„No country can ever have a 100% interception rating, that just doesn‘t really exist,“ Elizabeth Dent, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told CBS News, but that „was a hell of a one to miss.“
Saudi Arabia spent $83 billion on defense last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute — far more than any other country in the Middle East, including Israel.
So why has the kingdom struggled to stop the Houthi barrage?
(October 9, 2026)
Am 8. Oktober 2026 haben die parlamentarischen Beratungen über die Fortsetzung der Beteiligung bewaffneter deutscher Streitkräfte an der von der Europäischen Union geführten Operation European Union Naval Force (EUNAVFOR) Aspides begonnen.
Daten und Fakten
– Die personelle Obergrenze soll unverändert bis zu 350 Soldatinnen und Soldaten betragen.
– Das Mandat soll bis zum 31. Oktober 2027 verlängert werden.
– EUNAVFOR Aspides („Schilde“) ist eine Operation der Europäischen Union. Der Einsatz wurde am 8. Februar 2024 von der EU beschlossen. Die Bundesregierung sprach sich für eine deutsche Beteiligung am 16. Februar 2024 aus und das Parlament gab am 23. Februar 2024 grünes Licht.
– Der deutsche Beitrag zum Einsatz umfasst derzeit Stabspersonal im Hauptquartier im griechischen Larissa, sowie auf dem Führungsschiff der Operation. Darüber hinaus erfolgen regelmäßige Einsatzflüge zur Bereitstellung luftgestützter Seeraumüberwachung und die grundsätzliche Möglichkeit zur Beteiligung mit seegehenden Einheiten.
(…)
Einsatzgebiet
Das Einsatzgebiet von EUNAVFOR Aspides umfasst die internationalen Gewässer im Roten Meer, im Golf von Aden, im Arabischen Meer, im Golf von Oman und im Persischen Golf. Im Bereich der Straße von Hormus gibt es allerdings ein gesondert ausgewiesenes Einsatzgebiet mit besonderen Regelungen. Dort gibt es für Aspides derzeit keine Befugnisse für das Minenräumen oder den Schutz von Schiffen.
„Terrorism targets innocent people and seeks to spread fear and instability. It must be confronted with resolve,“ said Netanyahu in a statement posted to X. „Israel looks forward to a strong Middle East—one that stands united against threats, protects its people, and builds a future of security, cooperation, and prosperity for all the peoples of our region.“
„We may. We‘re gonna look at it,“ Mr. Trump said when asked about the possibility as he left the White House for a campaign rally in Tennessee. „We just found out about the recent attack [on the airport]. So we‘ll make a decision– we move very quickly.“
Mr. Trump was also asked about whether the Houthi strike on Riyadh‘s airport would change his previously announced decision not to launch any potential strikes on Iran until after the midterms.
„Well, we‘re gonna take a look,“ he responded.
Yemen’s Houthis say they carried out Saturday’s missile attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid Airport, which killed 12 people and wounded about 300, some critically.
Military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group launched several operations against the airport, “resulting in the disruption of air traffic at the airport and its complete closure”.
Macron emphasized that the French military did not intend to take part in any fighting. „Not to involve ourselves in any conflict, but to protect the site,“ he clarified. Macron also repeated that France was seeking to achieve the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz through diplomatic means, in particular by holding talks with „the Iranians“ and „the Omanis.“
Saudi Arabia on Saturday confirmed that Yemen’s Houthi rebels tried to attack its capital with a ballistic missile, the first targeting of Riyadh since the escalation in fighting with the Tehran-backed rebels that has opened a new front in the Iran war.
The statement by the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis came long after the dawn attempt, which the coalition said was intercepted. Some residents in Riyadh heard an explosion. Later, some saw a plume of smoke near the airport. There were no reports of casualties or damage.
(September 11, 2016)
Teil I: Die Militärmanöver
Teil II: Nachspiel
Teil III: Langer Marsch eines Molochs
Teil IV: Die Kommandokette
Teil V: Duplikat, Drone, Plan
Teil VI: Die Attentate – Ablauf, Hergang und Widersprüche
15 JAHRE TERRORKRIEG UND 11. SEPTEMBER: Wie alles begann
Soweit nicht anders gekennzeichnet, basiert dieser Artikel auf der fünfstündigen Film-Dokumentation von Massimo Mazzucco, die untenstehend zu sehen ist, sowie auf den oben verlinkten Artikeln „Langer Marsch eines Molochs“ und „Die Attentate – Ablauf, Hergang und Widersprüche“, wo entsprechend die Quellen angegeben sind.
Russian President Vladimir Putin just held a high-stakes bilateral meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Bishkek. The optics and message were unmistakable.
The battery was moved from the eastern island of Karpathos to Crete, where there is a major US base at Souda, the reports said.
The aim is to bolster air defence around Souda‘s strategically important naval and air facilities, which serve both the Greek Armed Forces and the United States and NATO.
The Souda base plays a pivotal role in supporting allied operations across the wider region, making its protection particularly critical under the current security conditions.
CNN producers in the Ukrainian capital heard several explosions and saw smoke over the city, as an air raid alert stretched on for hours. Massive fires lit up the night sky over the capital, video by Reuters news agency showed.
Ukraine has been relatively successful at intercepting the massive numbers of drones that Russia uses in its large-scale attacks. But in recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly exploited Kyiv’s near-zero stocks of Patriot interceptor missiles, which are needed to defend against faster-moving ballistic missiles.
Wie Simplicius76 bereits am 7. Juli 2026 detailliert ausführte, produziert Lockheed Martin derzeit rund 650 PAC-3-Abfangraketen pro Jahr — für die gesamte Welt. Das sind lächerliche 54 Stück pro Monat. Die Ukraine allein bräuchte ein Vielfaches davon, denn doktrinär werden pro anfliegender Rakete mindestens zwei, oft vier oder gar sechs Interceptoren abgefeuert.
(…)
Die Lieferkette für eine einzelne PAC-3 umfasst über 400 Zulieferbetriebe. Die Endmontage allein dauert sechs Wochen. Die Gesamtvorlaufzeit liegt bei mehr als zwei Jahren. Das ist kein Produktionssystem — das ist ein bürokratisches Monster, das für einen kurzen, intensiven Konflikt völlig ungeeignet ist.
Verschärfend kommt hinzu: Die USA haben im März 2026 ihren eigenen Krieg gegen den Iran begonnen und brauchen ihre Patriot-Bestände nun selbst.
(August 6, 2026)
Media reports have also said that the US has used up nearly all of its ATACMS missiles and Precision-Strike Missiles, which were both used extensively in strikes on Iran.
Trump also responded to a report from The Washington Post that said he lashed out at US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth over the munitions shortages, which one source told the outlet was part of the reason why Trump held off on his threats to dramatically escalate the war.
Sources told the Post that on the sidelines of a recent cabinet meeting at Camp David, Trump vented his frustration at Hegseth over the munitions shortages. The report said that Hegseth then blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for both the shortages and for failing to ensure Trump was informed about the issue.
(July 27, 2026)
Note: Estimated inventories today account for additional interceptor use and new deliveries since the April 8 ceasefire. THAAD deliveries during the ceasefire outpaced estimated use over the same period, resulting in higher inventories today than in April. Patriot calculations include the latest MSE variant and PAC-3s. Several hundred PAC-2s, not represented in the chart, are estimated to remain in the U.S. inventory.
Source: Authors’ calculations based on FY 2027 DOD budget materials and publicly released information. Methodology detailed in Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, “Last Rounds? Status of Key Munitions at the Iran War Ceasefire,” CSIS, April 21, 2026.
Saudi Arabia said on Saturday that its coalition forces struck Houthi militia in Yemen after the Iran-backed group claimed to have attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea earlier in the week.
Air defenses in Saudi Arabia reportedly intercepted two ballistic missiles from Yemen.
The latest salvos appeared to indicate an escalation in fighting in a second front in the Iran war.
The structural reason attribution stays murky is itself worth naming because the „Islamic Resistance in Iraq“ is not a single group but an umbrella of interchangeable front names, staffed largely by Kataib Hezbollah personnel, under which the harder-line factions operate. Attacks surface under disposable labels while the parent organizations issue denials, distributing deniability by design. In that framework, the absence of a claim is not evidence of an outside hand; it is the system working as intended.
Which leaves open a possibility that neither the proxy-signal nor the internal-defiance reading captures: that the strikes serve simply to manufacture instability in a region whose neutrality makes it a soft and symbolically useful target. When drones are intercepted over the cities, their debris cleared and their intended target never confirmed, even the object of the attack becomes a matter of inference.
(March 3, 2026)
For long-range defence, Iran has developed the Bavar-373 which has comparable capabilities to the Russian S-300. For short range air defence, the country has reverse engineered the Chinese HQ-7 as the Ya Zahr, and in 2021 the Zoubin system was unveiled.
Besides these copy cat systems, the country also leans on ageing Russian air defences, most notably the S-300PMU-2 battery.
However, Israel destroyed a significant number of these components in October 2024 and again during the 12-Day War the following year. Worse still, the Israeli Defence Forces learned all they can about the system in 2015 during joint air drills with Greece, which formerly operated its predecessor, the S-300PMU-1.
The exercise allowed Israel to develop comprehensive electronic warfare (EW) technologies specifically designed to compromise radars like those used with S-300 batteries: the Icebreaker missile and Haroop loitering munitions.
(July 18, 2026)
Pakistan deployed the HQ-9 battery to Saudi Arabia in May 2026 under the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement, according to the Times of Islamabad and The Daily Star. The system is operated exclusively by Pakistani military personnel — not Saudi or American crews — and functions as a standalone package integrated with Pakistan’s own command-and-control architecture rather than with Saudi Arabia’s existing air defense network, according to Defence Security Asia reporting from May 2026. The Jerusalem Post noted that Pakistan “deploys the defenses as part of a package because of their interoperability with other Pakistani systems,” a formulation that carries an embedded concession: the HQ-9 is not interoperable with anything else at the base.
(…)
The HQ-9 family’s combat record is now the most extensively documented peacetime marketing success that has failed every wartime test it has faced. During Operation Sindoor in May 2025, Indian Air Force Su-30MKI fighters launched two BrahMos-A air-launched cruise missiles at Pakistan’s Nur Khan Airbase near Rawalpindi, and Pakistan fired approximately 18 HQ-9B interceptors in response, according to Indian Defence Research Wing. The result was zero confirmed intercepts — both BrahMos missiles struck their targets, an 0-for-18 record that prompted Brandon J. Weichert, national security writer at The National Interest, to call the system “a Frankenstein’s Monster” reverse-engineered from Russian S-300 technology.
(July 18, 2026)
A report shared by Axios, said Iran allegedly fired a ballistic missile at a U.S. base in the Kingdom. Unverified videos circulating on social media purport to show a direct impact at Prince Sultan Air Base, though neither Washington nor Riyadh has officially confirmed the authenticity of the footage or the reported strike.
(July 18, 2026)
Footage surfaced showing Iranian ballistic missiles flying over Amman, Jordan’s capital, reportedly targeting a U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia.
2. The United States has continued its effort to degrade the Iranian ability to attack commercial traffic around the Strait of Hormuz. The United States has also conducted strikes further inland, the purpose of which is unclear.
The strikes also collapsed a tower at Iran’s Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, a key trade route for landlocked, neighboring Afghanistan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
Chabahar port, which Iran had been running with support from India, has been a repeated target of American airstrikes. Iranian state media acknowledged a third round of strikes on the facility without immediately acknowledging the tower’s collapse.
At least 8 dead, several more injured in attacks on Bandar Abbas, Bandar Khamir, Qeshm Island, Sirik and Iranshahr
Speaking during an interview on Fox News, Trump said the United States would broaden its target list if diplomacy failed.
“Next week it gets really bad for them,” President Trump said. “We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”
He also said energy facilities remained under consideration: “I’ll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we’ll hit energy targets.”
More than 30 civilians have been killed in US attacks on southern Iran over the past few days, according to Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani.
Thirteen US missiles struck facilities at a barracks in Bampour killing seven personnel from the 388th Brigade and injuring several others, it said. The army said “passive defence measures” limited casualties.
Qatar’s defense ministry said on Sunday morning local time its armed forces had intercepted a missile attack targeting the country.
Earlier on Thursday, Mehr News Agency reported that the Aq Tekeh Khan Bridge in the northern Golestan province had been struck by a projectile.
A US official told Axios that the American military targeted two railway bridges in northern Iran with cruise missiles as part of Wednesday‘s strikes.
The attack marked the first reported US strike on Iranian transportation infrastructure since the ceasefire took effect on April 8.