Deadly Houthi attacks keep Saudi airport closed as Trump considers U.S. strikes in Yemen

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said Monday that the kingdom had been tested, but would mount an “equally serious” response to a string of deadly attacks on Riyadh’s international airport by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

Lethal airport strikes have rocked the world’s top oil exporter since last week, which is pursuing an expensive economic reform drive aimed at attracting foreign investment.

Yemen’s decade-old civil war, in which a Saudi-led military coalition supports the government against the Houthis, has reignited months into the U.S.-Iran conflict that has roiled energy markets and plunged the Middle East into crisis.

“Energy security can’t be taken for granted,” Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told an energy conference in Riyadh. “The events of recent weeks are serious, our response must be equally serious.”

Operations remained suspended at the sprawling King Khalid International Airport on Riyadh’s outskirts Monday after the weekend’s deadly Houthi strikes.

CCTV video of the deadliest strike, which killed 13 people on Saturday, released by Saudi authorities showed Muslim pilgrims in religious attire waiting in departure lounges before a sudden flash tore through the building and brought down flaming debris.

CBS/AFP 

Saudi Arabia will continue implementing its economic goals and investing in energy infrastructure, industrial capacity and international partnerships despite the challenges presented by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said Monday.

Speaking at the World Petroleum Congress in Riyadh, the minister said Saudi Arabia had overcome major challenges throughout its history and would continue to do so, insisting that “fear has no place in the Saudi dictionary.”

He said Riyadh’s hosting of the international event reflected its position as an “energy security capital,” adding that the participation of senior officials and experts from around the world showed international confidence in the kingdom and its ability to ensure the safety of visitors.

He spoke as the Saudi capital’s main international airport remained shutdown after a week of strikes by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen that killed 20 people.

The minister acknowledged that risks to the global energy system had not disappeared and he said that made international dialogue and cooperation essential to protecting supplies and stabilizing markets.

Bin Salman cited the East-West Crude Oil Pipeline as an example of Saudi long-term strategic planning, saying it provided an alternative route to transport oil amid ongoing impediments in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, and that it had helped the kingdom supply global markets during the exceptional circumstances of the war. 

He credited state energy giant Saudi Aramco’s expertise with helping restore operations quickly when disruptions do occur — which they have on multiple occasions during the U.S.-Iran war. Iran’s proxy groups across the Mideast have targeted the East-West pipeline, along with other infrastructure, repeatedly, taking the pipeline out of service for weeks. 

Iranian authorities have arrested a lawyer who helped organize and publicize a prison marriage between a young man who was executed the following day over the 2026 anti-government protests and his fiancee, who was also in jail, rights groups said Monday.

Alireza Sepahi, 25, and his partner Mahshad Kashani, 22, were married in a ceremony conducted over the telephone by their lawyer and attended by their fathers on the eve of Sepahi’s execution on Oct. 5. 

Both were arrested and were being held in separate prisons in the central city of Isfahan over their participation in the nationwide January protests that shook the Islamic republic.

Lawyer Amirsalar Davoudi was arrested Sunday by plainclothes forces while attending a hearing at the Isfahan Revolutionary Court to defend Kashani, who is serving a five-year prison term, the Dadban Iranian legal affairs monitor said, according to French news agency AFP.

“Criminal prosecutions against lawyers – particularly those handling political, security, and human rights cases – have in recent years become an ongoing pattern,” it said.

The arrest was also confirmed by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which said Davoudi’s whereabouts were unclear.

Rights groups say Iran has in recent months executed 34 people in connection with the January protests in a bid to intimidate society and prevent further demonstrations. In 2025, the country doubled its use of executions, according to Amnesty International.

BY: CBS/AFP

Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation on Monday extended the temporary closure of King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh after it was struck by Houthi missiles twice over the weekend in attacks that killed 14 people .

GACA said in a statement that it would extend the suspension of all operations at the capital’s airport “to complete the necessary procedures to verify the safety of the airport’s facilities and their operational readiness, in coordination with the relevant authorities.”

The airport has been closed since Saturday, when a Houthi strike killed 13 people, including a U.S. citizen. One more civilian was killed Sunday in a subsequent strike, and attacks last week by the Iran-backed rebel group killed six people. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei blamed the U.S. and Israel on Monday for the ongoing disruption to commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

During his weekly press briefing, Baghaei noted that before the U.S. and Israel launched joint airstrikes on Iran at the end of February, the Strait of Hormuz was open. 

“Everything we are witnessing in the region” was a result of the “actions of the United States and the Israeli regime,” including the economic consequences of the disruption to shipping through the strait, Baghaei said.

“If the governments that are concerned about this situation are genuinely serious about their concerns, they should address the party responsible for creating this situation and seize every opportunity to compel the United States to stop its acts of aggression,” he said.

Tehran and Washington both claim to have control over the strait, and they are imposing competing blockades in the Persian Gulf and the strait.  

President Trump has offered various justifications for launching the war on Iran, but has recently stressed it as a necessary means of ensuring the regime in Tehran cannot build a nuclear weapon.

Houthi fighters have ramped up their siege of the Yemeni city of Taiz, where fighting has killed more than 60 people in the past 24 hours, military sources from both sides told the French news agency AFP on Monday.

The Houthis have blocked all exits from the city – a major urban center in Yemen’s southwest that, if it falls to the Iranian proxy force would give the Houthis a strategic foothold from which to threaten the de facto Yemeni government capital of Aden, further to the south.

The fighting over the last day alone has killed at least 22 pro-government forces and 40 Houthi fighters, the sources said. The Houthi sources told AFP reinforcements were being sent to the area.

On Sunday, health officials warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Taiz, with medicine, medical equipment and fuel “on the verge of running out.”

Taiz is inland from the Red Sea coast and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, where the Houthis captured swathes of territory in a rapid offensive last month.

CBS/AFP

The price of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, was trading over $105 a barrel early Monday, hitting a two-week high despite President Trump’s deeply controversial plan to purchase diesel from Russia.

Mr. Trump said in a social media post on Friday that he’d struck a deal to buy diesel during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, aiming to tamp down a spike in fuel prices ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections.

But the plan runs counter to U.S. efforts to cut the flow of money Russia gets from oil and gas sales that can be used to pay for its war against Ukraine. A bipartisan group of six U.S. senators called Sunday for the administration to “immediately reverse course” on the plan.

Early Monday, the price of Brent crude edged up about 1% on the day to just over $105 per barrel, while U.S. benchmark crude climbed by a similar amount to just over $92.

CBS/AP

Airstrikes targeted two districts in Yemen’s Houthi-held capital of Sanaa, the Iran-backed rebel group said Monday, accusing Saudi Arabia of launching the attacks around midnight local time. 

A spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi-run health ministry said the strikes killed one person and wounded 12 others in Sanaa.

Ministry spokesman Anees al-Asbahi said a strike on a salt factory in Sanaa’s Hamadan district killed on eman and wounded eight people. A separate strike on a house wounded a woman and three children, he said.

The rebels’ media center said Saudi Arabia carried out the strikes, which came as the Houthis continued to fire missiles and drones at the Saudi capital’s primary airport and other infrastructure. 

Those attacks have killed at least 20 people at Saudi airports over the last week, including three killed on Oct. 6 and 7 at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and Abha International Airport; three killed at King Khalid on Oct. 8; 13 people killed by the deadliest single strike on Riyadh’s airport Saturday; and one who died in the latest attack on the facility on Sunday.

Saudi Arabian authorities did not immediately confirm their latest strikes in Yemen, but the kingdom has been battling the Iran-backed Houthi rebels for more than a decade in the country.

CBS/AP

Iran’s Foreign Minister spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Monday that Tehran was still reviewing the U.S. response to a ceasefire proposal Iran put on the table last month, and that the regime continues communicating via mediators.

“I can tell you that the exchange of messages between Iran and the United States through mediators is continuing,” Baghaei said, adding that there had “already been considerable discussion of the seven points” in the proposal.

Late last month Iran presented a ceasefire proposal that calls for Tehran to lift its restrictions on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and to resume talks on its nuclear program in seven days if the U.S. lifts its naval blockade of Iranian ports, waives sanctions on Iranian oil sales and observes a ceasefire that includes Lebanon.

President Trump has publicly rejected the Iranian offer, but negotiations have continued between the two sides via mediators.

The U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia on Monday urged American citizens to exercise “extreme caution” when using all major airports in the country, following a weekend of strikes that killed a total of 13 people.

“The U.S. Mission is aware of additional attacks on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and targeted attack on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam on October 11,” the embassy said in a statement.

“Please take extreme caution when using all major airports in Saudi Arabia,” it added.

The U.S. military disabled a Panama-flagged commercial vessel in the Gulf of Oman Saturday by firing on it with a fighter jet, the U.S. military’s Central Command said.

According to CENTCOM, the fighter jet fired a “precision munition” at  the Ocean Molica, also known as the “Arika Sun,” that disabled the “ship’s propulsion without harming the crew.”

The ship had recently departed an Iranian port. Iran’s ports have been under a U.S. blockade since a ceasefire between the two countries collapsed in July.  

Four commercial vessels have been disabled by U.S. forces and 135 ships have been turned around since the blockade took effect on July 14, CENTCOM said.

During that period, U.S. forces have also destroyed 10 tankers that are believed to be part of a “shadow fleet” that transports sanctioned Iranian oil and petroleum products, CENTCOM said.

A projectile struck a passenger terminal at the international airport in Riyadh on Sunday, a day after a missile hit the same terminal and killed 13 people, the Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said. The Houthis claimed responsibility for those attacks and others.

Saudi authorities said one person, described as a Pakistani national, was killed, and 11 were injured in the latest attack on the domestic terminal complex at King Khalid International Airport.

The airport – struck four times in the past five days – has been closed since Saturday’s missile attack, which was the deadliest in a Gulf Arab nation since the Iran war began. Over 300 other people were wounded, some critically.

One American citizen was among the victims of Saturday’s strike, the U.S. embassy in Riyadh said.

CBS/AP

President Trump left open the possibility the U.S. will join Saudi Arabia’s battle against the Iran-backed Houthis on Saturday.

“We may. We’re gonna look at it,” Mr. Trump said when asked about the possibility as he left the White House for a campaign rally in Tennessee. “We just found out about the recent attack [on the airport]. So we’ll make a decision– we move very quickly.”

Mr. Trump was also asked about whether the Houthi strike on Riyadh’s airport would change his previously announced decision not to launch any potential strikes on Iran until after the midterms.

“Well, we’re gonna take a look,” he responded.

Multiple people were injured in a strike on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on Saturday. The Houthis have not claimed responsibility for the attack, but Saudi Arabia’s aviation authority said the strike was part of “continued attacks targeting civil aviation facilities in the Kingdom.”