Saudi Arabia’s airports have become a pressure point for the Iran-aligned Houthis, who are seeking to retaliate against Saudi airstrikes, disrupt international air travel and raise the cost to Riyadh of supporting Yemen’s internationally recognized government.
Over the past week, Houthi attacks have targeted King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and other airports in the kingdom, killing about 20 people.
The deadly attacks came after Yemeni government forces, backed by Saudi airpower, launched a major military operation to retake areas seized by the Houthis, a group Washington designates as a terrorist organization.
Tom Warrick, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told MBN that the Houthis were seeking to pressure Saudi Arabia by targeting a vital sector, given the importance of air travel to and from the kingdom.
He said the group was also seeking to persuade Saudi Arabia to allow greater freedom of air travel to and from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, while exerting broader political pressure on Riyadh.
In July, Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces bombed Sanaa’s airport runway to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing. The Yemeni government said at the time that the plane was carrying military equipment and members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. The aircraft later landed at an airport in the Houthi-controlled city of Hodeidah.
Warrick said Iran might prefer to deliver more support to the Houthis by air rather than risk maritime shipments that could be intercepted by Saudi or U.S. naval forces.
Mubarak Al-Ati, a Saudi researcher in international relations, told MBN that the Houthis were seeking to ignite a regional war and to fulfill what he described as Iran’s objectives, including “shutting down Saudi airports just as its own airports have been shut down.” He was referring to U.S. sanctions on Iranian airlines.
The Houthis portray their airport attacks as retaliation for Saudi strikes on areas under their control in Yemen. Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi official, linked Saturday’s attack on Riyadh airport, which killed 13 people and injured about 300, to what he described as Saudi attacks on Yemen’s civilian infrastructure, according to remarks reported by The New York Times.
Badr al-Qahtani, a Yemeni journalist, told MBN that the Houthis were using the airport attacks to “make up for their battlefield losses and restore their image among their supporters.”
The assessment suggests that choosing targets with a broad international profile gives the attacks greater media exposure than strikes on sites with more limited impact. An attack on a major airport in the Saudi capital affects not only the facility itself but also passengers, airlines, and diplomatic missions, as well as markets monitoring security developments in the country.
Simon Henderson, director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agreed with the assessment that the attack on Riyadh airport was intended to “make headlines.”
King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh came under another attack on Sunday. The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said an “unidentified projectile” struck Terminal 4, sparking a fire. Saudi civil defense authorities said that attack killed one Pakistani national and injured 11 others. The airport’s operations remained suspended, the authorities said Sunday.
Before Saturday’s attack, six people had been killed in Houthi attacks on the Saudi airports in Riyadh and Abha during the same week.
On Sunday, the Houthis renewed their warning to shipping companies, airlines, experts, employees, workers and travelers against using Saudi airports or airspace.
The group’s military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said on X that Saudi airports would be “subject to attack,” invoking the group’s slogan: “An airport for an airport, a blockade for a blockade, and escalation for escalation.”
Imad Gad, a researcher at Egypt’s Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said the Houthis’ shift from targeting economic centers, such as Aramco facilities, to airports — with civilians among the dead and wounded — was intended to send a message to the Saudi public: continued support for Yemen’s government would bring further losses.
Disrupting air traffic and international travel is a central part of that pressure campaign, he said, particularly when attacks hit an international airport and kill or injure people of different nationalities, extending the consequences across multiple countries.
The latest strikes have forced flights to be rerouted and operations at Riyadh airport to be suspended. The embassies of the United States, Canada, Germany and Spain advised their citizens not to use Riyadh airport.
The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia said on Sunday that it had instructed its employees to obtain special authorization before using the airports in Jeddah and Dammam. The statement came days after it issued a similar directive regarding Riyadh airport.
Gad said the targeting of civilian areas in Saudi Arabia could prompt Washington to reconsider its position on direct intervention against the Houthis.
U.S. President Donald Trump, responding to a question about whether Washington might join Saudi Arabia in launching strikes against the group, said his administration would consider the matter. Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the attacks, noting that an American citizen had been killed.
Saudi Arabia entered the war in Yemen in 2015, leading an Arab coalition in an effort to drive the Houthis out of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. The Houthis had seized the city the previous year, forcing government forces to withdraw.
The war killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis through fighting and famine. In 2022, Saudi Arabia reached an agreement with the Houthis that brought the conflict to a standstill.
But the ceasefire began to unravel in the summer of 2026 amid the fallout from the war with Iran. The breakdown culminated in a rapid Houthi advance during which the group seized control of the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea, before Saudi-backed government forces announced that they had retaken it.
