MEFILES

Saudi Arabia shuts its Hormuz bypass, declines to retaliate, and the oil price falls

Drone strikes that Riyadh says came from Iraq forced the closure of the East–West pipeline, the kingdom’s only route around the Strait of Hormuz. Brent fell roughly 3 per cent the same day.

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday 11 September that the East–West Crude Oil Pipeline — Petroline, a 1,200km line running from the Eastern Province to the Red Sea — had been targeted in the Riyadh and Medina areas by “several drones originating from Iraq”, causing injuries and material damage, and expressed its “strongest condemnation”. The Ministry of Energy shut the line as a “precautionary measure”, Al Jazeera reported. No group has claimed responsibility. Planet Labs imagery from 11 September, distributed via Reuters and AFP, shows a damaged site southeast of Medina on the pipeline route; NASA FIRMS recorded multiple large thermal anomalies nearby and Sentinel-3 caught a black smoke plume across western Saudi Arabia, according to OilPrice.com. CNN, citing two US officials, reported multiple pumping stations hit. Haaretz’s live blog rendered the Saudi statement as “launched from Iran”; the weight of reporting, and Baghdad’s own response, says Iraq.

Baghdad condemned the attack and dismissed the military commander who led operations in Maysan province, the militia-dense governorate on the Iranian border — an implicit admission of geography. Iraq also closed the Shalamcheh crossing with Iran, Reuters reported, citing two unnamed security sources. And then the most consequential line of the week, carried by Reuters via Haaretz: the Saudi foreign ministry said it would not retaliate at this stage, following a request from the Iraqi prime minister. Markets read the day as de-escalation. Brent settled just above $104, down roughly 3 per cent, on Trading Economics' continuous series, which attributes the fall to three drivers: Iranian state media saying Tehran would meet Gulf states in Oman, with GCC diplomats expected to sit down with their Iranian counterpart on Monday 14 September on a temporary arrangement for Hormuz shipping; an EIA forecast of 14.3 million bpd of US crude production in 2027; and an IEA demand outlook cut that the same note puts at a 2.5 million bpd contraction in 2026.

Precision is not available here and should not be faked. Reported settlements for the day range from $104.26 (Forbes Advisor) to $104.61 (PSU Connect, which is datelined “Friday, September 12” — 12 September is a Saturday), with percentage moves quoted between 2.81 and 4.24 per cent depending on the window measured. The trend numbers are less contested: Brent up 17.35 per cent on the month and 55.87 per cent year on year, on a CFD proxy rather than the ICE front-month settlement. Against that, the EIA’s September Short-Term Energy Outlook has global prices averaging $91/b in August and forecasts Brent near $90/b for the second half of 2026 — below spot — on an assumption that Middle East exports increasingly move by “alternative routes”. That outlook was published before the alternative route was shut.

Assessment: Two things happened on Friday that markets chose to net against each other, and only one of them is reversible. A pipeline can be repaired; a demonstrated willingness to absorb a strike on the primary export lifeline without answering it cannot be unsaid. Riyadh has effectively subcontracted its response to Baghdad’s ability to police Maysan — a bet with no historical record of success. Treat the 2.5 million bpd demand-contraction figure as unverified until the IEA’s own report is read; it would be destruction on a scale not seen outside 2020, and it is doing a great deal of work in explaining why the worst supply news of the war produced a down day.

Houthi forces reach Perim Island, completing their hold on the Bab al-Mandeb approaches

Yemeni government troops withdrew from the island that splits the strait’s shipping lanes. Every account of the advance rests on sources who would not be named.

Houthi fighters took the Red Sea port town of Mokha on Thursday 10 September, roughly 50 miles from Bab al-Mandeb, and reached Perim Island — Mayun, which divides the strait into two shipping lanes — on Friday after government forces withdrew, along with Dhubab city in western Taiz province. The group had already completed its control of Al-Hudaydah governorate after entering Hays and Al-Khawkhah. None of this is on the record. CNN cited two Yemeni government sources; Middle East Monitor, via Anadolu, a government military source. The strongest confirmation available is in NPR’s AP-sourced account, where a senior military official of the internationally recognised government and a Houthi official separately confirmed the Mayun capture, both anonymously because they were not authorised to speak. Two adversaries agreeing is what passes for verification this week. Pro-government forces, meanwhile, advanced in northern Al-Jawf toward Al-Hazm, with fighting continuing in Marib, Al-Bayda and Al-Dhale.

The causal chain matters more than the map. Bloomberg’s 10 September explainer sets it out: Iran has imposed costs on Washington by threatening Hormuz shipping, the Houthis have attacked vessels near Bab al-Mandeb periodically since late 2023, and the group escalated in July after Saudi Arabia shifted more of its oil exports to the Red Sea route. Riyadh’s workaround created the target set. A Houthi broadcaster said Saudi Arabia struck Mokha’s airport — a single partisan source, with no Saudi confirmation and no reported damage or deaths. The EU External Action Service called on the group to “end all attacks inside and outside Yemen, including attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea”. And MS NOW reported, with pickup by CNBC and Euronews, that Trump rejected a request from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for US strikes on Houthi positions as they approached Mokha on Thursday. Riyadh and the White House have not commented.

Assessment: The Washington line is the one to watch and the one to hold at arm’s length: a single outlet, an unconfirmed account of a private refusal, denied by nobody — which is not the same as true. It also happens to suit several parties at once, including a Saudi leadership that needs an explanation for why it is now absorbing strikes rather than answering them. Read this alongside the Petroline shutdown rather than separately. Within seventy-two hours the kingdom lost the use of its Hormuz bypass and watched the Red Sea end of that same corridor pass into hostile hands. The question for Monday’s Oman talks is what Riyadh has left to trade.

Pezeshkian calls explosions on Qeshm a US war crime, speaking from a summit stage in Delhi

The blasts at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz are reported but unexplained. Tehran has now offered three incompatible accounts of Qeshm explosions in four months.

The Jerusalem Post’s live blog, updating on 13 September, reported explosions on Qeshm Island in Hormozgan province and an accusation by President Masoud Pezeshkian that the United States had committed war crimes. What is not established is what exploded. Local authorities had not confirmed damage or casualties at the time of reporting, the sound was speculated to have come from the sea, and there is no US or CENTCOM confirmation of a strike. Pezeshkian made the charge while attending the BRICS summit in New Delhi on 12 September, which tells you something about the intended audience. His argument is not new: speaking to IRIB on 8 August, as carried by Gulf News, he said Iran sought neither war nor territorial expansion but would not yield to “coercion”, and accused Washington of using Gulf bases against Iran and of trying to split Tehran from its neighbours.

The pattern is the story. On 8 August, Gulf News reported two Qeshm blasts that the semi-official Tasnim attributed to Iranian forces engaging “hostile enemy targets” at the entrance to the strait. On 13 August, TRT World reported that IRNA said residents of Bandar Abbas and Qeshm heard blasts shortly before 4am, with Mehr subsequently saying a site near Qeshm had been struck at around 03:40 and calling it a US attack. On 19 May, Tasnim attributed blasts to the neutralisation of unexploded enemy ordnance. Air defence, an American strike, and disposal of old munitions: three framings from the same state and semi-official ecosystem in four months, for events at the same location. Today’s accusation lands on top of that record.

Assessment: An unconfirmed explosion attributed by a head of state from a foreign summit podium is a diplomatic act, not a battlefield report, and should be filed as such until something independent corroborates it. That does not make it false. It makes it unusable as evidence of what the United States did on Saturday night. The more durable point is that Iran’s own attribution machinery has burned its credibility on Qeshm specifically — which is a cost to Tehran on the day it most needs to be believed, with GCC diplomats due in Oman on Monday to discuss a temporary arrangement for the strait these explosions keep punctuating.