Saudi Arabia is currently facing "the biggest threat" ever to its production of oil as the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen are launching cross-border attacks and seizing territory near the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait, an expert told Fox News Digital.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Thursday that the situation is escalating in the Middle East as Iran "likely instigated the Houthis to force a blockade on Saudi Arabia."
"I think this situation is really precarious for the Saudis. This is the biggest threat to their production of oil since their kingdom was founded in 1932. And this is almost existential," he said.
"We see that the Saudis are trying to shop for some force to fight their war for them. And I think along the lines, they also called President Trump. It doesn't look to me that Washington is going to get involved in this one," he added. "We'll probably offer them advice and tell support, but I don't think we, the United States, will get involved with this war over Bab el-Mandeb."
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Saudi Arabia was forced to temporarily close its East-West oil pipeline last week following a drone attack launched from Iraq, which Trump said he believes Iran was behind. Then on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia destroyed a Houthi drone that attempted to enter the airspace near Mecca, among other recent provocations.
"We know that the United States imposes a blockade on Iran, so Iran is unable to export any of its oil, licitly or illicitly. What the Iranians are trying to do is that they're trying to telegraph to the other oil exporters in the region that either we export, all of us export oil, or none of us will export oil," Abdul-Hussain told Fox News Digital. "This is why you see Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. This forced Saudi Arabia to switch its oil production from east to west, from Hormuz to the other side to the Red Sea. Tankers started picking up oil at the port of Yanbu in Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea and sailing south through the Bab al-Mandeb all the way to the Asian markets.
"Iran didn't like this because clearly all or none didn't work," he said. "So they likely instigated the Houthis to force a blockade on Saudi Arabia."
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Fox News Digital, citing a source familiar with the matter, reported on Friday that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged Trump to take military action against the Houthis.
Trump then said the next day during a visit to Ireland that "the Houthis called us and they don’t want to fight with us."
"They let us know, they don’t want to fight with us...they don’t want us to go after them," Trump added. "But they have called and they have talked to us, and they don’t want us to, they would much prefer not having us involved."
Abdul-Hussain told Fox News Digital that "Our expectation as Washington is that the Saudis, with all these arms that we've sold them over the past few decades, with all the military support and advice we give them, that they should be able to protect their own tankers and ships in this waterway and keep it open.
"The Houthis announced that they're only going after Saudi ships and Saudi navigation and they made it clear that they are not going after international shipping, whether [they] are U.S. ships or European ships," he continued. "So this forces a choice on us. Do we go to war with the Houthis out of nowhere, even though they're not willing to, or at least they didn't wage war on our ships and our navigations through Bab el-Mandeb?"
"Or we ask the Saudis to handle this, you know, after all the Houthis are not really a state, they're a non-state actor and Saudi Arabia should be able to deal with them," Abdul-Hussain added. "Unfortunately, the Saudis don't seem to have been able to deal with the Houthis."
A senior administration official told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the U.S. remains focused on protecting core national security interests such as the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea while simultaneously empowering allies in the region to manage and resolve security challenges.
The Trump administration also remains in continuous dialogue with Saudi Arabia and Yemen over regional stability , the official added.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Efrat Lachter contributed to this report.
