Saudi Arabia Intercepts Six Houthi Missiles as France Guards Yanbu
Saudi Arabia intercepted six Houthi ballistic missiles aimed at Taif and Yanbu, and France’s Macron pledged military assets to defend the Red Sea oil hub.
RIYADH — September 25, 2026. Saudi Arabia said it intercepted six Houthi ballistic missiles aimed at western targets including Taif and the Red Sea oil hub of Yanbu, prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to announce military assets for Yanbu’s defense and drawing Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye into urgent talks under their mutual-defense pact.
The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen reported the intercepts after Civil Defence alerts covered Mecca, Jeddah, Yanbu, Taif and Tabuk. The Houthis claimed a more ambitious barrage — ballistic missiles and drones against Aramco infrastructure at Yanbu and a “sensitive target” in Riyadh — without independent confirmation of damage inside the kingdom. Oil prices climbed to a one-week high on the supply scare. Yanbu matters because it is the kingdom’s primary Red Sea crude terminal, fed by the East-West pipeline that Riyadh has leaned on while the Strait of Hormuz remains constrained by the wider U.S.–Iran war.
Macron said France would send “military assets, meaning soldiers, radars and defence systems to protect” Yanbu. In parallel, Saudi, Pakistani and Turkish foreign ministers arranged an urgent chiefs-of-staff meeting under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. Tehran publicly sought distance from the Houthis’ rapid Red Sea advances even as regional reporting continues to describe Iranian-aligned networks enabling the campaign.
On the Yemeni front, sources from both sides told AFP that at least 150 Houthi fighters and government-aligned personnel were killed in roughly 24 hours of fighting, including battles for high ground overlooking the Bab al-Mandab strait. The Houthis’ earlier seizures around Mocha and Red Sea islands already threatened a corridor that normally carries a large share of global oil trade. Combined with intermittent disruption of the East-West pipeline earlier this month, the latest missile night forces Riyadh to defend both ends of its export map at once.
What changed on September 25 is not the existence of Houthi reach into Saudi airspace — that has been episodic for years — but the stacking of theaters: Hormuz pressure, Red Sea blockade language, pipeline vulnerability and now an open French force offer plus a trilateral defense-pact huddle. If Yanbu becomes a forward air-defense node for European radars, the Red Sea war stops looking like a side theater and starts looking like an institutionalized second front of the Iran confrontation.
Sources
- Al Jazeera: Saudi-led coalition says shot down 6 ballistic missiles launched by Houthis
- France 24: Saudi reports fresh Houthi attacks as France pledges to defend key oil port
- Defense News: France to send military to protect Saudi Arabia on Red Sea oil route, Macron says
