What the US-Saudi strikes on Iran-affiliated militias in Iraq reveal about the wider war

It has been five months since the US and Israel launched their war with Iran, and the conflict has never really been contained. Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Jordan have all been hit by Iranian missiles and drones; Hezbollah drew Lebanon into a fight that is still going on; and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, with neither talks nor military action producing a lasting reopening.

Right now, though, no front is moving faster than the one closing in on Saudi Arabia, and it is coming from two directions at once.

In Yemen, a strike on Sanaa airport and Houthi accusations against Riyadh in July reignited a conflict that had been largely dormant, leading within days to attacks on Saudi shipping, a Saudi strike on Hodeidah port, and a Houthi claim to have hit oil sites in Jizan and Yanbu, in possibly the first direct strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure since 2022.

In Iraq, months of accusations that Iran-backed militias were launching drones from Iraqi soil culminated this week in Saudi Arabia joining the US in direct, public strikes for the first time, a move Riyadh justified as an exercise of its right to self-defence under the UN Charter.

In this episode of Beyond the Headlines, host Nada AlTaher is joined by Douglas Silliman, former US ambassador to Iraq and now president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, Hasan Alhasan, senior fellow for Middle East Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Elizabeth Dent, senior fellow at the Washington Institute, to look at how Saudi Arabia's escalation fits into the broader direction of the US-Iran war.