Riyadh says he will not tolerate threats to navigation in the Red Sea

A Saudi Arabia will not tolerate any threat to its security or freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and in the strait of Bab el-Mandeb, today warned the Council of Ministers, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

According to a statement released by the official news agency SPA, the Iranian Government also stated that the Huthis rebels of Yemen, supported by Iran, will respond for the “repeated crimes and attacks” against airports and cities of Mecca and Medina as well as against Saudi energy facilities.

On Monday, the head of diplomacy of the European Union said that the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia asked him to strengthen the European naval presence in the Red Sea in the face of the Huthis attacks.

Kaja Kallas condemned the “intensification of the Huthis attacks” against Riyadh airport and said that on Sunday he spoke on the phone with Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud to understand what Europeans can do to help the country cope.

“ We have Operation Aspides and their call was to strengthen this operation, so that it can work in close coordination with the international force to keep open the narrow of Bab el-Mandeb and ensure the exit of merchant ships from the Red Sea,” he said.

Operation Aspides, launched in February 2024, aims to protect commercial and merchant ships in the Red Sea, Gulf and Western Indian Ocean from growing threats, including attacks by Yemen's Huthis groups.

Riyadh's warning is that after Saudi Arabia attacked today a warehouse of Yemeni oil company, Yemen Petroleum Company, west of the capital, Sanaa, controlled by Huthis since 2014.

Previously, the Saudi Arabian-led military coalition, which has intervened in Yemen since 2015, had announced that it would bomb Sana's main fuel tank, where several explosions were heard in the capital.

Until now, the extent of the damage caused to this important fuel storage infrastructure, whose exit of civilians was first ordered by the Riyadh-led coalition, with a view to launching a “selective” operation against the Huthis, which in turn threatened to respond firmly if Saudi Arabia were to materialise the threat.

However, Yemen Petroleum Company indicated in a statement that it has taken “all the preventive measures necessary to cope with any emergency” in order to ensure fuel supply and thus meet the energy needs of the Sana population.

According to the company controlled by the rebels, the al-Sabaha plant “does not currently contain petroleum products”, so the attack “does not affect the reserves or the supply”, since the fuel was transferred to “installations and safe places in sufficient quantities”, without specifying which ones.

In a brief message published on social network X, the Huthis military spokesperson, Yahya Sahara, stated that the insurgent movement faced the “warning formations of the Saudi enemy” that attacked Sana without further details.

Huthis is expected to launch a large-scale operation shortly against Saudi state oil headquarters Aramco in Dammam, North-East Saudi Arabia, and against a refinery of the same company in Riyadh, the capital of the Saudi kingdom.

In addition, Sara had previously warned that, in the event of Saudi Arabia bombing Sana, the Huthis would also attack King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, which has been the target of several bombings of the insurgents in recent days, of which dozens have died and injured.