@not_a_charmEvery route Saudi Arabia has for getting energy out to the world is under some kind of pressure right now, and that's the part that matters more than any single strike Start in the east. Iran has set up its new order in the Strait of Hormuz. Swing west and the Houthis are digging in around Bab el-Mandeb, and an Israeli official reportedly rates that chokepoint as a harder problem than Hormuz, mostly because ships have to pass so close to territory the Houthis control. Then it moves inland. Saudi Arabia reportedly ran 129 airstrikes on Houthi positions across 48 hours, and imagery from above tells the story at an Aramco site in Abha, where at least six storage tanks got wrecked. Riyadh is reportedly weighing a big Yemen operation with no U.S. involvement, and that tracks, because MBS reportedly went to Trump twice asking for American military help and got turned down both times. The east-west pipeline that was supposed to be the workaround for Hormuz? It's been hit too. So the board looks like this: Hormuz boxed in by Iran, Bab el-Mandeb threatened by the Houthis, the escape route attacked, and the Pakistani-led defense arrangements Saudi Arabia was counting on have delivered political backing and not much else. For years the whole advantage was having more than one way to move energy out. This war keeps leaning on all of them
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