Houthis have struck Riyadh's main airport 20 times this month, the Saudi-led coalition says, as missiles hit Aden's presidential palace

The most important economic point is geographic. Saudi Arabia's main way to export crude without passing through the Strait of Hormuz is its pipeline to Red Sea ports. A Houthi war on the Red Sea coast and Saudi soil puts that alternative route under the same kind of risk the Gulf route already carries. The exposed groups are Saudi aviation and tourism, foreign investors in the kingdom's development program, shipping insurers on the Bab el-Mandeb route, and importers who assumed Riyadh could reroute supply. The Houthis cannot defeat the coalition. They can, however, impose repeated costs with cheap drones and missiles, and Saudi air defenses must pay far more to stop each one. That asymmetry has held since the 2019 Abqaiq attack temporarily cut half of Saudi crude output. Markets price the Hormuz risk but treat Saudi Arabia's Red Sea route as safe, and the desk sees that as the point where the consensus is likeliest to be wrong. The likelier outcome over the coming months is continued Houthi strikes on Saudi airports and infrastructure, rising insurance costs on Red Sea routes and delays to foreign investment in the kingdom. That depends on Iran continuing to supply the group while it is itself under blockade. It would be proved wrong by a Saudi-Houthi truce or by a coalition advance that secures the coast and ends cross-border fire.