There is a dangerous tendency to treat the renewed conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi Shiite group as a sideshow to the simmering US-Iran war on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.
But in many ways, it is a much more destabilising threat than even Donald Trump’s costly conflict – whether as a general threat to world supply chains, or specifically to oil supplies – than even the blockade by Iran of the Strait of Hormuz.
Yes, global supplies of oil, gas and fertiliser have been dramatically cut by the Iranian threat to Gulf shipping. But the Red Sea is an even bigger and more varied transport corridor right up to the Suez Canal.
Saudi Arabia had tried to redirect its oil export along the East-West pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. But the Houthis’ bombing of a range of pumping stations along it – as well as their ability to hit management targets in…
