Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Houthi strikes on Saudi energy infrastructure, Canada’s latest retaliatory tariffs against the United States, and a British ban on all Israeli goods made in the West Bank.
‘Dangerous Escalation’
Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a slew of missile and drone attacks across Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, marking one of the largest Houthi assaults on the kingdom since fighting erupted in July. The strikes mark another major escalation between Riyadh and the Iranian proxy group, and they raise fears that renewed fighting could transform into all-out war.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Houthi strikes on Saudi energy infrastructure, Canada’s latest retaliatory tariffs against the United States, and a British ban on all Israeli goods made in the West Bank.
‘Dangerous Escalation’
Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a slew of missile and drone attacks across Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, marking one of the largest Houthi assaults on the kingdom since fighting erupted in July. The strikes mark another major escalation between Riyadh and the Iranian proxy group, and they raise fears that renewed fighting could transform into all-out war.
Early Tuesday, the Houthi rebel group accused Saudi Arabia of targeting a Yemeni prison in Jawf province, killing at least 17 people and wounding around seven others. “Every aggression against our country and people will be met with a firm response,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesperson, warned on Tuesday.
Hours later, Saudi military officials said that the Houthis had targeted four Saudi cities, injuring more than 70 people, including women and children. According to Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki, a spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, the strikes also damaged critical civilian and military infrastructure, including oil facilities connected to Bab el-Mandeb strait, a logistics hub on the Red Sea coast, and King Khalid Air Base, located near Khamis Mushait.
These strikes signal a “dangerous escalation,” and the Saudi-led coalition will take “all necessary measures and actions to respond to the sources of the threat,” Maliki said on Tuesday.
In September 2014, Houthi forces seized control of Yemen’s capital, sparking a devastating civil war. In 2015, a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia intervened militarily to try to restore power to Yemen’s internationally recognized government. Although a 2022 truce largely eased fighting between the two forces, the Iran war’s destabilization of the region has risked upending that delicate detente, particularly after the Saudi-led military coalition attacked Sanaa International Airport in July to prevent a plane carrying Houthis flying back from Tehran from landing.
Since then, the Houthis have tried to advance on government-held positions, while Yemeni authorities have said that they aim to recapture all Houthi-held territory. According to the World Health Organization, renewed conflict killed at least 194 people and injured more than 880 others between Aug. 23 and Sept. 5. That includes at least 81 people killed during a Houthi ground assault near Bab el-Mandeb, which was part of a wider rebel effort to control traffic through the critical waterway; Bab el-Mandeb connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and is a vital alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.
Global energy prices reeled on Tuesday in the wake of the Houthis’ missile and drone attack. Brent crude briefly surpassed $99 per barrel for the first time since late July, and West Texas Intermediate hit its highest level since early June.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
“Dollar for dollar.” Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on around $20 billion worth of U.S. goods went into effect on Tuesday. The duties, which impact goods from textiles to cheese to furniture, mimic recent tariffs that the White House has imposed on Ottawa, and they signal the latest bout of escalatory measures in the two economies’ expanding trade war.
Last month, trade negotiations between U.S. and Canadian officials collapsed after Ottawa accused Washington of trying to destroy key Canadian industries. Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a slew of tariffs in response, with Ottawa pledging to go “dollar for dollar” with the White House’s duties. Accompanied by a war of words between Trump and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, relations between the North American neighbors have reached one of their lowest points in years.
Canada’s latest tariffs—and its larger pivot away from the United States as its No. 1 trading partner—“will come at a cost,” Carney said in a video message on Tuesday. However, “it doesn’t come close to the cost of standing still,” he added.
Just hours before Tuesday’s duties took effect, Trump took aim at Canadian plane manufacturer Bombardier on Truth Social, suggesting that the company will no longer be allowed to sell its products in the United States. “BUY AMERICAN. FLY ON AMERICAN AIRLINERS. ENJOY AMERICAN LIQUOR AND BEVERAGES. SAIL ON LAKE AMERICA,” Trump wrote. Last month, he signed an executive order requiring Lake Ontario to be renamed as “Lake America” in the U.S. federal government’s geographic names information system.
Punishing Israel. The United Kingdom announced its intention on Tuesday to impose sweeping trade restrictions on Israel, including a ban on all goods produced in the occupied West Bank. “Today marks the beginning of a new approach,” British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament, calling Israeli settlements in the West Bank “unlawful” and accusing extremist settlers of perpetrating “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” He added, “To those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements, let me say this: You will face the full force of U.K. sanctions.”
Miliband’s announcement cements London’s support for an International Court of Justice ruling in July 2024 that found Israel’s presence in the West Bank to be in violation of international law, including prohibitions on racial segregation and apartheid. It also lends support to similar trade bans by Canada and France, which have denounced Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
Although Western criticism of Israel’s West Bank occupation has grown in recent years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to shrug off foreign condemnation, and several of his cabinet members have repeatedly pushed for the construction of more settlements.
On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced that Israel will close the British consulate in Jerusalem, expel British representatives monitoring the Gaza cease-fire, end U.K. training of Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank, and bar 12 elected British officials from entering Israel, among other retaliatory measures.
An AfD victory. Thousands of people held a pro-democracy rally in Berlin on Tuesday to denounce the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s recent state election win. Carrying signs condemning some of the AfD’s trademark policies—including its anti-immigrant and pro-Russian stances—the backlash foreshadows what experts suspect will be two more tumultuous regional elections later this month.
On Sunday, the AfD won a landslide victory in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. With around 44 percent of the vote, this was a nativist party’s best-ever state election showing since the Nazi regime. Germany’s mainstream parties have long vowed to never work with the AfD, and the far-right party is classified as an extremist group in some regions of the country, including in Saxony-Anhalt.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has already ruled out any collaboration with the AfD, doubling down on the country’s so-called firewall against the far-right group. However, the hard-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance has signaled its intention to form a governing alliance with the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt.
Odds and Ends
First, the Louvre. Then, Paris’s Museum of Natural History. On Tuesday, another French collection joined the list of museums targeted by art heists in recent months. Investigators said a group of “well-equipped” and “well-informed” thieves sliced through a fence to enter the Renoir Museum in the French Riviera’s Cagnes-sur-Mer, stealing four valuable paintings. Local police arrived around five minutes after the alarm was triggered, forcing the suspects to abandon two of the masterpieces in the museum’s garden. However, Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano and Young Woman at the Well are still missing, and the culprits remain at large.
