Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed a drone attack Sunday on an Aramco oil refinery in the southwestern Saudi city of Jazan, the latest in a sustained campaign of strikes against the kingdom and its energy infrastructure.
Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, said the attack targeted the Aramco refinery and was a direct response to Saudi drones breaching Yemeni airspace over the provinces of Hajjah and Saada.
The Saudi Energy Ministry confirmed early Sunday that a fire had broken out at a facility belonging to the Aramco refinery. The ministry said the fire was extinguished and reported no casualties. It did not describe the cause of the fire.
A Yemeni government official said the Houthis also fired missiles and drones at the Mocha port on the Red Sea, one of the main ports under control of Yemen's internationally recognized government. Fayed al-Noman, assistant undersecretary of the information ministry, said the port had been struck. The Houthis did not immediately comment on that claim.
The Mocha port was renovated in recent years to handle shipping that avoids Houthi-held ports in Hodeida. The escalation threatens to reignite Yemen's civil war more than four years after a 2022 truce halted major fighting in the country.
On the same day, Iran signaled that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remains far from settled. Speaking to reporters in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that an exchange of messages through intermediaries is continuing with the United States but does not amount to formal negotiations.
"From our perspective, negotiations cannot resume until the violations of the memorandum of understanding have ended and the United States has remedied the provisions of the memorandum that it violated," Araghchi said.
He said talks with Oman about new maritime routes through the strait were in final stages, but added a sharp caveat.
"This, however, does not mean that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen," Araghchi said. "An agreement on the routes may be reached, but reopening the strait is subject to a number of other conditions, which have been conveyed through intermediaries."
Iran's Supreme National Security Council separately issued a statement saying the strait will not open until the United States "corrects its behavior." The statement was published by Iran's state broadcaster and attributed to the council's secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who also serves as a commander in the Revolutionary Guard.
The Pentagon, according to NPR, is pressing the U.S. defense industry to accelerate weapons production as the regional situation continues to deteriorate.
