The US Pulls Some Diplomats Out of Saudi Arabia, Explosions Ring Out Near Hormuz: the Gulf Is Shaking Again

The State Department has ordered some diplomatic staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia. Four US officials confirmed that similar measures are being prepared for the families of diplomats in the other Gulf states. Spokesman Tommy Pigott confirmed the decision on Saudi Arabia and clarified that it applies to non-emergency employees and their family members. The reason: increasingly fierce attacks by Yemen's Houthis, who are backed by Iran.

The weight of the decision lies in its timing. Over the past months, Washington had been gradually bringing people back to the missions it evacuated after the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran at the end of February. Now the process is going into reverse. That in itself doesn't mean a new US military operation has been decided - but when diplomats are packing, it's rarely because of good news.

While Washington counts its people, Iran's state agency IRNA reported several explosions in Hormozgan province in southern Iran, in the Karpan area, near the town of Sirik, on the coast of the Gulf of Oman and close to the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. What caused them, whether there are casualties and whether they're linked to the US decision - nobody is saying for now. Videos are circulating on social media claiming it was a US airstrike on an Iranian anti-ship missile launcher, but nobody has officially confirmed that.

Meanwhile, the Houthis are hitting Saudi Arabia. In recent weeks their targets have been civilian airports and other key infrastructure, with people killed and injured. King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, targeted several times in October, has been closed since October 10 and has only now partly resumed domestic flights, while Lufthansa and Air France have cancelled flights until mid-November. Debris from an intercepted drone fell on the Shaybah oil field, operated by Aramco - two workers from Nepal and the Philippines were killed, and two more, from Pakistan and India, were injured.

In Yemen itself it's even worse. In a Houthi missile attack on a camp of Yemeni government forces in Shabwa province, at least 73 people were killed, more than 200 wounded and 14 are listed as missing. The 2022 truce, which for years kept the big clashes under a lid, fell apart this year. The fighting has again reached the Bab el-Mandeb strait, through which shipping between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden passes.

Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb - the two sea gates through which a huge share of the world's oil and goods passes - are back in the line of fire. Eight months after the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, the war isn't ending, it's only changing shape. How many times has the Balkans heard that a war is "almost over"?