On November 4, a ballistic missile exploded above King Khalid Airport near Riyadh after being intercepted by Saudi Patriot missiles. The attack, launched by Houthi rebels in Yemen, led the Saudi government to blame Iran for supporting the rebels, escalating tensions across the Middle East. Curiously
Sebastien Roblin
Security, Asia
How North Korean Weapons Could Start a War (in the Middle East)
On November 4, a ballistic missile exploded above King Khalid Airport near Riyadh after being intercepted by Saudi Patriot missiles. The attack, launched by Houthi rebels in Yemen, led the Saudi government to blame Iran for supporting the rebels, escalating tensions across the Middle East.
Curiously, however, many of Yemen’s ballistic missiles came from North Korea—a design that North Korea, in turn, had acquired from Egypt .
The campaign of ballistic missile attacks has been raging since 2015 when Saudi forces, backed up by a coalition of Gulf states, invaded Yemen on behalf of the deposed government of President Hadi. The Yemeni Army’s sizeable ballistic-missile forces sided with the Houthi rebels.
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While dozens of missiles aimed at Saudi Arabia proper have been intercepted by Patriot air-defense missiles, three missile strikes on Saudi coalition forces within Yemen or near its border, in 2015 and 2016, resulted in well over three hundred deaths and major losses in equipment.
Yemen’s ballistic-missile arsenal dates back to the long war between Saudi-backed North Yemen, and the Communist-aligned South Yemen—whose last president happened to be Ali Abdullah Saleh, an ally of the Houthi rebels. Ballistic missiles offered a way for the warring states to terrorize the civilian populations of their enemies without having to win the war by conventional military means.
