The Houthis are threatening Saudi oil infrastructure, but are they all bark or is there real bite behind the threats?
The Houthis largely depend upon Iranian weapons, but if Iran were able to replenish drone and missile stockpiles, they still have to get them into Yemen, evading Saudi border controls and U.S. naval monitoring. If the weapons did make their way into Houthis’ hands, the question then becomes about scale.
Potshots and isolated strikes won’t move the needle, but sustained strikes could overwhelm Saudi defenses. The largest concern is the Petroline, which has helped stave off the energy crisis throughout the Iran war. We’ll find out soon enough what the Houthis have up their sleeves.
Hey y’all. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today is the 21st of July. We’re talking about something that went down yesterday on the 20th, on Monday. The Houthis, which are an ethnic group in western Yemen, basically declared open season on all things Saudi, including oil flows. Now, Yemen is in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula, and most of the Saudi population lives on the west side of the peninsula.
And so using weapons systems, mostly drones and missiles supplied by the Iranians. Everything that matters is within range of the Yemeni. Now, a few things to keep in mind at the point of this recording. There have been no attacks, just the threat. Number two, in the first phase of the Iran war that happened a couple of months back, the Yemeni did fire quite a few things, and then it appeared that they ran out, which means that the question is whether that they have been replenished by the Iranians in the time since.
Yemen has arguably the worst industrial base on the planet and cannot make things like styrofoam or even plywood, which by volume make up the majority of, say, a had drone. They certainly can’t make semiconductors and electronics, so any equipment that they have isn’t simply guided by the IRGC. IRGC is the militant faction that now runs Iran. Since the Trump administration killed everyone who might qualify as moderate.
But the GC also does the supply. So guidance and supply and targeting. So don’t think of this as a separate actor. This is just an arm of Iran for this purpose. Which brings us to the third problem. Iran had more than enough time in the way the Trump administration handled the cease fire to earn money, in fact, earn US dollars and for supplies to be rerouted from China.
Most of the equipment that is used to make the Shahid drones and the missiles comes from China. It used to come by water, but there was a blockade. So now it comes often by rail and that is something the US can’t interdict. So in the two three months that we’ve had since the blockade started, that should have been more than enough time for Iran to completely replenish all of their stocks.
And with the way the United States ended the blockade by allowing Iran access to the US dollar market, they probably have more than the currency to pay for all of it. But getting the equipment from Iran to Yemen is a different thing. The rail option or road option is not a good one, because you have to go through Iraq and Saudi Arabia and the Saudis have a de facto blockade at the Yemeni border.
You might theoretically be able to go through Oman, but the Houthis are on the other side of the country, so it’s probably not gonna work either. So it has to go by water. And while the US Navy has had a hard time asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz just because of the mechanics of the new weapon systems, being able to monitor what goes in and out of Yemen is child’s play in comparison.
So unless there’s been a gross collapse of strategic planning in the Trump administration, which I cannot rule out, the odds of unrestricted access for the IRGC to Yemen to replenish their military supplies is pretty low. So at the moment, the fact that 24 hours has gone by and there hasn’t been an attack, I am not exactly calling bullshit, but I am dubious of the Yemeni are going to be able to do anything.
But let’s assume let’s assume that this is wrong and that supplies have made it to Yemen, and the IRGC is preparing attacks on Saudi infrastructure. A couple things to watch for. Number one is volume. If they cook off a drone or a missile a day, going after a ship or a highway or a refinery or whatever it happens to be, that’s not a big deal.
Mostly because there’s just not a huge I mean, it’s a target rich environment, but the Saudis have been dealing with some form of attacks from Yemen for almost a decade now, and that sort of volume isn’t going to really move the needle very much. Second, if we do get more attacks a dozen a day or more, then we’re in a different field.
And then we need to consider a couple of things, because first of all, while the Iranians have mid-range drones that are perfectly capable of hitting the western side of Saudi Arabia, flying over the Persian Gulf over the entirety of the Arabian Peninsula, hitting the far side of the country. They’ve done that. They’ve demonstrated they can do that with accuracy.
Doing so requires the weapon system flying a bit of a gantlet, because you have to get over American naval forces in the Gulf. You have to get over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Gutter and Kuwait, all of which have air defense. And you have to get there over the entirety of this Arabian Peninsula. There’s plenty of chances for fighter jets, for example, to shoot down drones.
And then, of course, there’s missile defense on the western side of the peninsula. Two or if you fire it from Yemen, you spend most of the time over the water. And under the earlier Trump administration, we had a 30 day war between the United States and the Yemeni. And the United States learned very, very quickly that it really couldn’t root out the launchers in a place that as is as mountainous and as rural as Yemenis.
So if your weapons systems spend most of their flight time over the water, most of them are going to get through and they’re going to hit the Saudi coast, coming from the west instead of the south. And in doing so, the air defenses will be out of position. So you could do some very real damage very quickly. And then third most important thing.
One of the reasons why the loss of crude out of the Persian Gulf has not led to a catastrophic energy induced depression to this point is that the Saudis have something called a Petro line that ships about 7 million barrels per day from their fields in the east, across the length of the peninsula. Going west, it hits Yanbu primarily, which is one of their primary ports on the western coast.
And that one pipe has made up for about a third of the disruption that we would have felt, and has done wonders for keeping prices from going stratospheric. Well, it’s an easy range of anything from Yemen, so I’m not calling that the Yemeni can’t do this, although I have my doubts. But we will find out in the next few days, maybe a couple of weeks.
Whether or not a the Iranians have actually moved hardware successfully to Yemen, and b whether the hardware that is moved has significantly accurate targeting in order to damage the facilities that are necessary to prevent that energy induced depression. A lot of moving pieces, a few if things in that statement, but we’re going to pretty soon whether the hardware and the equipment is there because we know the advisors are already
and the Houthis really have no problem sticking it to the Saudis at every opportunity. So time will tell. And it won’t take that much time.
