Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy said on Friday, September 11, that it had temporarily shut the East-West pipeline after several drones struck it in the Riyadh and Medina regions on Thursday morning. The Foreign Ministry said the drones came from Iraq. Baghdad accepted the finding, dismissed its commander for Maysan province after placing the launch there, and asked Riyadh not to retaliate. Riyadh agreed, for now.
The same Friday, Houthi forces reached Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait after Yemeni government forces withdrew, and took Dhubab on the mainland facing it. Mocha had fallen on Thursday. Four Yemeni government sources told Reuters of the Perim advance, and a senior Yemeni military official confirmed it to AP. Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree declared the operation begun September 3, was complete, and said navigation was safe for all companies except Saudi ships.
The conventional read treats these as an Iraqi militia problem and a Yemen problem. They are one problem. Since Iran closed Hormuz after the war began on February 28, Saudi crude exports have concentrated on the only pipeline route to the Red Sea coast, from Abqaiq to the Yanbu terminal complex, and then branched north through Suez or south through Bab el-Mandeb. Thursday’s drones hit the inland leg. Friday’s advance put the Houthis on the southern exit. Saudi Arabia can route tankers around Bab el-Mandeb, but sustained exports still depend on the pipeline replenishing Yanbu and on the approaches to Yanbu staying usable.
The corridor
Aramco’s own presentations put the pipeline at roughly 7 million barrels per day, with about 2 million feeding west coast refineries and the rest available for export, and the company reported running it at that ceiling in March as Gulf ports shut. Kpler data reported by The National put 92 percent of Saudi seaborne crude exports through Yanbu in June. That is a June figure, and it measures concentration rather than exclusivity, but it describes a system in which one terminal complex carries nearly everything.
Before the Houthi ban, Clarksons expected Yanbu loadings to hold near 4 million barrels per day through the first three weeks of July, and Kpler measured 4.23 million in the week before July 20.
July 20 is when the Houthis’ naval ban on Saudi-linked shipping took effect. In the following week, Kpler and AXSMarine recorded visible crude and condensate loadings at Yanbu falling to between 2.4 and 3 million barrels per day, a drop of at least 30 percent. Vortexa disagreed, estimating exports broadly stable and attributing the gap to tankers loading with transponders off. Public data cannot reconcile the two. What they share is that Saudi Arabia was already moving barrels under pressure before either attack this week.
The ban was enforced. On August 24, the Bahri VLCC Amzan, IMO 9693745, Saudi-flagged, 320,926 dwt, was struck 63 nautical miles west of Yanbu and caught fire on its main deck. UKMTO reported the strike without naming the vessel or the weapon. Bahri confirmed the incident and that the crew was safe. The Houthis claimed a ballistic missile. EOS Risk Group placed Amzan inbound from Ain Sukhna in Egypt at the time, which matters for what comes next. ACLED counts more than a dozen Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea since late July.
Operators had already adapted. The National reported on July 26, citing Kpler, that Saudi Arabia had loaded no crude for export through Bab el-Mandeb in the week since the ban and was sending Asia-bound cargoes north through Suez instead. The canal cannot pass a fully laden VLCC, so operators either split a 2 million barrel cargo across two Suezmaxes or send the VLCC through part-laden and top up at Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean via the SUMED pipeline. Kpler put a voyage from Yanbu to South Korea at 24 days via Bab el-Mandeb and 54 days via Suez. Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported on September 3 that the part-laden VLCC pattern was spreading, tying up tonnage and contributing to the third VLCC spot-rate spike since the crisis began, with Bab el-Mandeb transits down 15 percent since the ban.
Rerouting can avoid the strait. It cannot refill the tanks at Yanbu.
Stored crude cushions an interruption. Aramco lists domestic and international storage as part of its supply contingency, so a pipeline shutdown does not by itself stop tanker loading. The export effect depends on how long the line stays down and how much usable crude is already at the terminal, and neither is public. What the week established is that the northern route still begins at Yanbu, that Amzan was hit on the approach from Egypt rather than anywhere near Perim, and that the one route feeding the terminal can be interrupted from Iraq. Planet Labs imagery dated September 11, distributed by AFP, shows fire damage southeast of Medina along the pipeline route. The Ministry of Energy called the shutdown precautionary and gave no reopening date.
Two forces, one corridor
The attribution boundary has to be stated plainly. Saudi Arabia says the drones came from Iraq. Iraq says they came from Maysan. Neither government has named the group. AP reported on September 9, citing two Saudi officials and a senior Iraqi security official, that Houthi emissaries worked inside an operations room run by Iraqi militias during the July drone swarm on Saudi oil facilities. PMF officials denied involvement. That reported precedent makes coordination this week plausible. It does not identify Thursday’s attackers, and two pressures producing one effect do not prove a jointly directed operation.
The Houthis’ end is better documented. Reuters reported, citing two Iranian sources, that Tehran told the Houthis last week to escalate against Saudi Arabia and promised funding, weapons, and senior officers. A separate Iranian source in that reporting said the decision to take Mocha was the Houthis’ own. Iran publicly denies directing the group. The Combined Maritime Forces said on July 27 that the Houthis had moved missiles and drones to positions near Bab el-Mandeb; what is on Perim itself has not been independently documented.
What Iran has said on the record is more useful than what its sources say off the record. On September 9, before Mocha fell, the IRGC spokesman listed Yemen among Tehran’s conditions for any settlement with the United States. On September 11, Iran’s foreign ministry called for an end to the Saudi blockade of Yemen and for talks between Riyadh and the Houthis. Tehran is not hiding the leverage. It is listing it.
That establishes a demand, not a result. Attacks at both ends of the corridor make Saudi Arabia’s alternative to Hormuz more expensive and less reliable without anyone closing Bab el-Mandeb, and Iran is publicly attaching Yemen to its terms while Hormuz is the subject of negotiation. Whether the pressure has produced a concession from Washington or Riyadh is not established by anything cited here.
Two responses
Riyadh has answered each end differently. On Friday, Saudi airstrikes hit the airport at Mocha, according to the Houthi broadcaster Al-Masirah. Riyadh has not confirmed the strikes, and no damage has been reported. A senior Yemeni government official told AP his side was stunned the Saudi air force did not hit the Houthi column on its way to Mocha, and assessed that Riyadh lacked an American green light for a wider campaign. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with President Trump twice on Thursday and pressed for US strikes on the Houthis, according to CNN and Axios. Trump did not agree, one source told CNN.
At the Iraqi end, the response was restrained by request. The Foreign Ministry said the kingdom would give Baghdad the chance to prevent further launches from its territory, while reserving the right to act. Iraq answered with a dismissal and an investigation.
Whether either response improves export reliability will be tested by sustained pipeline throughput, post-shutdown loadings at Yanbu, and subsequent attacks on Saudi-linked shipping. The reporting cited here does not yet establish how those measures have changed since the shutdown.
Reopening the pipeline restores Saudi Arabia’s ability to supply Yanbu. Riyadh would still have to keep tankers willing and able to collect the oil.
John Hendricks is an OSINT analyst and the founder of Global Recon. Follow on X: @IGRecon