Saudi Arabia can be hurt, but not broken by Houthi attacks

From the report

Missiles and drones can damage airports, disrupt oil infrastructure and spread fear among civilians. They can expose weaknesses in military defenses and impose significant economic costs. But inflicting damage is not the same as defeating a nation. The latest Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia have renewed questions about the Kingdom’s security, yet much of the commentary risks confusing its vulnerability to asymmetric warfare with a fundamental weakness of the Saudi state.

Saudi Arabia faces a serious and evolving security challenge. The Houthi movement has demonstrated its ability to threaten civilian and economic infrastructure with missiles and drones, exploiting the difficulties of defending a vast territory against relatively inexpensive weapons. These attacks must be taken seriously. However, they should also be assessed against the Kingdom’s history of surviving major political, military and security crises.

For more than a century, Saudi Arabia has confronted adversaries that sought to undermine its stability or challenge its regional position. In the 1960s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser supported revolutionary movements and deployed troops to Yemen, seeking to weaken the Saudi monarchy’s influence. The Kingdom survived that confrontation. In 1979, it faced the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the revolutionary ambitions of Iran’s new Islamic Republic. Eleven years later, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait brought a powerful Iraqi military machine dangerously close to Saudi territory.