On Wednesday, the State Department did something it rarely does with a close ally. It ordered non-emergency U.S. government employees and their families to leave Saudi Arabia. Hours earlier, a Houthi strike hit King Fahd International Airport in Dammam. Saudi authorities said one person was killed and eight wounded there, with some reports putting the toll at two, and a separate drone attack on an oil field killed two more.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott blamed “Iranian-supported Houthis” for increasingly targeting civilian airports and critical infrastructure and said the safety of personnel was the department’s “highest priority.” Nobody should fault the department for protecting its people. The question Americans should be asking is a harder one: how did we get here, and why does nobody in Washington seem to have a plan to get us out?

This crisis did not begin in Dammam. It began on February 28, when U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran launched a war, the administration promised would be short and decisive. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz within days. By March 28, the Houthis had formally entered the conflict. A spring ceasefire briefly reopened shipping lanes, then collapsed. Now the Houthis have pushed the fight directly into Saudi cities.

The scale of the escalation is staggering. On October 10, a Houthi attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh killed 13 people, including an American, and injured more than 300. April Longley Alley, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and former adviser to the UN envoy for Yemen, called it “the deadliest attack on Saudi Arabia in over a decade.” Houthi strikes earlier this month set fire to Saudi Aramco’s headquarters, and on Thursday, according to Reuters, Aramco told staff to evacuate its Dhahran headquarters altogether.

Think about that for a moment. The world’s most valuable oil company is sending employees home, and America is pulling diplomats’ children out of a country it has defended for decades. Does that sound like a war that is going according to plan?

Saudi Arabia has spent tens of billions of dollars on American weapons, including Patriot missile batteries. It is still struggling to stop cheap drones and missiles. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the kingdom may be running low on interceptors. Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Michael Ratney told ABC News that the Patriots are “obviously not enough.”

Maysaa Shuja Al-Deen of the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies explained the math plainly: when the Houthis launch dozens of drones and missiles, “at least one of them” will get through. They do not need to destroy a target. They only need to damage it. Every successful hit costs the Houthis a fraction of what it costs Riyadh to intercept the rest.

Ratney also warned that the Houthis are “increasingly independent-minded,” which means a future deal with Tehran may not rein them in at all. If Washington believes that pressuring Iran will automatically quiet Yemen, it is betting on a link that experts say is weakening.

The Houthis have also declared a maritime blockade that threatens the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key route for Saudi oil exports. With Iran still harassing shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, both of the region’s critical chokepoints are now under fire at the same time. Who in Washington planned that?

Americans are already paying at the pump. Brent crude jumped to nearly $112 a barrel on Thursday, its highest level since May. AAA put the national average for regular gasoline around $4.33 a gallon last week, up from roughly $3.06 a year earlier, with diesel above $6. In July, a White House spokeswoman promised that “oil and gas prices will plummet back to pre-conflict levels.” Voters can judge that promise for themselves at the next fill-up.

The suffering in Yemen is far worse, and it rarely makes American headlines. The World Food Program estimates that more than 18 million Yemenis face acute food insecurity. Renewed fighting has displaced roughly 200,000 people. Saudi Arabia, which intervened in Yemen in 2015 and helped turn the country into one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, bears its own share of responsibility. The 2022 truce collapsed this year after Saudi strikes on Sanaa’s airport and Houthi missile attacks. Neither side has clean hands.

Here is the part that should trouble every voter. The New York Times reports that U.S. and Israeli militaries have drafted plans to resume strikes on Iran after the November 3 midterm elections, targeting energy, nuclear and missile sites. If those strikes are necessary for national security, why wait until after Election Day? If they are not necessary, why plan them at all?

Timing military escalation around an election calendar invites the suspicion that politics, not strategy, is driving decisions of war and peace. Even some of the administration’s allies are uneasy. Palantir chairman Peter Thiel reportedly told a private audience that he doubts the United States should have launched the Iran war in the first place.

Alley argues that military pressure alone will not end the Saudi-Houthi conflict, and that Washington must “pair military pressure with diplomatic off-ramps and a much-needed political vision.” That is sound advice, and it applies to the broader Iran war as well.

A serious strategy would start with the hard work of diplomacy, including pressing for a renewed truce in Yemen and backing the UN’s mediation efforts. It would help Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates repair their strained relationship instead of watching the Gulf coalition fracture. It would level with Americans about the costs of this war, from gas prices to the safety of U.S. citizens living in the region. And it would let Congress, not campaign strategists, debate any decision to widen the conflict.

The evacuation order is a warning sign, not a victory. When a superpower starts quietly moving families out of an allied capital, it is admitting that it can no longer guarantee their safety. The administration owes the public an honest answer: what exactly is the endgame, and how many more Americans will be put in harm’s way before we find it?

Saudi Airports Burning, Gas Prices Soaring: What Exactly Is Washington’s Endgame Here?

Similar Opinions

Latest in The Opinion Times

A Mother, a Survivor, $4 Million: Has Vivek Ramaswamy Campaign Crossed The Line?

Saudi Airports Burning, Gas Prices Soaring: What Exactly Is Washington’s Endgame Here?

Comebacks, Superteams and Blackouts: What Did NBA Opening Night Really Tell Us?

Putin a Humanitarian? What Witkoff’s Praise Says About America’s Moral Compass Today

Is This Midterm a Referendum on Trump, or Proof Both Parties Failed?