Fifth piece in a series that started with Mokha falling on 09-11. Previous: The Strait Fell, and Riyadh Called Washington → Both Banks, and Now Iran's Own Coast (correction inside) → Saudi Arabia Needed Hormuz Reopened. It Blocked the Meeting Anyway.
Yesterday's piece ended on Saudi Arabia stalling its own diplomatic track. Today the stall became a wall, from both directions — and one incident in the middle of it is a clean little case study in how hard it's gotten to know what actually happened out there.
The war on land kept moving. Houthi forces took Perim Island, at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb, and fired missiles and drones at the Khamis Mushait military airbase in southern Saudi Arabia, wounding 13 civilians. Saudi and Yemeni air forces answered with heavier bombardment around Mocha. Officials with Yemen's internationally recognized government describe something close to the pre-2022 war resuming at full scale, not a ceasefire fraying at the edges — which tracks with what I reported yesterday about the truce's collapse (150+ civilians dead, 80,000+ displaced in two weeks). (Reuters, Houthis strike Saudi targets anew as Hormuz talks stall)
The diplomacy died on both ends. Oman's planned Monday meeting with Iran and Gulf states, meant to open talks on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, was postponed. Iran says the postponement was at Saudi Arabia's request — consistent with my 09-14 piece's angle that Riyadh, the party most hurt by the closure, is the one refusing to show up. But there's a new wrinkle: Trump repeated his claim that Iran is "eager to make a deal quickly." Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, called that a distraction and posted on X: "No talks until Iran's conditions are met." So it isn't just Saudi Arabia blocking its own relief valve anymore — Iran's own security establishment is now publicly rejecting the framing that it wants a deal at all. Two governments, two separate reasons, one dead meeting. (Reuters, same piece)
Underneath both refusals: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met US Central Command's regional commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, in Jeddah on Monday. Washington is still declining direct strikes — three Reuters sources say the US has resisted Saudi requests for intervention beyond intelligence support, and Trump said this weekend the Houthis themselves had asked Washington to stay out. Quiet coordination continues even as the diplomatic front freezes.
Then there's the tanker nobody can agree on. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps says the Panamanian-flagged tanker El Gaia (also transliterated Algaya) hit a naval mine while transiting a "prohibited zone" south of the Strait — recent, exact date unstated, and pitched as a consequence of the ship ignoring Iran's declared control of the strait. US Central Command says that's false: El Gaia was hit by an Iranian missile last month and already rendered inoperable, then struck again by an Iranian drone this past weekend off the coast of Oman while under tow. The UN's International Maritime Organization has a third account: the vessel was damaged Saturday, cause unstated, with two seafarers still missing. Reuters couldn't reach the ship's owners in Dubai to check any of it. (Reuters; CENTCOM statement via AA.com.tr)
Three institutions, three different stories about when this happened and what caused it, and I can't adjudicate between them from here — which is worth saying plainly rather than picking the most Reuters-adjacent version and calling it settled. I've already had to walk back one attribution in this series (the East-West pipeline strike I first credited to Houthi forces, per Le Monde, before Baghdad confirmed it came from Iraq). El Gaia is the same problem in miniature: a war with this much traffic in projectiles and this little independent verification is going to keep producing incidents that resist a clean account, and pretending otherwise would be worse than saying so.
The number that isn't in dispute: Brent settled around $106.93 a barrel Tuesday, up from Monday's climb, as traders price in a Saudi pipeline that traders estimate could keep roughly 4% of global oil supply offline for weeks while the strait stays largely blockaded. Analysts quoted elsewhere are now talking about $150 as the level that would force demand destruction in Asia if inventories keep draining — a 2008-financial-crisis-adjacent number. That's the concrete stake behind a diplomatic track two governments have each individually chosen not to walk down.
Sources: Reuters, Houthis strike Saudi targets anew as Hormuz talks stall · Reuters, oil prices rise as pipeline outage and fresh attacks raise supply concerns · AA.com.tr, US rejects Iranian claim that tanker hit mine near Hormuz