A devastating Houthi attack on Riyadh international airport has left 13 dead and over 300 wounded, exposing vulnerabilities in Saudi Arabia's defense capabilities and escalating regional tensions. Analysts indicate that the militant group uses these high-profile strikes on critical infrastructure as a strategic bargaining chip to retaliate against Saudi airstrikes and disrupt international travel. By targeting major airports, the Houthis aim to impose global economic costs, generate maximum media impact, and pressure Riyadh into halting its support for the Yemeni government.

A devastating Houthi attack on Riyadh international airport has left 13 dead and over 300 wounded, exposing vulnerabilities in Saudi Arabia's defense capabilities and escalating regional tensions. Analysts indicate that the militant group uses these high-profile strikes on critical infrastructure as a strategic bargaining chip to retaliate against Saudi airstrikes and disrupt international travel. By targeting major airports, the Houthis aim to impose global economic costs, generate maximum media impact, and pressure Riyadh into halting its support for the Yemeni government.

A devastating Houthi attack on Riyadh international airport has left 13 dead and over 300 wounded, exposing vulnerabilities in Saudi Arabia's defense capabilities and escalating regional tensions. Analysts indicate that the militant group uses these high-profile strikes on critical infrastructure as a strategic bargaining chip to retaliate against Saudi airstrikes and disrupt international travel. By targeting major airports, the Houthis aim to impose global economic costs, generate maximum media impact, and pressure Riyadh into halting its support for the Yemeni government.

The Iran-aligned Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh international airport claimed 13 lives, wounding over 300 people. The deadliest attack on its soil in over a decade has left Saudi Arabia scrambling for options to retaliate.

Four people were killed in the two previous attacks on the airport earlier in the week, one attack causing heavy damage to a Saudi commercial plane parked on the tarmac. While the strikes expose vulnerabilities in Saudi defence capabilities as the kingdom wages an air campaign against the Houthis, experts analyse why the militant group continues to target Saudi airports.

Many see a parallel with Iran’s conflict with the United States. Like Iran, the Houthis are also targeting critical infrastructure of the Gulf nations, thereby imposing a global economic cost.

Saudi airports have become a bargaining chip through which they seek to retaliate against Saudi airstrikes, disrupt international travel, and increase the cost of Riyadh’s support for the Yemeni government.

Thomas Warrick, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, believes the Houthis are trying to put pressure on Saudi Arabia in a vital sector, given the importance of air traffic to and from the kingdom. The group seeks to exert broader political pressure on Saudi Arabia and retaliate for what it did to Yemeni airports, he told Arabic media Alhurra.

Iran prefers to deliver more support to the Houthis by air, rather than risk sea voyages that could be intercepted by Saudi or US naval forces.

Last July, Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces bombed Sanaa airport runway to prevent an Iranian plane from landing. The Yemeni government said at the time that the plane was carrying military equipment and members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which Washington classifies as a terrorist group.

The plane later landed at another airport under Houthi control in Hodeidah.

Mubarak Al-Ati, a Saudi researcher in international relations, also believes that Houthis are seeking to ignite a regional war, in addition to their desire to achieve Iran’s goals of closing Saudi airports as it closed its airports. The Houthis present their attacks on airports as a response to Saudi strikes targeting areas under their control in Yemen.

Many believe targeting airports was to create headlines. Choosing targets with a wide international presence gives operations greater media impact. An attack on a major airport in the Saudi capital not only affects the facility itself, but also extends to travellers, airlines, diplomatic missions, and markets that monitor developments in the security situation.

Though Houthis targeted economic centres, such as Aramco facilities, earlier, shifting focus to airports is a message to the Saudi public that Riyadh's continued support for the Yemeni government will lead to further losses.

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