Global Geopolitical Series: Saudi Arabia intercepts missile from Yemen amid heightened risk

Saudi Arabia’s air-defense yet intercepted another attack from Yemen, where the Kingdom is involved in a civil war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels since 2015. This was the most prominent attack on Saudi Arabia using missiles this week, since the Houthi rebels’ attack on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea channel, near the bottleneck of Gulf of Aden in July, where one of the tankers was seriously damaged leading to a suspension of oil traffic through the channel. Last night’s missile attack was the second this week.

While other places in the Middle East has relatively stabilized, with Syrian government taking control of Syria, negotiations going between Israelis and Hamas over Gaza border, Iraq election and Libyan faction agreeing to the election with the help of French intervention, the Yemeni civil war is showing no signs of diminishing.

With Yemen being such a great geopolitical prize sitting near the Gulf of Aden and close to ‘The Horn of Africa’, through which billions of dollars’ worth of goods traveling each year, we neither expect Saudi Arabia nor the Houthi rebels to back down from trying to control the region.