Yemen's Houthis said they attacked an oil facility Sunday in southwestern Saudi Arabia, the latest attack by the Iranian-backed rebels on the kingdom.Meanwhile, Iran has made new demands about the restart of negotiations and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the Pentagon is pressing the U.S.
defense industry to accelerate production of weapons.Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, said they targeted an Aramco refinery in the city of Jazan with a drone.The attack was in response to Saudi drones' breaching Yemen's airspace over the provinces of Hajjah and Saada, he said.Early on Sunday, the Saudi Energy Ministry reported a fire at a facility belonging to the Aramco refinery without casualties.
The ministry said the fire was extinguished but it didn't describe its cause.Sunday's Houthi attack is the latest in a series of missile and drone attacks that targeted Saudi Arabia and its shipping in the Red Sea.A Yemeni government official said Sunday that the Houthis also attacked a crucial port on the Red Sea.Fayed al-Noman, assistant undersecretary of the information ministry, said the Houthis fired missiles and drones on the Mocha port.It's one of the main ports under Yemen's internationally recognized government, renovated in recent years to handle shipping that avoids the Houthi-held ports in Hodeida.There was no immediate comment from the Houthis.The escalation threatens to reignite Yemen's civil war more than four years after a 2022 truce stopped major fighting in the impoverished Arab country.Speaking to reporters in Tehran on Sunday, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said an "exchange of messages through intermediaries" is continuing with the United States, but that doesn't constitute negotiations."From our perspective, negotiations cannot resume until the violations of the memorandum of understanding have ended and the United States has remedied the provisions of the memorandum that it violated," he said.He added that negotiations ...