Iran offers to mediate between its Houthi allies and Saudi Arabia

• Iran offered to mediate between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi militia, saying there is no military solution to conflicts in the Middle East.
• A Houthi strike on Riyadh airport killed at least 12 people and injured hundreds, followed by reported strikes on Sanaa and more drone and missile threats.
• The conflict has widened across Yemen and the Gulf, raising fears of fresh regional fighting as Iran warns it could target digital infrastructure if war resumes.

TEHRAN – Iran has offered to mediate between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen, after a string of deadly attacks on the kingdom, warning that overlapping conflicts in the region have no military solution.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made the offer to his Saudi counterpart, Faisal bin Farhan, during a telephone call on Oct 11, according to a statement posted on social media by the Iranian minister’s office.

“Insisting on a military approach and ignoring a political solution will further complicate the current situation,” the statement, posted on Araghchi’s Telegram channel, said.

Araghchi said Iran stood “ready to provide any assistance to help initiate a dialogue” between the two sides.

The Saudi government said the two ministers spoke, though it made no reference to any mediation offer from Iran. The call was a day after the deadliest attack on a Persian Gulf country since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

On Oct 10, a Houthi strike on an airport in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, killed at least 12 people, with hundreds injured.

That sparked an exchange of strikes with Saudi-led forces targeting the airport in Sanaa, Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, according to reports on Oct 11 in local news media affiliated with the group.

The Houthi-run health ministry said a child was also killed in a strike on a residential building in Sanaa.

Saudi authorities have not commented on those assertions, but reported another deadly Houthi attack on Riyadh’s airport on Oct 11.

On Oct 12, a state-owned Saudi television channel, Al Ekhbariya, warned that the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen was fending off drones and cruise missiles headed toward Saudi Arabia. The Saudi authorities have not commented publicly.

Fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis rapidly escalated in September when Houthi forces seized Yemen’s Red Sea coast, taking territory that sits alongside a strategic waterway for global trade and a key export route for Saudi oil.

The militia has been fighting the internationally recognised government of Yemen, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, since 2014. A fragile truce agreed in 2022 has unravelled in recent months.

The conflict has stoked further upheaval in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region, which was already reeling from the economic fallout of the US-Iran war.

US and Iranian officials appear braced for the possibility that their stalemated regional conflict could spill back into the open, with the Pentagon drawing up new plans for strikes.

Iran’s national security adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, threatened on Oct 11 that if fighting were to resume, Iranian forces would target digital infrastructure in the Gulf, including data centres, cables, and artificial intelligence facilities.

The Houthis are one of several militant groups that Iran is allied with across the region, and part of what the Islamic republic calls its “Axis of Resistance”.

Though the Houthis have benefited from years of military and financial support from Iran, regional experts have long described them as among the most independent of these allied forces, with ambitions distinct from Iran’s. NYTIMES

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.