Iran hits airbase in Saudi, allies Houthis enter war, target Israel

Exactly a month since US and Israel attacked Iran, a fresh front appeared to have opened in the spiralling West Asia war as the Houthis, an Iranian-backed militant group in Yemen, launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel early Saturday. It was their first in this war, followed by a threat that the attacks would continue “until the aggression ends”. Israel said it intercepted the projectile.

An Iranian strike, meanwhile, injured 12 US troops in Saudi Arabia, two of them seriously, in an attack on Prince Sultan airbase on Friday, two people briefed on the matter said. The combined missile and drone attack amounted to one of the most serious breaches of American air defences in the war. At least two KC-135 aerial refuelling planes also suffered significant damage.






Iran also claimed to have struck two US Army “hideouts” in Dubai, Iranian state media Fars News Agency reported. According to the news agency, a military spokesperson claimed US army personnel had moved to these hideouts after Iran’s strikes on their bases in the region.

Iran reports strike at Bushehr nuclear plant, third in 10 days

The spokesperson claimed that more than 500 US Army personnel were in these hideouts. Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, said Saturday barrage of ballistic missiles was launched toward what he described as “sensitive Israeli military sites” in southern Israel. The attack came hours after Saree signalled in a vague statement Friday that the rebels would join the war.

The situation at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant continues to deteriorate and attacks pose a direct threat to nuclear safety, the head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom said on Saturday after another strike near the facility. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Friday that Iran had informed it of another strike in the vicinity of Bushehr, the third such incident in 10 days, with no damage to the operating reactor and no release of radiation reported.

The Russian foreign ministry on Saturday called for “unequivocal and firm condemnation” of the attack near Bushehr. The Israeli military said Friday it had struck a heavy water reactor and a uranium processing plant in central Iran, but did not mention Bushehr. The plant in southwestern Iran has the country’s only operational nuclear power reactor and was first connected to the grid in 2011.

The Saudi airbase attacked Friday, about 96km from the apital of Riyadh, was targeted twice earlier in the week. The base is run by the Royal Saudi Air Force but is also used by US troops. The number of Americans wounded in the Iran war has grown beyond 300, while 13 soldiers have been killed.

Elsewhere in the region on Saturday, drones struck Kuwait International Airport, damaging its radar, and the key port of Salalah in Oman. The United Arab Emirates said its forces were intercepting drones and missiles from Iran. Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry said its forces had intercepted drones and a missile, without saying where they had come from.

The Israeli military said Saturday that it had begun a new round of bombardment in the Iranian capital of Tehran. The Israeli military said Saturday it had struck an industrial complex in Tehran used for the research and development of naval weapons. Israel also reported more waves of incoming Iranian missiles, which killed at least one person in Tel Aviv. A direct strike on a village in central Israel wounded 11 people and left a massive crater.