Saudi oil pipeline hit by Iraqi drones as Middle East tensions escalate

In the long contest over the arteries of global energy, Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline — a corridor carved precisely to escape one chokepoint — has now become a target in its own right. Drones launched from Iraqi territory struck the vital route on Friday, injuring workers and forcing a shutdown, while Iran-backed Houthis simultaneously hold the Bab al-Mandab Strait. What unfolds here is not merely a regional skirmish but a deliberate tightening of the world's energy circulatory system, with consequences that reach far beyond the desert sands where the smoke still rises.