Saudi Arabia moves from the margins of the war to its center after the strike on the East-West pipeline and the Houthi advance toward Bab al-Mandab; the international press now views Riyadh as the state being tested on whether it can protect two energy routes at once, while Hormuz turns into a bargaining chip and Washington searches for an exit that does not look like retreat

September 13, 2026

Monitoring and Analysis | Strategic Media Department – BETH Agency
Supervision: Abdullah Al-Omairah

The international press no longer views the U.S.-Iran war merely as a confrontation between Washington and Tehran.

On the morning of September 13, Saudi Arabia moved to the center of the global media picture.

The attack on the East-West pipeline, the Houthi advance toward Mayyun and Bab al-Mandab, and the continuing disruption in Hormuz have created a new equation, condensed by the international press into one question:

Can Saudi Arabia protect its route to the world if pressure is applied simultaneously from both east and west?

The question goes beyond the Kingdom.

Because the answer will reach oil prices, shipping companies, European and Asian markets, and Washington’s own calculations.

Saudi Arabia in the Global Press | From Oil to Security

Saudi Arabia featured prominently today across American, British, French, Indian and German media.

American media did not treat the attack on the East-West pipeline as a local incident. It linked it directly to market movements. Saudi shares declined, Aramco, banks and mining companies came under pressure, and markets began measuring the Kingdom’s ability to restore flexibility to its exports amid simultaneous pressure on Hormuz and the Red Sea.

France’s Le Monde went further, portraying Saudi Arabia as facing an increasingly operational attempt at isolation: Iran applying pressure through Hormuz, the Houthis through Bab al-Mandab, while no decisive external military intervention has yet appeared on Riyadh’s side. The French reading is clear: Saudi Arabia is not weak, but it is being asked to carry a burden greater than it expected to carry alone.

The Financial Times approaches the scene from a more strategic angle: the Yemen war has returned to affect Saudi calculations at a moment when Riyadh wants to protect its economic project, attract investment and reduce regional risk. For the newspaper, the problem is not a missile or a drone; it is that the return of a broad war in Yemen would bring military risk directly back into the calculations of Vision 2030.

In the German press, the European dimension appeared quickly: any further decline in Saudi exports means additional pressure on fuel prices in Europe, turning the security of Saudi facilities into part of German economic security rather than a distant Gulf concern.

BETH Reading:
What has changed is that Saudi Arabia is no longer presented only as an oil producer or a regional power, but as a node of global stability; if it is disrupted, the shock moves from the chokepoints to the markets.

Washington | Iran Wins Through Routes, Not Fronts

In the American press, a new idea is taking shape:

Iran may not be militarily superior, but it has become capable of generating leverage through routes Washington cannot afford to ignore.

The Washington Post focused on the Houthi advance toward Bab al-Mandab and argued that Iran has gained an additional pressure card on top of Hormuz, because a successful Houthi threat to the western passage means that any settlement with Tehran in the Gulf would no longer be enough on its own to restore normal energy flows.

The newspaper quoted a Yemeni official in striking terms, saying that the Houthi advance made this one of the days on which Iran began to appear as though it were achieving a genuine gain in the war, not through a direct front, but through a second strait.

The American concern is therefore clear:

If the world needs one solution for Hormuz and another for Bab al-Mandab, then the war no longer has a single exit door.

London | A Moment of Testing for Saudi Arabia

The British press is focusing today on what it effectively sees as Saudi Arabia’s most dangerous moment in years.

The Times reads the Houthi advance as a development that goes far beyond Yemen. Houthi control of positions near Bab al-Mandab means greater capacity to threaten shipping, while the East-West pipeline has already been attacked, leaving Saudi Arabia’s alternative to Hormuz itself exposed to pressure.

In the British reading, the question is not only: What will the Houthis do?

It is:

Will Saudi Arabia return to a large-scale war in Yemen, or will it try to contain the advance without falling into another war of attrition?

Other analyses reflect the same dilemma, suggesting that dragging Riyadh into a prolonged conflict may itself be a Houthi and Iranian objective, because the cost to Saudi Arabia would not be military alone, but economic and investment-related as well.

Paris | Saudi Arabia Seeks a Partner, Not an Umbrella

The French discourse is harsher today.

Le Monde describes Saudi Arabia as facing simultaneous pressure from two directions and argues that reliance on the United States has so far failed to produce a decisive military response.

The deeper reading is this:

The war is forcing Saudi Arabia to confront a larger question:

Does it continue waiting for an American umbrella, or move toward building a more independent regional deterrence network?

This is where the “Makkah Alliance” and the defense rapprochement with Türkiye and Pakistan take on greater importance than they appeared to have at the time of signing.

The press that once viewed it as a political arrangement may now begin testing it as a practical instrument.

Moscow | America Will Be Forced to Intervene

In the Russian press, particularly Kommersant, a different interpretation dominates.

The Houthi advance is not viewed only as pressure on Saudi Arabia, but as another failure of Washington’s attempt to keep the war within controlled limits.

A prominent Russian analysis concluded that the Houthi advance near Bab al-Mandab ultimately makes the problem an American one as well, because threatening both chokepoints simultaneously hits the global economy and may force Washington to intervene even if it does not want to open another front.

As for the East-West pipeline, the Russian press sees it as proof that the alternatives Saudi Arabia built to bypass Hormuz are not completely insulated; the land route ends at the Red Sea, and the Red Sea itself is now under threat.

New Delhi | Energy First

The Indian press is viewing the war through an extremely practical lens:

Where will the oil come from, and at what price?

The Indian Express devoted particular attention to the East-West pipeline because it represents one of the most important safety valves for the Indian market when Hormuz is disrupted. An attack on it is therefore not merely a Saudi problem; it is a direct threat to Asian countries that depend on Gulf oil.

At the same time, BRICS is trying to produce a position that does not collide with Iran, the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

India succeeded in bringing divergent states behind a joint declaration calling for the protection of energy flows and infrastructure and for preventing further expansion of the war.

This reveals a contradiction:

BRICS wants independence from the West, but it cannot afford chaos in the Gulf.

Beijing | Silence Does Not Mean Distance

China’s official press is less aggressive in directly characterizing either Saudi Arabia or Iran, but the broader Chinese discourse remains focused on three consistent principles:

Energy stability.

Preventing the war from expanding.

And guaranteeing freedom of navigation.

China does not need to align itself openly with one side for its position to be clear. Its economy makes it one of the biggest losers from simultaneous disruption in Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab.

Any diplomatic success in Oman would therefore serve Beijing, while any new military escalation would push China toward greater political engagement to protect energy routes.

BRICS | Difficult Neutrality

The BRICS summit in New Delhi produced one of the week’s most revealing images:

Iran, the UAE and other states with sharply divergent positions sat within the same bloc and agreed on language calling for de-escalation and the protection of energy flows.

But behind the statement lies a larger problem:

BRICS wants to become an independent international force, yet it includes parties standing on different sides of the war.

That is why the statement was cautious.

It did not name Iran.

It did not place responsibility on a single party.

And it called for the protection of infrastructure and maritime routes.

It is a statement attempting to protect the economy more than to settle the politics.

BETH Selection | Opinion

Washington | Trump Is Fighting Himself

In a prominent Washington Post opinion piece, the American problem appears in a different form.

The dilemma is not Iran alone; it is Trump’s own hesitation between escalation and negotiation.

The writer argues that U.S. policy swings between siege, strikes, negotiations, threats and then a return to negotiations, giving Iran room to buy time instead of forcing it to make a decisive choice.

The key conclusion:

A policy that refuses to choose between war and settlement may end up prolonging both.

London | Bab al-Mandab Changed the Calculations

The Times reads the Houthi advance as a moment that transcends Yemen.

The central idea:

If the Houthis succeed in consolidating control near Bab al-Mandab, the world will no longer be facing only a Hormuz crisis, but a dual system of maritime chokepoints that places Saudi Arabia and global energy security in a more fragile position.

Washington is debating how to end the war.
London is asking: Has the war now become too large to be ended by a single settlement?

Saudi Arabia in the Global Press | The Picture Is Changing

There is a transformation worth pausing over.

In the opening months, Saudi Arabia often appeared in international coverage as:

A mediator.

An energy producer.

Or a state trying to stay outside the war.

Today, the picture has changed.

The international press now presents it as:

A state absorbing attacks.

Protecting alternative energy routes.

Confronting the Houthis.

Pressuring Iraq to rein in militias.

Testing its military relationship with Washington.

And searching for more effective regional partners.

A new question is therefore beginning to appear in the global press:

Is Saudi Arabia merely a state trying to protect itself from other people’s war?

Or is the war pushing it toward reshaping its security role in the region?

Arab Press Brief | From the Atlantic to the Gulf

The Arab press today is focused on three circles:

Saudi Arabia. Bab al-Mandab. Iraq.

In the Gulf press, concern centers on the Houthi arrival at Mayyun and Dhubab, which changes the balance in the Red Sea and gives the group greater capacity to pressure shipping and energy routes. Sky News Arabia focused on the fact that control of Mayyun came amid fragmentation among anti-Houthi forces, and that the island gives the group an advanced position at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

Asharq Al-Awsat, meanwhile, has focused in recent days on the danger of turning Bab al-Mandab into “another Hormuz,” and on the way the war has begun shifting all of Yemen’s front lines.

In Cairo, Al-Ahram summed up the scene with an accurate phrase: “The War of the Straits” — Hormuz in the east, Bab al-Mandab in the west, and the global economy between them.

In Iraq, attention is gradually moving from denying responsibility toward the question of state authority itself, after a border crossing was closed and an investigation was opened into the drone launches.

Inside the Capitals | Every Country Has Its Concern

Washington:
How can Saudi Arabia and Bab al-Mandab be protected without opening another war?

London:
Will the Red Sea become a front independent of Hormuz?

Paris:
Can Saudi Arabia manage simultaneous pressure from two directions without direct Western military support?

Moscow:
Will Washington be forced to widen the war after trying to contain it?

New Delhi:
How do we protect oil flows from a war over which we have no control?

Beijing:
How can trade be protected without openly taking sides?

Baghdad:
Can the Iraqi state prevent its territory from becoming a platform for war?

Riyadh:
How can energy and sovereignty be protected from three directions at once without being dragged into an open-ended war of attrition?

Between the Lines

There is a major transformation that headlines alone do not capture.

At the beginning, the war was being managed around Iran.

Today, it is being managed around Saudi Arabia and the world’s strategic chokepoints.

From the east: Hormuz.

From the west: Bab al-Mandab.

From the northwest: the Suez Canal, which Saudi Arabia now appears to be expected to help protect, along with the route leading to it.

From the north: armed groups inside Iraq.

And from within: the East-West pipeline, which has itself become a target.

Saudi Arabia has thus moved from being a state seeking distance from the war to one expected to be present at every route through which the world’s oil and trade move.

BETH Eyes | Who Protects the World’s Interests?

The global press today reveals the scale of concern surrounding Saudi Arabia, Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab and oil prices.

But concern is one thing.

Accepting responsibility is another.

The question that is not being asked often enough is:

Does the world expect Saudi Arabia alone to protect the routes through which everyone’s interests pass?

Saudi Arabia is capable of protecting its territory, infrastructure and interests. During the war it has demonstrated that it possesses alternative energy routes, room to maneuver, and political, military and economic tools that go beyond the limits of the present crisis.

But Hormuz is not a Saudi strait.

Bab al-Mandab is not a Saudi route alone.

The Suez Canal is not a Saudi passage either.

And global energy security is not Riyadh’s responsibility alone.

Saudi Arabia is capable of protecting itself and its interests. But the broader question is this: Can the countries of the world protect their political, economic and military interests against a single adversary when the tools of protection are scattered, decision-making is fragmented, and responsibility remains divided?

If Europe fears rising prices, it must bear its share of protecting supplies.

If Asia depends on Gulf oil and trade, then the security of these routes must be treated as part of its own security.

The chokepoints are international, the interests are international, and the bill for protecting them should not be Saudi.

If India and China depend on Gulf oil and trade, the security of these routes is part of their national security as well.

And if Washington regards freedom of navigation as a strategic American interest, it is not enough to watch Saudi Arabia absorb pressure across the maritime routes and then ask: What will Riyadh do?

If such passivity turns into dependency, it does more than leave a vacuum; it gives Iran greater space to inflate its influence and project a strength partly manufactured by weak international positions and the reluctance of states to shoulder their responsibilities.

Those who retreat from protecting their own interests have no right to be surprised when their adversary expands into the vacuum, or when Saudi deterrence moves through its various tools to stop the disorder and close a chapter of hostility where other bets and confrontations that once imagined they could break the Kingdom ultimately ended — in defeat.

And from a distance comes a more sensitive question: Is the world today fighting an adversary whose harmful intent is clear — Iran — or are some capitals still more preoccupied with suspicion toward a new Islamic power taking shape through the “Makkah Agreement”?

The objectives are declared and the agreement is defined. Yet those accustomed to viewing every emerging Islamic power through suspicion may still be prisoners of an old political memory shaped more by Islamophobia than by a rational reading of interests.

And so the most important and immediate question returns: What will you do to protect your own interests from an adversary manipulating the world’s resources by exploiting fragmented decision-making, divided responsibility and lack of strategic focus?

Riyadh is not a security company for international waterways.

And it makes no sense for Saudi Arabia’s geography and weight to become a pretext for loading onto it alone the cost of a war from which the entire world suffers.

Saudi Arabia will protect its interests. It needs no one’s permission to do so.

But if the world wants oil to keep flowing, trade routes to remain open and markets to stay stable, then it must demonstrate its concern for its own interests through action, not analysis and statements.

Here lies the paradox:

Every capital today writes about Saudi Arabia’s importance.

But Saudi Arabia’s importance does not mean it must carry everyone else’s responsibilities.

Whoever wants the passage open must defend it.

Whoever wants energy to remain stable must share the cost of that stability.

And whoever wants Saudi Arabia to remain a barrier against chaos must stop treating it as though it alone is responsible for guarding the world.

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For a Separate Reading: Who Protects the World’s Interests?