THE WASHINGTON POST: Saudi Arabia joins US military strikes on Iranian proxies

Fighter jets from the United States and Saudi Arabia conducted joint military strikes overnight targeting Iranian proxy forces in Iraq, officials said, marking what appeared to be Riyadh’s direct entry into the ongoing conflict between Washington and Tehran.

US Central Command said in a statement that the two countries hit “logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq” in response to more than 30 drone attacks directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in recent days. The Saudi Defence Ministry acknowledged its involvement in the operation but provided little detail.

The two countries launched strikes hours after US forces in the Middle East intercepted multiple ballistic missiles launched by Iran, thwarting what officials called an “attempted surprise attack” on American personnel in the region.

The developments threatened to upend a recent pause in hostilities that President Donald Trump had sought in a bid to advance stalled peace negotiations. The strikes signalled a potential expansion of the five-month war, though it was not immediately clear if the thwarted missile attack and the US-Saudi operation were directly related.

Iran said it had targeted a US base in Jordan in response to “aggressive actions by the US military.” Jordan said Wednesday its air defences had intercepted five Iranian missiles.

The Saudis’ role in Tuesday’s strikes represents a “major step” in the conflict for Riyadh, one that may signal deeper involvement to come, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

“They’ve lost patience and taken a step that they’ve been reluctant to take in the past, directly attacking other Arab organisations,” Mr Cancian said. “It’s also important because it might signal that the Saudis would be willing to allow the United States to use bases in Saudi Arabia, whether for attacks directly on Iran or for operations” in the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia, in a statement by its Foreign Ministry, said it launched the strikes after Iran-backed militias in Iraq targeted Saudi oil facilities. It said the kingdom was “not seeking escalation” but would not hesitate to respond.

In Iraq, the Popular Mobilisation Forces, a grouping of mostly Iran-backed armed factions, said 20 of its members were killed.

The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, was up about 3.5 per cent at $US87 a barrel on Wednesday after the overnight attacks. Oil prices last week spiked over the threat of a Red Sea blockade, but had eased more recently.

Despite repeat rounds of negotiations, Washington and Tehran have failed to end a standoff over access to the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf waterway that’s vital to the movement of Middle Eastern oil, and last week, the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen declared a blockade against Saudi Arabia’s oil shipments in the Red Sea.

The announcement compounded economic worries caused by Iran’s shuttering of the strait since the US and Israel launched the war in late February.

In recent days, Saudi Arabia has attacked Houthi sites in Yemen, hoping to weaken the group’s ability to exert pressure there, according to analysis by the Institute for the Study of War.

The US supported Saudi Arabia’s years-long bombing campaign in Yemen that sought to dislodge the Houthis. The militant group remains one of Iran’s most significant allied forces.

Anna Jacobs, a nonresident fellow with the Arab Gulf states Institute, another think tank, acknowledged the significance of Riyadh’s involvement in Tuesday’s targeting of Iranian proxies. The Saudis, she said, are “feeling more pressure now” to do more militarily “to restore deterrence.” But that does not mean abandoning diplomacy, which “remains core to their strategy of managing Iran and regional security more broadly,” Professor Jacobs added.

“It’s not either, or. … But also I’m viewing the Saudi attacks on Yemen and Iraq as still relatively contained,” she said, characterising the development as “more in the realm of sending a message to Iran and its armed partners in the region.”

Mr Trump had declared the Iran war over in May, following the announcement of a ceasefire. But US military operations in the region did not end at that time, with two aircraft carriers patrolling nearby and continued air patrols, limited exchanges of fire and then a resumption of hostilities in July.

To date, 18 American service members have been killed and more than 600 wounded in the conflict. Four US troops died this month after the fighting with Iran resumed. Three perished July 17 in an Iranian ballistic missile strike on a base in Jordan. Another was killed the following day during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone at a base in Iraq.