In comments on Yemen’s al-Masirah TV, Mahdi al-Mashat, the President of the Houthis’ Supreme Political Council, declared the group’s intentions to target oil sites and oil tankers in both the Red Sea and Arabian Sea going forward.
Mashat declared any such sites and ships to be “legitimate targets for
us to stop the aggression.” He added that the Houthis now have missiles
capable of reaching any point in any of the Gulf states.
Mashat is considered a “hardliner” by Houthi standards, and has often
advocated more aggressive military responses to the Saudi-led invasion.
He is in a powerful position now, but it’s not clear he has control over
whether such attacks would be launched.
The Houthis have already carried out drone strikes against Saudi oil
infrastructure, however, and targeting any Suezmax tankers in the Red
Sea would not be out of the question. It is, however, unlikely that
Houthi retaliation would really ‘stop the aggression,” as years into the
Saudi-led war, the Saudis seem as committed as ever to continuing it.
There’s a tanker in Yemen that was being used as a transfer terminal that has been offline since 2015. The ship is named the Safer and it carries more than a million gallons of degraded crude. One wrong move would cause a spill larger and more damaging than the Exxon Valdez spill.
OTOH, attacking Saudi infrastructure is one of the few things the Yemenis have left to do, as they’ve already been completely wrecking the Saudi “Coalition” on the ground.
It’s worth a try.