Why did the Houthis attack Saudi Arabia?

After reports surfaced that Saudi Arabia was considering setting the price of selling its oil to China using the yuan instead of the dollar, some Republican senators said that "President Joe Biden is losing an existential battle to communist China, which is displacing the dollar from the world economy”. But the situation was aggravated by the intriguing chronological coincidences of a number of events.

The news from the Saudis coincided with the moment of Russia's military operation in Ukraine. For this reason, the United States and Western countries have stepped up efforts to diversify energy supplies. In early March, the Biden administration announced a complete ban on the import of Russian oil, gas and coal. At the same time, the United States announced its intention to force the signing of a nuclear agreement with Iran and oblige it to increase oil production. The well-known Cairo newspaper NoonPost reported that "the ongoing closed negotiations between Iran and Saudi Arabia on the normalisation of relations with access to normalisation in Yemen are about to end in agreements”.

A curious geopolitical equation has developed on this track. Thus, the Biden administration excluded the Houthis from the list of international terrorist organisations, although it is believed that Iran is behind them. Biden promised to end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and to reassess relations with Saudi Arabia. Plus, a return to the nuclear agreement with Iran.

On the sidelines of negotiations with Iran on a mutual return to the nuclear agreement, the White House put pressure on Tehran to convince the Houthis to stop fighting and show flexibility in peace negotiations.

Perhaps further events would have developed according to the proposed scheme. But the designated structure, or rather one of its supporting bases, "suddenly" began to collapse. State Department spokesman Ned Price said that "a return to the 2015 nuclear deal remains uncertain and not inevitable, despite the optimism of recent weeks that indirect talks between Iran and the United States may soon lead to an agreement”. The US recalled that they "have contingency plans in case a deal is not reached”.

By the way, the transition of the situation into the phase of force majeure was foreseen by the authoritative American publication Foreign Policy. It predicted that in Saudi Arabia "something should happen around the Saudi Aramco company, which today ranks first in the world in terms of oil production. In 2021, it made record profits, earning $110 billion.

And it happened. The Houthis launched rocket attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities. The United States immediately called these attacks terrorist attacks. In a written statement, the assistant to the US President for National Security, Jake Sullivan, states that "the attacks were obviously carried out thanks to Iran in violation of UN Security Council resolutions prohibiting the import of weapons into Yemen”. And the Saudi-led Arab coalition announced the launch of an operation aimed at "neutralising such attacks”.

There are reports of strikes on targets in Yemen. The Secretary General of the League of Arab States (LAS) Ahmed Aboul Gheit also made a statement. According to him, "the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities pose a threat to the security of the entire region and global energy supplies”. Moreover, a meeting of representatives of the Persian Gulf countries and the Houthis was scheduled for March 29 in Riyadh, but they announced their refusal to participate in this forum. In a word, the situation in the Persian Gulf region has sharply escalated again.

But nothing is known for sure about the true reasons for such a scenario, or rather those international and regional forces that are behind it. There are only different versions and many different arguments. Someone needed to attack a Saudi oil refinery in order to blame Iran for this and launch a military operation in Yemen.

The goal has been achieved. In the south of the Arabian Peninsula, the situation is again deadlocked. That is why the Wall Street Journal, commenting on the situation, notes that the "Chinese game" of the Saudis has always been synchronously activated over the past six years in connection with the US nuclear negotiations with Iran and the lack of American support for the Saudi military operation in neighbouring Yemen. If something changes in this equation, then politics in the Middle East also changes.