Houthis Pound Saudi Airports & Trump Throws Putin a Lifeline | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

dee takos (0:00)

This episode is presented by VAER Watches. Go to vaerwatches.com/theteamhouse. What's up, dude? We're live, just, I'm good. How you doing?

Andy Milburn (0:10)

Not bad.

dee takos (0:11)

Thank you for the morning. No problem, of course. We're live and alive.

Andy Milburn (0:16)

So I didn't show up just having stepped out of the shower.

dee takos (0:19)

I know, how you normally do. What's going on over there?

Andy Milburn (0:26)

Yeah, so here's, and you can stop me at any time, right? Just to bring everyone up to speed on what's been happening here, not just in the country I am, which is Saudi Arabia, but in the Middle East generally. So it's been a busy week for the Houthis, right? And a few days ago, the 6th through the 7th, we had missiles and drones hit APA airport in the south here, but also King Khalid, which is the main international airport in Riyadh. Three were killed, including a Saudi pilot, Saudia Airlines, which is their national flag carrier, and at least one aircraft was injured, injured, was damaged.

And then a day later, on the 8th, there was another strike that killed another three people on the airport, on the main airport too. And then on the 10th, which was yesterday, of course, there was a big strike in terms, I mean, it was another ballistic missile, not that the missile was any bigger, but it hit the complex of terminals three and four are joined together. So it basically hit two terminals, brought them, I don't know whether it brought the roofs down, but it caused extensive damage, killed 12 and injured 309, you know, 309 who injured badly enough to be treated in hospital, and a number of those unspecified number is still critical. So, you know, among the dead, now those are the domestic terminals. So I don't know how accurate Houthi targeting is. By all accounts, it is pretty damn accurate. I mean, they were just, you know, from what I'm seeing from hearing, hitting a Saudi Airlines jet was not an accident. So it may well have been that they intended to hit the domestic terminals. However, among the dead, there were four Saudis, but they're also foreigners. Two Bangladeshis who, you know, anyone who's been to the airport here know that a lot of, there's a lot of Bangladeshis, third country nationals work in the airport. Also an American who's yet to be identified, a national so far, who's Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, and Palestine, ironically, okay. So right now, the airport's closed. Something like, you know, saying 300 flights have been canceled in the last 24 hours. And basically all embassies here have told their citizens to stay away from the airport. So that's going to have a big impact on, you know, on Saudi Arabia, the economy, but also kind of the international, a couple of major international events coming up. The Houthis have, you know, have doubled down. They said that today that they are, they warned all airlines against using any Saudi airports. And previously they'd said, look, you can, you can enter Saudi airspace if you request permission from the Houthis. I don't know how you do that, you know, you call out Houthi traffic control. I don't know what their call sign is. But now they're saying they're not even going to let anyone fly over airspace, Saudi airspace. So, you know, I mean, how they can stop that, who knows?

But nevertheless, serious situation, right? They've effectively shut down not just the airport here in Riyadh, but all across the country. You know, the UN calls it a dangerous escalation, which is a huge understatement, right?

So this, you know, we talked about the Mecca Pact, right? Turkey and Pakistan.

dee takos (4:37)

Are they going to come and meet again?

Andy Milburn (4:39)

Yeah.

Now, Pakistan's already confirmed that it has troops here in the Kingdom, Saudi Arabia. Don't know how many, don't know what exactly their role is. Of course, Saudi Arabia has also, is getting air defense support, not just from the US. This is open source, right? As far as air defense support. Patriot missiles, though, I'm not talking about more patriot than THAAD missiles. Because, as we all know, we had discussed, there is a worldwide shortage, and the Gulf states, it's obviously how many interceptor missiles they have left is of course classified. I don't know. Even if I did, I couldn't say here on this broadcast. But the concern is that their stock, their inventory is dangerously low. There's much speculation about why these missiles are not getting intercepted, all right? Because the Saudi air defense system is actually pretty damn good. They've had a lot of practice, and so this is really unusual that this number of missiles are getting through. I mean, three in one week in one area, right? All three inflicting casualties on a scale upwards.