Authored by Larry C. Johnson via Sonar21,
Riyadh has a simple method for dealing with Houthi claims. It announces that its air defenses intercepted something, says nothing about everything else, and hopes the world changes the subject. Aramco, a company that publishes its quarterly earnings to the decimal point, suddenly develops a vow of silence whenever someone asks whether its refineries are on fire.
So let me try something different. For the length of this column, I am going to ignore the Saudi government and Aramco entirely and take Ansar Allah's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, at his word. Not because Saree is a paragon of precision. Military spokesmen everywhere, including in Washington, inflate their results. I do it because the exercise tells you what the Houthis believe they are doing, what they are aiming at, and what Saudi Arabia stands to lose if even half of it is true. Since October 10, the answer is: quite a lot.
The target list
Between October 10 and October 29, Saree issued at least eight statements claiming strikes inside the kingdom. Read them together and a pattern jumps out. This is not random harassment. It is a campaign against three things: the capital, the oil export chain and the air bases that run the war in Yemen.
Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport appears in seven of those statements, on October 10, 11, 12, 19, 24, 26 and 29. Saree has declared it a "military target" and told airlines and travelers to stay aw
