Iran war spreads to Red Sea and Caspian, but the Gulf is left quiet as US forgoes strikes
For the first time in two weeks, the US did not launch any attacks, but the Iran-backed Houthis did fire missiles at Saudi Arabia
The Iran war broadened over the weekend despite a pause in U.S. strikes, as Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis attacked Saudi oil installations along the Red Sea coast and Iran accused Ukraine of targeting one of its vessels in the Caspian Sea.
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The U.S. military said on Saturday its naval blockade against Iran "remains in full effect" but did not explain why it halted a streak of 13 nights of escalating strikes.
There were also no weekend reports of attacks by Iran on neighbours, similar to its daily rejoinders to the U.S. attacks.
Asked about the pause, a senior official in the US administration said that Donald Trump "has always been clear that his preference is diplomacy, but he has shown Iran what will happen if they fail to come to the table in a serious way."
The US president has decided, for now, to back away from plans to ramp up attacks on Iran, the New York Times said on Saturday, citing two people briefed on the discussion.
The president and his advisers, the newspaper said, have concerns about expanding the conflict, depleting defense stockpiles, alienating Middle East Gulf allies and affecting energy supplies and the global economy.
Vice President JD Vance and Gen. Dan Caine both raised concerns with Donald Trump about the U.S. munitions stockpile during a White House meeting on Friday, a U.S. official told CNN.
Operations are "on a hold," a Department of Defense source told the broadcaster on Saturday.
Despite this, Saturday's fighting between Iran's Houthi allies and Saudi Arabia showed that the war, could affect a second major shipping route along with the Strait of Hormuz and reignite Yemen's civil war.
Separately, Iran's Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of attacking an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, saying one sailor was killed and another injured in an attack it described as "hostile and criminal", state news agency IRNA said.
The Iranian denunciation came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia was passing its satellite observations in the Middle East on to Iran to enable it to direct strikes in the region.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group struck sites belonging to Saudi state oil company Aramco in the cities of Jizan and Yanbu on Saturday.
Two missiles aimed at oil installations in Yanbu were intercepted, but smoke was seen rising from the direction of the refinary in Jizan.
Yanbu is Saudi Arabia's main Red Sea oil port and has become a key route for Saudi oil skirting the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has blockaded.
The Houthis have declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia over the past week, and Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said all Saudi oil facilities could be targets.
In Yemen, officials said the air force of the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government, which has opposed the Houthis for more than a decade, struck Houthi sites in the Marib and al-Jawf provinces.
The officials said both sides in Yemen's civil war were mobilising forces along the front. The civil war, in which famine and fighting killed hundreds of thousands, has been paused by a ceasefire since 2022.
Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition battling the Houthis since the Iran-aligned fighters captured Yemen's capital, Sanaa.
That truce broke down this month, with the Houthis effectively joining the wider war their Iranian allies have waged since being attacked by the United States and Israel five months ago.