Riyadh Airport Remains Closed After Houthi Drone and Missile Strikes

Start with what should not be controversial: an airport is not a military target. Saudi officials say twelve people were killed and more than 300 wounded in Saturday's strike, with another death on Sunday. Whoever is sitting in a terminal, whether a Filipino nurse, a Pakistani construction worker or a family heading home, did not choose this war. The Houthis claimed responsibility. A movement that cannot say "we are fighting for Yemen's people" with a straight face while striking civilians in Riyadh deserves condemnation, and the Left should say so without hedging.

But condemnation is not a strategy, and the strategy Donald Trump is floating is one we have already watched fail.

Trump says the United States could join Saudi Arabia in retaliatory operations. Join them in what? Saudi Arabia led a coalition into Yemen in 2015 with American refueling, intelligence and bombs. Years of airstrikes produced what the UN called the world's worst humanitarian crisis: famine, cholera, a generation of malnourished children. They did not dislodge the Houthis, who ended up stronger, better armed and more battle-hardened. The truce that began in 2022 held more than any bombing campaign ever did, and it came from negotiation. Washington's own 2025 air campaign against the Houthis ended in an Omani-brokered ceasefire, not a victory. Each round of escalation has taught the Houthis that they can absorb punishment and the other side cannot absorb them.

Then there is the question the President never seems to ask: who authorized this? Congress did not authorize the earlier strikes, and it has not authorized this one. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not a president musing about retaliation at a press gaggle. In 2019 Congress passed a resolution to end U.S. involvement in the Yemen war, and Trump vetoed it. Many Republicans who rail about forever wars on the stump fall quiet the moment a Gulf monarchy is involved. Democrats are not blameless either. Too many of them go silent when the word "deterrence" appears. A party that claims to have learned from Iraq should not need a body count to rediscover the War Powers Act.

Watch the other half of the story, because it is the one that matters. Iran's foreign minister says Tehran is ready to help broker dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Iran's Foreign Ministry is reviewing a U.S. response to a proposal on the Strait of Hormuz. Skeptics will say Tehran arms the Houthis and is now posing as peacemaker. True, and irrelevant. You do not make peace only with people you trust. Saudi Arabia understood that when it restored relations with Iran in 2023, and it is the reason Riyadh was spared years of this violence. The Saudis have more to lose from a regional blaze than anyone, and the Houthis' main patron is now offering a channel. A president who calls himself a dealmaker should take the deal and test it, rather than reach for a bombing campaign that hands the hardliners in every capital a reason to stay hardline.

There is also the matter of who profits. American weapons makers have spent a decade selling Riyadh the munitions that sustained a failed war, and every new escalation guarantees another order. Meanwhile the people paying are those in the terminals and, far more numerous and far less visible, the Yemenis in the hospitals and breadlines. They don't make the travel advisories.

The measure of this moment is not how hard we hit back. It is whether twelve dead in Riyadh become a pretext for the next phase of a war that has already killed far more people than anyone can count. Demand a vote in Congress. Demand that American arms stop feeding the cycle. Demand that the diplomatic opening, however cynical its source, be taken seriously before a single bomb is dropped.