Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels on Sunday struck a government-held port on the country’s Red Sea coast, killing several people and deepening fears over threats to strategic Middle East shipping routes and a potential return to civil war. They also said they attacked an oil facility in neighboring Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, Israel is rejecting a deal announced by President Donald Trump for Gaza. Details have emerged on the potential deal between Iran and Oman on managing the Strait of Hormuz. And the Pentagon is pressing the U.S. defense industry to accelerate production of weapons as concerns about shortages grow.
Here’s a look at developments across the Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.
Houthis target Aramco refinery and Red Sea port
The National Resistance Forces, a Yemeni government-allied force, said at least seven people - four troops and three civilians - were killed and 15 civilians were injured in the Houthi attack on Yemen’s Red Sea port of Mokha.
Fayed al-Noman, assistant undersecretary of the information ministry, said the rebels fired missiles and drones, severely damaging port buildings and piers as well as commercial goods and food supplies. The military later said the Houthis tried to attack with an explosive-laden unmanned boat, and that missiles landed in several areas, including near a television channel.
Mokha is one of the main ports under Yemen’s internationally recognized government and has been renovated to handle shipping that avoids the Houthi-held port of Hodeida.
The Houthis claimed the attack, saying they targeted military forces and warehouses.
Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesperson, said they also targeted an Aramco refinery in the Saudi city of Jazan with a drone in response to Saudi drones’ breaching Yemen’s airspace over the provinces of Hajjah and Saada.
The Saudi Energy Ministry reported a fire at a facility belonging to the Aramco refinery, with no casualties. The ministry did not say what caused it.
The attacks threaten to reignite Yemen’s civil war after a 2022 truce stopped major fighting in the impoverished Arab country.
- by Samy Magdy in Cairo
Details emerge about a potential Iran-Oman deal
The Strait of Hormuz, crucial to global supplies of oil and natural gas, was considered an international waterway before the war.
Iran and Oman, which bracket the strait, are working to finalize a temporary deal that would reopen it, with ships entering through a route near Iran and exiting through a route near Oman, according to two people familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Ships would transit without paying fees or tolls during the interim period.
The agreement is designed to restore an earlier, separate agreement between the U.S. and Iran and restart a 60-day clock for them to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program.
According to the two people, the deal is endorsed by members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and is expected to be jointly announced by Iran, Oman, the United States and the International Maritime Organization of the United Nations. But the people stressed the terms could still change before the deal is final.
- by Michelle Price in Washington and Aamer Madhani in New York
Netanyahu insists no Gaza withdrawal until Hamas disarms
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the deal on Gaza announced by Trump last month, saying that Israel’s military “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed.”
Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting that Israel is discussing plans for Gaza with the U.S., and some U.S. ideas are acceptable to Israel and others are not.
Trump had said Israeli forces would withdraw from the Palestinian territory as the militant Hamas group’s disarmament is completed. Israeli forces control over half the enclave.
“We remain committed to the road map,” said Bassem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, adding that it expects mediators and the U.S. to pressure Netanyahu. The Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparked the war in Gaza. A fragile ceasefire continues.
Pentagon seeks boost in weapons production
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell on Saturday said the department was focused on boosting munitions acquisitions to provide “the weapons our warfighters need at the pace the threat demands.”
The war with Iran has used up more of the U.S. military’s already diminished stockpiles of advanced missile interceptors, says a new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. The shortage has caused concern among allies like Ukraine and Taiwan who seek more U.S. military support.
Parnell’s statement said the push for speedier delivery was part of a broader modernization effort that predated the war that began with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Feb. 28.
Iran says negotiations ‘cannot resume’ until conditions met
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters that negotiations with Oman about “new maritime routes” through the Strait of Hormuz were in the final stages but “this, however, does not mean that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen.” That step requires conditions that “have been conveyed through intermediaries.”
Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council on Saturday said the strait will not reopen until the U.S. “corrects its behavior.”
Tehran’s demands include that the U.S. never threaten Iran again, a permanent end to the war with Iran and its armed allies, a lifting of the naval blockade of Iranian ports and a withdrawal of U.S. military from the area. The U.S. also must “completely compensate” Iran for war damage, lift sanctions and “unconditionally” release frozen assets.
The U.S. Central Command has said the blockade had redirected 53 commercial vessels, disabled two and boarded two through Saturday.
Araghchi said an “exchange of messages through intermediaries” is continuing with the U.S., but that doesn’t constitute negotiations, which “cannot resume until the violations of the memorandum of understanding have ended and the United States has remedied the provisions of the memorandum that it violated.”
Iranian media release undated video of Khamenei
Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency shared an undated video apparently showing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. The Associated Press cannot independently verify when and where the undated video was filmed.
Mehr shared a video in March that appeared to have been recorded at the same event, apparently a jurisprudence class.
Khamenei is understood to have stopped publicly teaching in 2024. He reportedly sustained serious injuries on the first day of the U.S.-Iran war and hasn’t been seen in public since.
It is not clear why Mehr released the footage.
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