A Houthi missile slammed into the domestic terminals of Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on Saturday afternoon, killing 12 people, including an American citizen, and wounding 309. Hours later, President Donald Trump said the United States may join Saudi Arabia’s air war against the Iranian-backed terrorist organization in Yemen.
“We may. We’re going to look at it,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “We just found out about the recent attack, so we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.”
The missile struck at about 3 p.m. local time, hitting the complex that houses Terminals 3 and 4. Saudi Arabia’s warning system issued no alert. “I was on gate 403,” one witness told AFP. “I saw 401 hit. I saw injured in front of my eyes. Everyone was running.” An injured traveler told Reuters he saw something streak across the sky before part of the ceiling near a departure gate collapsed.
The dead included four Saudis, two Bangladeshis, and one person each from the United States, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Sudan, as well as a Palestinian. Several of the wounded remain in critical condition. The Associated Press called it the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab state since the Iran war began.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not mince words. “The United States strongly condemns the recent attacks on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by the terrorist Houthis, including today’s strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh that took numerous innocent lives, including an American citizen,” Rubio wrote. “These reprehensible attacks demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now.”
Trump said he would speak with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “What happened in Saudi Arabia’s not acceptable,” the president said. The US Embassy in Riyadh “strongly recommends all US citizens avoid this airport and surrounding areas.”
A week of terror against Saudi aviation
Saturday’s strike capped a week-long Houthi campaign to shut down Saudi air travel. On October 6, a Houthi strike on Abha International Airport killed two women, a Moroccan and an Algerian. The next day, a Sudanese man was killed at the Riyadh airport. On October 8, another strike on Riyadh killed three Saudis, including Saudia pilot Capt. Hamoud Ali AlKalthami, whose aircraft was hit on the ground. Hours after Saturday’s attack, a projectile fell near King Fahd International Airport in Dammam.
The Houthis made no secret of their intentions. After the Riyadh strike, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree reposted his earlier warning that only pre-approved humanitarian flights could land in the Saudi capital, adding two words: “a reminder.” Hizam al-Asad of the Houthi political bureau accused Washington and Riyadh of a “desperate attempt” to retake the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and promised worse to come. “The operations we have carried out so far were merely a dress rehearsal. Our forces have many surprises,” al-Asad said.
Flight trackers showed every flight bound for Riyadh diverted or canceled. Kuwait Airways, Etihad, Qatar Airways and Lufthansa suspended service, and at least 291 flights were canceled within 24 hours. Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, called the strike “a terrorist act” that “will be met with a firm response.”
America’s stake
Washington is already deep in the fight. A US official confirmed that the military’s Central Command runs a task force “enhancing intelligence sharing and planning support with Saudi forces,” and officials say American help includes identifying targets for the coalition’s current offensive.
Saturday’s American death marks a sharp turn in US policy. In mid-September, Vice President JD Vance said Washington was in “constant contact” with the Saudis and had “engaged in direct conversations with the Houthis,” and Oman hosted a meeting between US and Houthi representatives. One regional official told the AP at the time that “the decision now is to give diplomacy a chance.” Less than a month later, the president is weighing airstrikes.
The Saudis cannot defend themselves alone. In mid-September, two regional officials told the AP the kingdom was running low on missile interceptors and had asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt for air-defense support. The Saudis looked elsewhere, one official said, because the United States has burned through its own interceptor stocks in the war with Iran.
The economic stakes run just as high. The Houthis have waged a relentless campaign against Saudi oil. At a Sanaa rally in July, Houthi supporters carried a banner reading, “All Saudi oil facilities are targets to our missiles and drones.” Since then, the Houthis have hit Aramco’s refinery in Jazan, twice in less than a week in August, and claimed strikes on Yanbu, Saudi Arabia’s principal west coast export gateway. On October 3, flames and smoke rose from Aramco’s refinery south of Riyadh, though the coalition called the Houthi claim “misleading.” The Houthis have also announced a naval blockade on Saudi shipping in the Red Sea. Separately, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq knocked out a key Saudi pipeline, and in mid-September oil was trading above $100 a barrel.
Last month the Houthis seized coastal territory overlooking Bab el-Mandeb, the chokepoint linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, which carries roughly 12 percent of world trade. With the Strait of Hormuz closed during the war with Iran, the Red Sea route has become far more important. “This is just not a Houthis versus Saudi Arabia issue,” said Adam Baron, a fellow at New America. “This is a matter of figuring out some way to guarantee wider patterns and pathways of international shipping.”
Israel’s war, Saudi Arabia’s front
The Saudi-Houthi war is a direct outgrowth of Israel’s war. The Iran war began on February 28 with joint US and Israeli strikes on Iran, and the AP describes the Saudi-Houthi fighting as the latest front to erupt from it.
Israel knows this enemy well. Before the January 2025 ceasefire in Gaza, the Houthis had fired over 40 ballistic missiles and over 100 attack drones and cruise missiles at Israel, including a drone that killed a civilian in Tel Aviv in July 2024. After the IDF resumed fighting in Gaza in March 2025, the Houthis fired 91 more ballistic missiles and at least 45 drones, and Israel struck the Houthis 19 times. One missile hit near Ben Gurion International Airport on May 4, 2025. The Houthis ceased their attacks after the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire, then rejoined the war on March 28 of this year. In April they claimed a strike on Ben Gurion using drones and cluster munitions, and on June 8 they fired missiles at central Israel and declared a blockade of Israeli vessels in the Red Sea, renewing the blockade of Eilat they had enforced during the Gaza war.
The airport campaign against Riyadh follows the playbook the Houthis ran against Ben Gurion. The Houthi slogan spells out the target list: “Death to America, Death to Israel, a Curse on the Jews.”
Jerusalem Post analyst Seth Frantzman wrote that Iran treats the Middle East as a single 3,000-mile front running from Bab el-Mandeb through the Strait of Hormuz to Iraq. He traced the strategy back to October 7, 2023, when Iran mobilized its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen against Israel. Iran lost Syria with the fall of Assad, but it still commands Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iraqi militias. Frantzman added that Iran and the Houthis have penetrated expensive air defenses in Saudi Arabia, across the Gulf, and at times against Israel.
The Mecca Pact
The crisis is also the first real test of the Mecca Pact, a mutual defense agreement Saudi Arabia signed in August with NATO member Turkey and nuclear-armed Pakistan. Under the pact, an attack on one is an attack on all three. Pakistan has an estimated 8,000 troops in the kingdom. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said his country stands with the Saudis “unwaveringly, shoulder to shoulder.” Turkey, Israel’s most vocal critic in the region, has drawn a line. “We will not send military forces into another country’s territory to conduct an offensive,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said. “We are studying how to provide Saudi Arabia with military assistance, air defense and electronic warfare capabilities under the alliance.”
On Sunday morning, Saree issued a new warning to every airline, crew member and traveler. “The airports and airspace are exposed to targeting and constitute a theatre of operations for our forces,” he said, “with the exception of the airports of Mecca and Medina.”
The exception is telling. In mid-September, Saudi Arabia accused the Houthis of sending a drone toward Mecca and declared Islam’s holiest city a “red line.” The Houthis denied it. Now they declare war on every other airport in the kingdom of the Two Holy Mosques, sparing only the two cities whose names define the faith both sides claim.
The archer in the wilderness
The Houthis fight under a banner of Islamic solidarity, yet their missiles kill Muslim travelers in the heartland of Islam. What drives the sons of Ishmael to turn their bows on their own brothers?
The Bible answers that question in the first description of Ishmael’s adult life. After Abraham sends Hagar and her son away, the Bible records: “And God was with the lad, and he grew; and he dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer” (Genesis 21:20). The Hebrew phrase, rove kashet, means a man of the bow. Rashi, the foremost medieval commentator on the Bible, explains what Ishmael did with that bow: he sat in the wilderness and robbed passersby. Rashi ties this directly to the angel’s prophecy to Hagar, that Ishmael’s “hand shall be against every man” (Genesis 16:12), a verse Israel365 News examined last month when the Houthis struck near Mecca [LINK].
Ishmael’s first trade was ambushing travelers on the desert roads of Arabia. Four thousand years later, his self-proclaimed heirs fire ballistic missiles at departure gates and warn every airline to stay out of Arabian skies.
The Bible’s final word on Ishmael sharpens the picture. After listing his twelve sons, the princes of their tribes, the Bible concludes:
“And they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria: over against all his brethren he did settle” (Genesis 25:18).
The Hebrew reads al pnei chol echav nafal, literally “in the face of all his brothers he fell.” Rashi notes the change in wording. In Genesis 16, the angel promised that Ishmael would “dwell,” yishkon, in the face of his brothers. Here the Bible says he “fell,” nafal. Rashi explains that as long as Abraham lived, Ishmael dwelt in peace; once Abraham died, Ishmael fell. Ishmael’s descendants hold together under a father’s restraint, and without it they collapse into conflict with every brother around them.
The Baal HaTurim, Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, the 14th-century commentator, reads prophecy into the next verse. Genesis 25:18 ends with Ishmael’s fall, and Genesis 25:19 opens with “These are the generations of Isaac.” The Baal HaTurim teaches that the sequence is deliberate: when Ishmael falls at the end of days, the son of David, the Mashiach ben David (Messiah, son of David) descended from Isaac, will sprout.
The prophet Isaiah places that collapse on the modern map. His oracle titled Massa ba’arav, “the burden of Arabia,” names the caravans of Dedan and the land of Tema. Dedan was the ancient city at today’s al-Ula, and Tema is today’s Tayma, both in Saudi Arabia. Isaiah describes the people of Arabia fleeing in panic: “For they fled away from the swords, from the drawn sword, and from the bent bow, and from the grievousness of war” (Isaiah 21:15). Isaiah then names the fate of Arabia’s archers: “And the residue of the number of the archers, the mighty men of the children of Kedar, shall be diminished; for the Lord, the God of Israel, hath spoken it” (Isaiah 21:17).
The Bible draws a straight line from the bow in Ishmael’s hand to the bent bow that sends Arabia’s travelers fleeing. On Saturday, passengers in Riyadh ran from a missile fired by men who claim Ishmael’s faith and Ishmael’s land. The Houthis spare Mecca and Medina by name and target everything else.
The same Houthis who promise “Death to Israel” aim their missiles at Mecca’s guardians, and the Mecca Pact rallies Turkey and Pakistan to defend Arabia against fellow Muslims. Ishmael’s house is turning on itself, exactly as the Bible recorded and the Sages explained. The Baal HaTurim read the next verse as well: when Ishmael falls, the generations of Isaac rise.
