Drones keep flying at Saudi Arabia despite Trump's pause

The drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan and Iraq reported by news agencies on July 28 confirmed what European chancelleries have suspected for weeks: the American pause in bombing Iran did not break the cycle of war, it merely handed it over to allies and proxies. For Serbia, a landlocked country that receives energy and Asian goods indirectly, through ports and maritime corridors, this is not a distant crisis on the other side of the world but a question of fuel prices, cargo insurance and delivery times in the second half of the year.

The most serious move came from Yemen’s Houthis. On July 26 they attacked two large facilities of the Saudi company Aramco with ballistic missiles and drones, in the coastal cities of Jizan and Yanbu. A large column of smoke was filmed above the Jizan plant, while Saudi Arabia released no details about the damage. In Yanbu, the kingdom’s main export gateway on the west coast, two ballistic missiles aimed at oil installations were intercepted by a Patriot battery operated in Saudi Arabia by the Greek military, a detail that gives this war a clear European dimension.

The strike did not come out of nowhere. It followed Saudi air raids on Hodeidah, a Houthi-held city, on Friday, and before that, on July 20, the Houthis declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia after an attack on the airport in Sanaa prevented an Iranian aircraft from landing. Earlier they said they had targeted two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, the Enceliya and the Layla. This is therefore a systematic campaign against Saudi maritime and oil infrastructure, not a series of isolated incidents.

Why does Bab el Mandeb matter more than it looks from the Balkans?

Yemen’s foreign minister in mandate warned that the Houthis want to disrupt navigation through Bab el Mandeb along the lines of Iranian control over Hormuz, encouraged by an insufficient international response. That warning describes the geopolitical reality precisely: two chokepoints, one at the entrance to the Persian Gulf and the other at the southern end of the Red Sea, carry the bulk of the seaborne oil flow towards Europe and Asia.

For now the figures show resilience. On July 27, 28 ships passed through Bab el Mandeb, the highest number in four days, while traffic through Hormuz remained suppressed. Shippers still calculate that the risk is bearable, but analysts warn that a simultaneous blockade of both straits would cause severe disruption to global supply chains. For European importers, including those who bring goods into Serbia through Greek and Adriatic ports, that would mean longer routes around Africa and costlier insurance.

Riyadh is paying the price for strikes on oil infrastructure

Saudi Arabia finds itself in the position it spent decades trying to avoid: it is waging a war in Yemen, absorbing blows to its own oil industry and at the same time trying to preserve the image of a stable supplier. Riyadh’s silence about the damage in Jizan is part of that calculation, because any admission of vulnerability at export terminals spills straight onto the market.

Seen more broadly, the geography of the attacks says more than any individual target. When strikes are reported on the same day from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan and Iraq, it is clear that the pro-Iranian network is not answering on one front but on four, and that the pause in American strikes was not read as an offer of a truce. The diplomatic channel towards Tehran remains open, but without an interlocutor who controls every actor on the ground.

Does Europe have any instrument at all to protect navigation through the Red Sea, or will the final bill again be paid by consumers?