The war in the Middle East took a dangerous turn on Saturday night, when Donald Trump refused to rule out American military involvement against Yemen’s Houthi rebels — hours after a missile strike on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport killed 12 people, including an American citizen.
Asked whether the United States would join Saudi Arabia’s strikes on the Iran-backed group, Trump was blunt. “We may,” he told reporters. “We’re going to look at it. We just found out about the recent attack, so we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.”
The remarks, made as Trump returned to Washington from a political rally in Tennessee, are the furthest Washington has gone toward joining the fight. Until now, American outlets have reported, Saudi requests for US military help against the Houthis had been rebuffed.
What happened in Riyadh
The attack struck the airport’s domestic terminals on Saturday afternoon. Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority confirmed 12 dead and 309 injured, some of them in critical condition. Four of the dead were Saudi citizens; the rest were foreign nationals — two from Bangladesh and one each from the United States, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Sudan.
Airports across the region felt the shockwave immediately. Saudi authorities suspended operations at the airport, roughly 260 flights were cancelled and another 219 delayed, and the American, Canadian, German and Spanish embassies all warned their citizens to avoid the airport. Airlines had already been pulling out of Saudi Arabia in the days before the strike.
The Saudi-led coalition blamed the Houthis, called the strike a war crime and vowed a response. Houthi fighters did not immediately claim responsibility — though earlier this week they had claimed strikes on the same airport that killed three people and damaged a commercial jet on the tarmac.
The American death changes the calculus
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on Saturday night that an American citizen was among the dead, and condemned the attack in unusually strong terms. “The United States strongly condemns the recent attacks on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by the terrorist Houthis,” Rubio said, “including today’s strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh that took numerous innocent lives, including an American citizen.”
“These reprehensible attacks demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now,” he added. “We stand with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its people.”
Trump said he plans to speak with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the attack. “What happened in Saudi Arabia is not acceptable,” he said.
Why this matters
Deadliest in more than a decade. The Associated Press described Saturday’s strike as the largest attack on a Gulf Arab country since the Iran war began in February — and it landed without warning. Saudi Arabia’s threat-warning system never issued an alert.
The escalation ladder is moving fast. Hours after the Riyadh strike, a coalition spokesman said a projectile had landed near King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, and early Sunday the coalition said it had intercepted a missile southeast of the capital. In Yemen, Saudi-backed government forces are advancing on Houthi positions around the Bab al-Mandab strait — the narrow chokepoint for Red Sea oil and cargo shipping.
And now the question that was unthinkable a week ago is being asked out loud: whether the United States puts its own forces into the fight. The Houthis are Iran-backed; the wider war with Iran has been raging since February. One analyst, Anna Jacob of the Arab Gulf States Institute, put it plainly: “We are moving up the escalation ladder in a very dangerous way.”
