of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, and drew participants backing Palestine Action, a direct action group proscribed under British law. Under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, public expression of support for a proscribed organization is a criminal offense, a provision that police leveraged to order mass detentions of everyone inside a cordoned protest zone.

The arrested journalists included two full-time reporters from the local *Leicester Gazette* and two union-accredited freelance journalists who were on site specifically to cover the demonstration, according to *Leicester Gazette* editor Emma Guy. In comments to Middle East Eye, Guy confirmed that all five journalists had explicitly identified themselves as press to multiple officers before their arrest, ruling out any case of mistaken identity. The reporters were held in detention for three hours before being de-arrested only after turning over full personal information to officers. “A decision was made by Leicestershire Police to blanket arrest journalists and then de-arrest them on a case by case basis,” Guy explained.

Two freelance journalists who spoke to Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity (using the pseudonyms Matt and Barold) detailed the chaotic turn of events that led to their detentions. They confirmed the protest had been organized to end peacefully at midday, and that activists had already reached an agreement with police to disperse by that time. But instead of allowing the crowd to leave, officers deployed in large numbers formed a rigid police cordon – colloquially known as a kettle – around the entire protest site. An announcement over a police megaphone confirmed that every person inside the cordon would be arrested.

Matt, a veteran freelance photographer with 40 years of experience covering demonstrations, said he had repeatedly shown his official press card to officers to move through the cordon throughout the morning, with no pushback. But when he attempted to exit the cordon for a final time, he was stopped and placed under arrest. “I didn’t think that necessarily would apply to press. I mean, it never does, press is always the exception,” he said. Both freelance journalists confirmed that even after they presented their officially verified press cards – which include secure PIN codes that allow police to confirm identity on the spot – officers refused to verify their credentials and instead demanded private personal information as a condition for release. Matt called the action “incredibly heavy-handed”, noting “They just arrested anybody that was in there. People that were just standing round holding banners, and people that had done nothing at all.”

Barold, a freelance video journalist, added that arresting officers refused to communicate with his National Union of Journalists (NUJ) representative, and that an officer explicitly confirmed the mass arrests were intended primarily to collect identifying information on all attendees. For the *Leicester Gazette* team, which has covered regular protests at the Elbit Systems site for five years without any incident, the arrests mark a dramatic escalation. “This is concerning for us as a small newsroom. Like many others, we don’t go to work thinking that we’ll be arrested under the Terrorism Act. It sets a worrying precedent that journalists are being arrested for doing their jobs,” Guy said.

Legal observers have harshly condemned the police tactic of mass arrest followed by conditional de-arrest in exchange for personal information. Tim Crosland, a former government lawyer and spokesperson for campaign group Defend Our Juries, called the practice legally baseless and fundamentally incompatible with British policing norms. “There is no legal basis for police to demand members of the public provide them with personal information generally, and definitely not as a pre-condition for ‘de-arrest’,” he said. “Such oppressive and intimidatory police conduct is characteristic of a police state, not policing by consent.”

Guy added that the arrests were carried out under a recent expansion of the Terrorism Act that expands criminal liability to include livestreaming or photographing material that could be interpreted as supporting a proscribed organization. In its official response to requests for comment, a Leicestershire Police spokesperson defended the mass detentions, saying “To affect a thorough investigation, due to the circumstances and number of people at the scene, everyone was placed under arrest and told to remain in the area. Once these individuals had been spoken to, details provided to officers and it was established that no offences had been committed, they were de-arrested.” The spokesperson confirmed a total of 35 people were arrested under Section 13, with one additional arrest on suspicion of racially aggravated public order, and all 35 have since been released on conditional bail. None of the journalists were taken into formal custody beyond their initial detention.

The NUJ, which represents working journalists across the UK, has formally raised the incident with the National Police Chiefs’ Council over concerns about systemic police overreach. NUJ General Secretary Laura Davison noted that the union has repeatedly emphasized that simply covering Palestine Action protests and documenting placards or statements does not constitute criminal support for the group. Defend Our Juries confirmed that despite widespread filming and livestreaming of previous protests at the site, no journalist or attendee has ever been arrested for this activity prior to the October 8 demonstration.

For Matt, the incident is only the latest in a pattern of aggressive targeting of journalists who cover pro-Palestine protests at arms manufacturing sites tied to Israel. He said he has now been arrested five times in the last three years, all while covering Palestine Action demonstrations, and that the persistent targeting has created a constant climate of fear for working reporters. “As a journalist, you don’t feel entirely safe. You’re made to feel that you shouldn’t really be there,” he said. “It seems to be particularly difficult at Elbit Systems sites. It’s becoming almost impossible. You can’t relax. You don’t really know if you’re ever gonna come home. It acts as a deterrent.”

In April 2025, Matt was arrested while covering a Palestine Action protest at a Lockheed Martin site in Ampthill, on suspicion of conspiracy to commit burglary. Police alleged he had fired fireworks from his vehicle, but he was in fact photographing the protest from outside the main gate. He was held for 20 hours, and police seized his car and all journalistic equipment. He ultimately won a financial settlement from Bedfordshire Police over the unlawful arrest, though the force maintained it acted with reasonable grounds and settled the claim without admitting liability. A month after that arrest, Matt was detained again on suspicion of a hate crime while photographing the aftermath of a Palestine Action protest at a London site tied to Elbit Systems, and was later released without any further action.

In a high-profile legal decision that has drawn international attention to Saudi Arabia’s restrictive regulations on online speech, the kingdom’s highest judicial body has reversed a death penalty handed down to a 27-year-old Sri Lankan national convicted of blasphemy over a social media comment.

The case of Anojan Sivarasa traces back to intercommunal online tensions that erupted earlier this year, when video footage of a Muslim man kicking a dog during the return of a Hindu pilgrimage went viral across regional social platforms. The clip sparked heated arguments between Hindu and Muslim users in comment threads, where one user posted a derogatory remark targeting a Hindu deity. Sivarasa responded to that comment with an insult to the Prophet Muhammad, the act that would ultimately lead to his arrest and prosecution.

Quickly realizing the severity of his statement, Sivarasa deleted the comment and posted a public apology video to address the offense. But a screenshot of the exchange was already circulating, and it was eventually shared both with his employer, based in Saudi Arabia where Sivarasa resided and worked, and Saudi law enforcement officials. He was taken into custody by authorities in July this year.

Last month, the Al-Ahsa Criminal Court found Sivarasa guilty of blasphemy against Islam. Alongside the death sentence, the court issued a concurrent 5-year prison term and a fine of 3 million Saudi riyals, equivalent to roughly $800,000. The conviction and capital sentence sparked widespread international backlash, with critics highlighting longstanding concerns over how Saudi Arabia’s legal system targets freedom of expression online.

On Wednesday, Sri Lanka’s Deputy Foreign Minister Arun Hemachandra confirmed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the death sentence in an official Facebook post, where he also thanked Saudi authorities for agreeing to commute the capital punishment. As of the latest update, Sivarasa remains in Saudi custody, and there has been no official confirmation on whether additional legal proceedings will be initiated against him.

The ruling comes against a backdrop of growing international scrutiny of Riyadh’s approach to online speech. The kingdom combines traditional interpretations of Islamic law with modern cybercrime and counter-terrorism legislation to crack down on online expression deemed to violate “public morals,” a policy that has led to a sharp rise in lengthy prison sentences for social media users and a sustained high rate of capital punishment. Data from regional monitoring organizations shows that at least 175 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia so far this year, the vast majority of whom are foreign nationals working and residing in the kingdom.