War returns to Iran with Israel, US strikes

The forces of Yemen’s internationally recognised government said that the Houthis had fired ballistic missiles at the central city of Marib, which sits in a strategic oil-rich region, AFP reports.

“Houthi terrorist militias fired several ballistic missiles at the densely populated city of Marib,” the government forces said.

Yemen’s Houthis attacked a military headquarters at the presidential palace in Aden, which also serves as the seat of the internationally recognised government, media affiliated with the group reported, according to AFP.

The group targeted “the headquarters of military operations, led by Saudi officers, at the Al-Maashiq Palace in Aden, as well as weapons depots belonging to them”, it reported.

Yemen’s Houthis fired missiles at the presidential palace in Aden, which also serves as the headquarters of the internationally recognised government, security sources told AFP, while a journalist saw smoke rising from the site.

“Houthi missiles targeted the Al-Maashiq presidential palace in Aden,” the government’s interim capital, three local police sources said on condition of anonymity, after residents of the southern city reported hearing explosions.

Global finance firms including JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank are allowing Saudi Arabia-based staff to work from home after a series of Houthi strikes heightened security concerns in the kingdom, three people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

US investment firm Franklin Templeton has temporarily closed its Riyadh office and asked all staff based there to work from home until further notice, one of the people said. No end date has been set for the new working arrangements.

The moves are in response to escalating Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia over the past week, including an attack on the headquarters of oil giant Saudi Aramco on Tuesday and an earlier strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis says that regional actors have helped the group acquire “advanced technologies”, without identifying those involved, AFP reports.

The Houthis “have worked to obtain advanced technologies with the help of regional actors”, coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki told a briefing in Riyadh, adding that the group now had “ballistic missiles, attack and suicide drones, and fast explosive-laden boats”.

Dr. Rayed Krimly, deputy minister for public diplomacy at the Saudi foreign ministry, says the country reached out to Yemen’s Houthis in recent weeks as fighting escalates between the two sides, but the group refused to meet in Oman, AFP reports.

“At the beginning of this escalation, we asked them to meet in Muscat, Oman and they refused. This was the last communication which happened a few weeks ago,” the foreign ministry official said during a virtual briefing with reporters.

A Saudi foreign ministry official has accused Iran of encouraging the Houthis in their ongoing fight with the kingdom, adding that Tehran continues to arm and train the group, according to AFP.

“Iran continues to arm, train and support the Houthi militia in violation of UN security council resolutions,” Dr Rayed Krimly, deputy minister for public diplomacy at the foreign ministry, alleged during a virtual briefing with reporters.

US wholesale inflation surged past analysts’ expectations in September, marking its biggest jump since 2022 as the war in Iran sent fuel prices rocketing, AFP reports, citing government data.

The latest numbers, coming a day after hotter-than-anticipated consumer inflation, underscore the challenges that President Donald Trump faces in cooling prices and winning over cost-weary voters in November’s midterm elections.

The spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, Turki Al-Maliki, says that Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport has been subjected to 20 attacks since Oct 1, according to Al Jazeera.

He added that Houthi attacks on the airport have killed 17 people and injured 333 people between Oct 7-11.

The Oct 10 attack on the airport was carried out with 10 drones, missiles and other projectiles, Al-Maliki said at a news conference in Riyadh.

The Iranian navy’s media wing says that surveillance teams earlier identified an oil tanker that had caught fire in the prohibited zone of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s state-run Press TV reports.

More than 200,000 people have been displaced in Yemen in recent weeks as escalating fighting disrupts food and fuel supplies, Al Jazeera reports, citing the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

Alison Bottomley, an advocacy manager at the NRC, told Al Jazeera that Yemen had already been experiencing “one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world” before the latest escalation.

Now, shifting front lines in Taiz are cutting off civilians and preventing the entry of essential supplies, with some reports indicating a 50 per cent increase in food prices there, she said.

Ayatollah Ka’bi, a senior Iranian cleric, says that the lasting national security does not merely mean the absence of war, ISNA reports.

“Military readiness alone does not guarantee lasting security; a country must be able to withstand economic uncertainty, infrastructure vulnerabilities, and the possibility of renewed conflict,” he said.

Brigadier General Ali Jahanshahi, the commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces, says the forces are strongly deployed along the country’s entire border, from the northwest to the Makran coast, making any enemy plan for a ground offensive an “unattainable dream,” IRNA reports.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says that the country is facing its most intense blockade since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, accusing the United States of seeking to provoke public protests, AFP reports.

“Over the 48 years since the Revolution, we have never faced such an intense blockade, war and difficulties as we are facing now,” Pezeshkian said in a speech broadcast by state television.

He accused Washington of seeking to make life difficult for Iranians in order to fuel public anger and trigger unrest.

Pezeshkian said the US was focusing its efforts on making “the people become upset and face difficulties, and then for social protests to emerge so that they can achieve their sinister objectives”.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that military action cannot force a country into submission amid the US-Israel war on Iran, adding that his country “must find a way to strengthen national cohesion and unity,” Al Jazeera reports.

A summit between the European Union and Gulf countries in Riyadh has been postponed, Brussels has said, as Saudi Arabia faces sustained attacks from Yemen’s Houthis, AFP reports.

“The second Summit between the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council, originally planned for 24 October 2026 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has been postponed. A new date will be announced in due course,” the European Council representing the bloc’s member states said.

Shifting geopolitics and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East will have a lasting impact on world trade flows as companies hedge their bets against future shocks, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organisation, told Reuters.

Trade had contracted sharply in the Middle East as a result of the Iran war, despite a series of workarounds, and would take some time to bounce back, Okonjo-Iweala said in an interview, adding that some of the shifts could become permanent. The WTO forecast a 17 per cent drop in exports this year, with imports down about 15pc.

Yemen’s Houthis said they did not carry out any attack on the Madina region , shortly after Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted a missile targeting the area of the holy city, AFP reports.

“The Yemeni armed forces confirm that they have not carried out any operation today targeting Saudi territory, and that the Saudi enemy’s claims of an attack on Madina are a shameless and brazen lie,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on X.

Lebanese Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah has said that a car carrying hundreds of kilograms of explosives seized by Lebanese security forces earlier this week belonged to the group, as the government presses ahead with efforts to disarm Hezbollah, Reuters reports.

Deputy chief of the Iranian Army for coordination Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari says the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and that any passage through the strategic waterway must be coordinated with Iranian forces who maintain full control and surveillance over the area, IRNA reports.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony honoring army nurses, Sayyari said the situation was evident from oil flows and rising gasoline prices in the United States.

He said the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy maintains a strong presence west of the Strait of Hormuz, while the Iranian Army operates east of it, extending northward into the Sea of Oman.

If any passage takes place, it must be coordinated; otherwise, people will see in the news what happens, Sayyari said.

The Saudi-led military coalition said it had intercepted a cruise missile in the Madina region — home to one of Islam’s holiest cities that the Houthis previously vowed not to target, AFP reports.

“Interception and destruction of a cruise missile in the Madina region,” coalition spokesman Turki Al-Malki wrote, with the statement also published by state media.

The Yemeni army says its air defence units have intercepted a Saudi Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet over the northwestern province of Sa’ada, as hostilities between the two sides have entered a new phase of intensified air strikes and cross-border attacks, Press Tv reports.

Spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, announced in a statement early on Thursday that the supersonic and multirole warplane was struck by a locally manufactured surface-to-air missile while conducting hostile operations.

Saree added that the warplane, which had taken off from King Fahd Air Base in Taif, sustained a direct hit as a result of the strike and had to leave Yemeni airspace.

The Asian Cup scheduled for January in Saudi Arabia could be moved back a year to 2028 “if we need to”, the continent’s top football official said, following a series of Houthi attacks on the country, AFP reports.

But AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa also said they were in “no hurry” to make a decision over Asia’s premier football tournament.

The 2027 Asian Cup is supposed to kick off on January 7 in the Saudi cities of Jeddah, Riyadh and Al Khobar.

The kingdom has in recent days come under sustained attack in a dramatic escalation in the war with the Iran-backed Houthi group.

US President Donald Trump said that the war with Iran would end “very soon,” predicting that oil prices would fall sharply once the conflict concludes, Anadolu reports.

“The Iran war will end very soon … Soon, as they want it to end,” Trump told reporters in Montana.

“They’ll never have a nuclear weapon, and oil prices will drop like a rock.”

Earlier, addressing a rally in Montana, Trump expressed uncertainty over which Iranian officials the US was negotiating with as Washington sought to end the conflict.

“They don’t have a navy. They don’t have an air force. Their army is decimated. Their leaders are gone.

“I should have probably left their leaders because I don’t know who the hell we’re negotiating with,” he said.