Signs emerged this weekend that the conflict involving Iran is spreading beyond the Persian Gulf, even as U.S. military strikes came to a temporary halt. Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi fighters launched attacks against Saudi oil installations along the Red Sea coast, while Iran’s government accused Ukraine of targeting one of its commercial ships in the Caspian Sea.
The U.S. military announced Saturday that its naval blockade against Iran “remains in full effect,” but offered no explanation for why it ended a streak of 13 consecutive nights of escalating strikes. When pressed on the pause, a senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration said Trump “has always been clear that his preference is diplomacy, but he has shown Iran what will happen if they fail to come to the table in a serious way.”
Saturday also saw no reports of Iranian attacks on neighboring countries — attacks that had been occurring daily in response to U.S. military action.
According to the New York Times, Trump has decided, at least for now, to pull back from earlier plans to intensify strikes against Iran. The newspaper cited two people briefed on internal discussions, saying Trump and his advisers are worried about broadening the conflict, draining military stockpiles, straining relationships with Persian Gulf allies, and disrupting energy supplies and the global economy.
Even with the relative calm in the Gulf, fighting between Iran’s Houthi allies and Saudi Arabia on Saturday suggested the war — which has already disrupted energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — could threaten a second critical shipping lane and reignite Yemen’s long-running civil war.
In a separate development, Iran’s Foreign Ministry stated that Ukraine attacked an Iranian commercial ship in the Caspian Sea, saying the strike caused an explosion that killed one sailor and wounded another. Earlier Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted on social media praising the outcome of “long-range strikes” in the Caspian Sea, referring to vessels carrying military cargo, though he did not identify which country’s ships were targeted.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree announced that the group struck facilities belonging to Saudi state oil company Aramco in the cities of Jizan and Yanbu. Video circulating on social media, which Reuters confirmed as authentic, showed a large plume of smoke rising near the Aramco refinery in Jizan. Two trading sources based in Asia said they had received reports of possible damage to fuel and oil storage facilities in Jizan. Aramco did not respond to media requests for comment.
In Yanbu, two ballistic missiles aimed at oil infrastructure were intercepted by a U.S.-made Patriot missile defense battery operated by the Greek military under an agreement with Saudi Arabia, according to Greek security sources.
Yanbu serves as Saudi Arabia’s primary Red Sea oil export hub and has become a vital alternative route for Saudi oil exports that would otherwise pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has blockaded. The refinery in Jizan, a city near the Yemeni border on the Red Sea, has the capacity to process up to 400,000 barrels of oil per day.
Inside Yemen, the air force of the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government — which has fought the Houthis for over a decade — carried out airstrikes on Houthi launch sites and weapons depots in the Marib and al-Jawf provinces, according to Yemeni officials. The Saudi-led military coalition also reported bombing Houthi military positions on Friday at the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah. Yemeni officials said both warring sides were moving forces toward the front lines.
Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition against the Houthis for more than a decade, ever since the Iran-backed fighters seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. Yemen’s civil war, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives through combat and famine, had been frozen under a ceasefire since 2022. That truce collapsed this month when the Houthis effectively joined the broader war their Iranian allies have been waging since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks against Iran.
Over the past week, the Houthis declared their own naval blockade of Saudi Arabia, and Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi warned that all Saudi oil facilities could be considered targets. On Thursday, Houthi forces struck two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea.
U.S. forces have also resumed their blockade of Iranian ports. U.S. Central Command reported that on Friday, in the Gulf of Oman, American forces disabled a vessel whose crew tried to break through the blockade despite “repeated warnings.”
A temporary ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran effectively fell apart two weeks ago, when U.S. forces began striking targets in southern Iran in response to Iranian interference with shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. On Friday, Trump said the two countries were engaged in negotiations to end the conflict but repeated that Iran was not yet prepared to reach a deal.
