On Oct. 8, a Houthi missile destroyed a Saudia airliner on the tarmac at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing its pilot and two other Saudi citizens. Two weeks later, Global Affairs Canada told Canadians to avoid the main airports in Riyadh and Dammam.
Three months earlier, Prime Minister Mark Carney had flown into Jeddah, the first Canadian prime minister to visit in 26 years, and signed more than $1 billion in deals on the bet that the kingdom was a safe place for Canadian money.
Two years ago, Saudi Arabia was selling itself as the Middle East’s safest bet. Nearly eight months into a regional war that no one seems able to end, it has become one of the front lines.
The Riyadh strike was not a one-off. Since Oct. 6, Houthi missiles and drones have struck airports in Abha, Riyadh and Dammam, killing 21 people and injuring more than 300. Iran’s proxies do not move as one. Hezbollah behaved like a crew that stands down when the boss says so. The Houthis are the enforcer who keeps collecting protection money long after the boss has called a truce.
I know these airports. I travelled through them back when the worst thing that could happen on the tarmac was a delay. I lived in these cities and worked at oil company Aramco’s headquarters, which the Houthis have now hit. In those years, Saudi Arabia was selling the future: Red Sea resorts, NEOM and an economy that would one day run on more than oil. It was also becoming the place where rivals came to talk, restoring ties with Tehran in 2023 and hosting talks on Ukraine. The bet was simple: a kingdom that talks to everyone gives no one a reason to attack it.
That bet didn’t fail on its own. A war Riyadh didn’t choose broke it, and the longer that war runs, the less of the old Saudi Arabia survives.
The broken bet
That war began on Feb. 28, when the United States and Israel struck Iran. Anyone who knows the Gulf could see who would take the return fire. Iran retaliated with missile and drone strikes across Saudi Arabia, and a drone attack forced Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery to shut down. Three years of patient diplomacy with Tehran bought no exemption. A country can declare itself neutral. The other side decides whether that means anything. Iran’s plan was to absorb the bombing and drive up the cost of oil and shipping until the war became too expensive to fight. Washington and Jerusalem escalated this war, and Riyadh is the one paying for it.
The spring ceasefire did not stop the bill from growing. Direct Iranian attacks largely faded after April 8, but Iran-backed groups in Yemen and Iraq kept striking the kingdom. In July, Saudi Red Sea oil exports fell sharply after the Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi shipping, cutting off the tanker route out of Yanbu that Riyadh had used to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
In the first quarter alone, the kingdom ran a deficit of about US$33.5 billion, nearly what it had projected for the entire year, as military spending rose 26 per cent. The IMF now expects the Saudi economy to shrink 3.3 per cent this year. Vision 2030, which the prime minister describes as an “ambitious economic transformation” plan, rests on the claim that Saudi Arabia is a safe place to put money. Every strike on an airport tests it.
None of this makes Riyadh a blameless bystander. Its air war and blockade in Yemen helped create what the UN called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, and Reuters has reported that the Saudi air force quietly struck Iran in late March.
Those are fair points, but they do not change who started this war. Two governments made that choice, and neither lives next door to Iran. Iraq set the pattern. Washington planned the 2003 invasion, and Gulf states spent the next two decades contending with the militias and refugees it unleashed. And it was the Houthis who walked away from the UN-brokered truce in place since 2022.
Assigning blame matters less than what comes next, and this war has no obvious exit. Wars end when someone can call them off, and in this one, nobody can. Washington wants out but keeps weighing new strikes. Tehran is so divided that U.S. President Donald Trump has complained he can’t tell who is in charge. Each ceasefire moves the fighting somewhere else. The April truce quieted Iran’s missiles, and the war resurfaced in Yemen and the Red Sea.
That has pushed the kingdom into a role it spent years trying to avoid. Now the kingdom that hosted peace talks is bombing Houthi positions in Yemen and fending off near-daily strikes on its airports and oil sites. It is also looking beyond Washington for protection. A treaty signed in Mecca in August warns Tehran that another major attack could draw Pakistan and Turkey into the war, and Egypt has said it is ready to defend the kingdom if asked.
For decades the Gulf ran on an understanding that the United States guaranteed security while the monarchies hedged with everyone else. That deal is giving way to one in which regional powers sign their own pacts and fight their own wars. Saudi leaders are now asking what American protection is still worth.
Ottawa’s direct stake
Canadians have more reason to ask that question than a travel advisory suggests. Ottawa and Riyadh only restored full diplomatic relations in 2023, after a rupture over a 2018 tweet about jailed activists. Workers in London, Ont. build armoured vehicles for the Saudi military. Ottawa can help by backing the UN process in Yemen, pressing for enforcement of the UN arms embargo on the Houthis, and telling Washington plainly that an open-ended war in the Gulf carries costs for Canadians, too.
The trouble with being the mediator is that you must stand in the middle, and that’s where the punches land. Saudi Arabia has now taken enough of them to start throwing its own. The region is watching to see which Saudi Arabia comes out of this war: the broker or the combatant.
If it is the combatant, the Middle East loses one of the few capitals that can still talk to all sides. As Canada and its allies work to loosen their dependence on Washington, we should look hard at what American and Israeli choices have cost a kingdom that, two years ago, was selling itself as the Middle East’s safest bet.
