Saudi Pipeline Strains as Red Sea Route Faces New Attack Threats

Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, running at full capacity of 7 million barrels per day, was the kingdom’s answer to a blocked Strait of Hormuz. That answer is now under threat.

After Israeli and U.S. strikes on February 28, 2026 effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, Riyadh pivoted its export strategy to the pipeline linking Abqaiq to Yanbu on the Red Sea coast. By May, the route was moving around 3.43 million barrels daily. The infrastructure held. The workaround worked, at least for a time.

Additional reference context is available at https://themercury.com/news/national/a-new-houthi-front-and-expanded-iranian-attacks-risk-sinking-gulf-nations-choke-point-workaround/article_b088056f-7d32-5f71-8826-ba4cb1c3368c.html.

What changed: Houthi militants and Iranian-aligned forces resumed coordinated attacks on shipping and energy infrastructure in July, targeting the very routes Saudi Arabia had built its contingency around.

Houthi forces in Yemen resumed Red Sea attacks on July 22, 2026, after a nine-month pause, directly striking Saudi vessels and interests. A week later, suspected Iranian drones hit a floating liquefied natural gas storage facility at Egypt’s Damietta port in the Mediterranean, igniting a fire that spread to a nearby tanker. Since July 20, the Houthis have struck at least four oil tankers in the Red Sea, prompting Saudi Arabia to conduct airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen for the first time since the 2022 ceasefire that ended the civil war.

The trigger for this escalation traces to early July. A Houthi delegation traveled via Iranian airline Mahan Air to Tehran for the funeral of Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed on the opening day of the Iran war. When the delegation attempted to return on July 12, Saudi-backed forces struck the runway at Sanaa airport, forcing the aircraft to divert to the port city of Hodeidah. The return flight reportedly carried Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps personnel along with components for missiles and drones. That incident catalyzed the Houthi announcement of a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, the most serious escalation between the two since the 2022 ceasefire.

The geographic scope of the problem has grown. Vulnerability now extends beyond the Strait of Hormuz to encompass two additional chokepoints: the Bab al-Mandab Strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, and the Suez Canal with its pipeline links connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Both Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s western coast and the UAE’s bypass pipeline from Abu Dhabi to Fujairah were targeted by missiles and drones during the earlier phase of the Iran war. The Abqaiq processing facility, the nerve center of Saudi oil operations, has come under attack from both Houthi forces and Iranian-aligned groups operating in Iraq.

If the Bab al-Mandab Strait becomes as restricted as the Strait of Hormuz, tankers would need to divert north through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, adding approximately four weeks to journey times and substantially increasing costs for Asian destinations. The world’s largest oil tankers cannot transit the Suez Canal itself, but they can use the SUMED pipeline to move oil from the Egyptian Red Sea port of Ain Sokhna to the Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir for onward shipment. The drone strikes on Damietta demonstrate that Egypt’s Mediterranean infrastructure now falls within Iranian strike range. That creates the prospect of Red Sea restrictions at both ends, rendering Saudi Arabia’s west coast ports as vulnerable to disruption as its east coast ports in the Persian Gulf.

The operational consequences of that scenario are severe. As detailed in reporting at themercury.com, the first phase of the Iran war showed how rapidly risk assessments can shift shipping and insurance calculations across critical maritime corridors. Saudi Arabia has also conducted joint airstrikes with the U.S. in Iraq on July 28, risking deeper entanglement in a regional conflict the kingdom has sought to avoid.

The core problem is restraint, specifically its absence. During the spring months, the Houthis had avoided striking Saudi vessels despite their long campaign against Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab shipping from 2023 to 2025. That restraint was what made the Yanbu pivot viable. With Saudi retaliation now underway and attacks multiplying across multiple corridors, the region faces overlapping conflicts that have resisted resolution while placing further strain on energy and commodity supply chains already weakened by spring production losses.

Whether Saudi Arabia can find a third workaround, if both its eastern and western export corridors face sustained disruption simultaneously, remains the operational question with no clear answer yet.