Saudi Arabia’s two ways around Hormuz both closed this week, and Riyadh declined to answer either one

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement, carried by the Saudi Press Agency under a Riyadh dateline of 12 September, condemns the targeting of the East–West Crude Oil Pipeline in the Riyadh and Madinah regions “by several drones launched from Iraq,” and reports injuries and some damage. The operative sentence is the next one: following a request from the Prime Minister of Iraq for an opportunity to prevent attacks from Iraqi territory, “the Kingdom has opted not to respond at this stage,” while reserving the right to take all necessary measures. Note what Riyadh named and what it did not. It named a launch territory, not a group and not a sponsor. Al Jazeera reported the strike on 11 September; the shutdown was confirmed by the Saudi energy ministry, and satellite imagery of smoke south of Medina was published by Reuters and AFP. The pipeline is the country’s principal Hormuz bypass, running east to Yanbu on the Red Sea; the figure of up to five million barrels a day comes from FDD’s Long War Journal, an advocacy organisation with a declared position on Iran, and should be read as such.

That bypass ends at a sea whose southern gate changed hands in the same week. Houthi forces took the port city of Mokha in Taiz province on Thursday 10 September, per AP and NPR citing Houthi and Yemeni officials. On Friday, Asharq Al-Awsat and AP reported the seizure of Mayyun (Perim) Island inside the strait, the Hanish archipelago and Zuqar Island, and wide areas of Dhubab district overlooking Bab al-Mandeb. By the weekend Al Jazeera assessed the takeover of Yemen’s entire Red Sea coastline as complete, with Houthi forces twenty kilometres from the African shore. The group declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia on 20 July and claimed an attack on the Saudi tanker Amzan off Yanbu on 24 August. The International Organisation for Migration said on Sunday that more than 2,000 people had fled Yemen to Djibouti in twenty-four hours. On the same day Riyadh said a Houthi projectile wounded two people and damaged a mosque in Jazan.

The third exit is diplomatic, and it slipped. President Masoud Pezeshkian told India Today, in remarks carried by ISNA and Xinhua on 12 September, that Iran and Oman would sign an agreement in Muscat on Monday establishing a joint route to be notified to the International Maritime Organization; Bloomberg, citing one person familiar, placed the event in Salalah and described it as an unveiling with fees still to be negotiated. Bahrain said on Saturday it would not attend. On Sunday, Oman announced the talks were postponed, citing the need for regional consensus — reported by Bloomberg, CNN, Arab News, Al Jazeera and TRT, all tracing to an Omani official or Omani state media. Hours earlier UKMTO reported a vessel struck by an unknown projectile in the strait; Iranian state media claimed an Iranian commercial hull was hit near Qeshm with one killed. It is not established whether these are the same ship. Kpler’s tracking puts transits at thirteen a day against roughly 130 before the war.

Assessment: Restraint here is arithmetic, not virtue. Riyadh cannot strike the launch territory without striking the state it needs to police the launch territory, and Baghdad has already dismissed a commander and opened an investigation rather than name anyone — the same posture it took after a tanker burned in its own waters on 9 September, which the Oil Ministry attributed to “an unidentified source.” Distrust three things circulating today. First, the NBC report that Mohammed bin Salman is urging Washington to strike the Houthis: one anonymous source carried by two outlets. Second, the claim that no US–Iran talks are under way: two anonymous sources, one of them Iranian and interested. Third, any tidy causal line from these attacks to the oil price. Brent settled above $100 for the first time since May, but the IEA has cut 2026 demand by 2.5 million barrels a day and the EIA has raised 2027 US output to 14.3 million. A demand collapse is subsidising everyone’s restraint. Egypt is quietly collecting the difference.