- On 26 September the Houthis fired two ballistic missiles and two drones at Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi-led coalition; all four were reported intercepted.
- President Macron announced France will deploy soldiers, radar and air defences to protect the Yanbu energy complex on the Red Sea.
- Yanbu anchors the East-West Pipeline — up to seven million barrels a day, the kingdom's lifeline while Hormuz stays crippled.
- Saudi, Pakistani and Turkish military chiefs met under the new Mecca Joint Defence Agreement as the coalition hardens.
The surprise this week didn't come from the battlefield. It came from Paris. On Thursday, Emmanuel Macron announced that France would deploy soldiers, radar systems and air-defence equipment to Saudi Arabia — to guard an oil complex on the Red Sea. French boots on the ground to protect Saudi energy infrastructure: that's the measure of how seriously the Houthi campaign is now being taken (France 24).
Riyadh: Saturday, 4 a.m.
Millions of Saudis woke to a drill that's becoming grim routine — civil defence alerts, warnings to stay from windows, the distant thud of interceptions. Yemen's Houthis had fired two ballistic missiles and two drones at the kingdom: the drones toward Riyadh, the missiles toward Khamis Mushait in the southwest, home to a key air base.
The Saudi-led coalition announced the interceptions in early-morning posts on X. Spokesman Major General Turki Al-Maliki said the two Riyadh-bound drones were "intercepted and destroyed," and confirmed the Khamis Mushait missiles met the same fate. Civil defence had sent overnight alerts for Khamis Mushait and Abha — notably, not for the capital. A Houthi political bureau official, Hezam Alasad, called the operation "merely a small-scale rehearsal for a full-scale escalation." The Houthis, who control Yemen's most populous regions, have been striking Saudi Arabia since declaring a naval blockade against Riyadh in July — hitting Red Sea tankers and seizing stretches of Yemen's coast vital for oil exports (Reuters).
Yanbu: the prize
Macron, speaking to TF1 and France 2, said the deployment was agreed with Riyadh and aimed at protecting "this site" — explicitly not at joining the wider conflict. The site is Yanbu, and its importance is hard to overstate: it anchors the East-West Pipeline, which can move up to seven million barrels of crude a day from the kingdom's eastern fields to the Red Sea. With tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz crippled, Yanbu is Saudi Arabia's main alternative route to world markets — the one lifeline in the global oil map.
It's also a target. Riyadh said its defences intercepted six ballistic missiles on Thursday, some aimed at Yanbu and Taif, where the Houthis claimed strikes on Aramco facilities. Macron described Yanbu as having been "very badly damaged" in previous attacks. With Brent crude briefly spiking above $108 a barrel this week, the arithmetic is written in the oil market for everyone to see.
Mecca: the pact
Riyadh isn't absorbing this passively. Hours before Saturday's attack, the military chiefs of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye met in the capital to review threats under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed just last month — a pact declaring an attack on one member an attack on all. On Saturday morning, Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman affirmed with Pakistan's army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir continued joint efforts against the attacks "in accordance with the pact" (Al Jazeera).
The pact hasn't been formally triggered, and what Pakistan or Turkiye would actually contribute remains unclear. But the signal is unmistakable: Saudi Arabia is organising the Houthi campaign as a collective threat, not a bilateral nuisance.
Step back and the geometry is stark. Iran chokes Hormuz. The Houthis — Tehran's allies — squeeze the Red Sea alternative. Yanbu becomes the single point of failure for global oil flows, and this was the week a European power put boots on the ground to protect it.