Bulwark Takes - Command Post: Saudi Arabia’s Oil Pipeline Hit With Multiple Attacks

Episode Date: September 12, 2026

Ben Parker and Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) break down the latest escalation across the Middle East, including an attack on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, a critical alternative route designed to move oil around the Strait of Hormuz. With the pipeline damaged and the Houthis taking control of key positions along the Red Sea, the region’s major shipping routes are facing growing disruption.The attacks threaten far more than oil. The Bab al-Mandab and Red Sea are critical routes for food, grain, packaged goods and cargo moving between the Gulf, Europe, Asia and Africa. Mark explains why Iran and the Houthis appear to have the initiative, why the U.S. is increasingly responding rather than setting the terms of the conflict, and how Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and NATO could become entangled as the war continues to expand.Plus, the Somali pirates becoming active again and shippers now face another threat once they make it through the region’s increasingly dangerous choke points.Your health matters and taking care of yourself shouldn’t be complicated. Head to Zocdoc.com/BulwarkTakes to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list.

Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the bulwark. Welcome to an emergency episode of Command Post on the Bullwark takes feed. I'm joined as always by our very own Lieutenant General Mark Hartling. General, we've got a lot to talk about. You said it was going to get sporty and it has gotten kind of sporty. It's interesting. Not only has it gotten sporty, Ben, but it actually is some of the things we predicted on the Wednesday morning command post are coming true. And it wasn't a hard prediction to make, but they are actually happening. So let's talk a little bit about it. Yeah, well, we talked about pipelines, and it's a bit of bad timing because just yesterday, the president said this. On Iran, oil prices have shot back up over the last 24 hours since we last talk. Very rapidly, as soon as we win the military conflict or war, you can call it whatever you want. The prices will go back to where they were. It's always, look, there's no cost cutter like me, but Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. when that ends, and I think it'll end very shortly after the election, could end before the election, but I think it'll end very shortly after the election. The prices will go down to less than $2 a barrel, $2 a gallon for oil.

And then we woke up this morning to the news that there appears to be what is looking to me like a coordinated Iranian-backed defensive against energy infrastructure on the Arabian Peninsula. So the Houthis have captured a port town on the Babelmandab Strait as well as an island in the middle of the Babelmandab Strait. And there's been an attack on a major Saudi oil pipeline. We can show some pictures of what that attack looks like because it's already showing up on satellite photos. General, what do you make of these attacks? Well, Ben, truthfully, I got some of these pictures from open source intel last night about 11 o'clock. and pieces started coming together. And I sent you a note, and we decided to do this session this morning.

But that pipeline or that black area in the middle of that photo is actually the East-West Saudi Arabian pipeline. And it has been attacked by, who knows, a terrorist organization. It could be the Houthis. It could be Ansala. It could be even inside terrorist within the country of Saudi Arabia. But as Secretary Besson was talking earlier in the week, and we talked about it on Wednesday on command post, saying, hey, it's going to be great. You know, pretty soon the Strait of Hormuz is just going to be an empty waterway that means

no, means nothing to anyone because we're going to have pipes all over the Middle East transporting oil, and we won't need shipping. Well, there are pipes all over the Middle East, as we talked about on when we're going to be. Wednesday, I've seen them up close and personal. The pipelines that come out of the Beji Oil Refinery and the Kurdish oil fields that go to major refineries inside of Iraq. They are also present in Jordan and Syria. They are also present in Iraq. So you're seeing right now the effects of a waterway that's been disrupted. The Saudis are attempting to bypass that waterway by shipping oil through these pipelines to the west coast of Saudi Arabia to the ports. The pipelines have been

intercepted as well as I think what we're also going to talk about today, as you mentioned in the opening, the Houthis taking control of major port cities along the Red Sea that will further disrupt any kind of shipment in and around the Gulf states along the Bab el-Mandab. So you're seeing a multi-faceted approach that Iran is using to disrupt the world's economy based on oil. And by the way, those shipping routes along the Babama and Dob and into the Red Sea, they ship more than oil. They also ship a variety of other resources to include food and grain and package goods and cargo ships. So we're seeing not only a disruption of oil and shipment of oil, but a disruption of the world's economy that go to a lot of Gulf nations into Europe and into Africa.

The geography here is really important. We should start sort of on the left-hand side with the Suez Canal, right? The Suez Canal is what allows you to ship between Europe and Asia without going all the way around Africa. If you see at the bottom, that's the Baba Mandab. That is the very narrow strait where if you're going through the Suez Canal, either way, you're going to end up in the Baba Mandab in between Djiboulli and Yemen. And that's where the Houthis in Yemen have seized control of some of the port towns and a little island that is right in the middle of the narrowest part of that strait.

So zooming out a little bit, you can see the Strait of Hormuz on the right side of the map. If you're not getting oil out of the Middle East via the Strait of Hormuz, as you said, you're going to try to get it out through the Red Sea. But if you've choked up the Baba Mandab, it's not clear how you're going to get to Asia where a lot of the major oil consumers are. maybe you can get to Europe through the Suez Canal, but the whole thing's going to be so backed up. It's almost like, remember when that ship got stuck in the Suez Canal a few years ago? It's like the Iranians are doing that, but on purpose. Is this sort of what this seems like to me? Yeah, and you forgot to mention that little yellow line cutting right across Saudi Arabia is the east-west pipeline.

That's what Saudi Arabia is attempting to use. I'll mention a couple more things, too, Ben, that I think are kind of ancillary to all this, but they're important to understand how critical this big piece of terrain, this outlet between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The circle that is at the bottom on the western side that you described as the Bab el-Mandab, that is exactly right. But that country there is Yemen to the south of Saudi Arabia. And the Houthis have basically defeated the Yemenese army within the last 48 hours. the Yemen army has asked Saudi Arabia for help against the Houthis. The Saudi Arabians have asked the U.S. for additional support in bombing the Houthis that are

basically taking over the western corridor along the Red Sea of Yemen. And Mr. Trump told Mohammed bin Salman this morning, no, I'm not going to help. I will provide you critical intelligence and some targeting support, but now I'm not going to allow any aircraft to support the Saudi Arabian army. Now, why would he say that? Well, primarily because the Saudi Arabian Air Force is one of the most modern and largest of all the Gulf states. They have almost 400 aircraft that have been left on the ground, that have not

participated in providing close air support to either the Saudi Arabian army or the Yemeni army in fighting off the Houthis. And one has to ask the question why. Why is the Saudi Arabian Air Force not flying in this campaign? There are multiple responses to that depending on your view of the Saudi Arabian military, which we could get into. But truthfully, I'd rather not because some of it's pretty insulting. This ad is brought to you by Zock Doc. So there are certain things that are incredibly easy to put off and making a doctor's appointment is pretty high up on that list, for me at least. You know you need to do it, but then you think about making that phone call and getting put on hold and figuring out whether they'll even take your insurance. Then you've got to

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Head to Zachtok-com slash Buller Takes to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash Buller Takes. One more thing. At the very bottom, you'll see the coast of, it looks like the coast of Somalia at the very bottom or at least parts of it. If this wasn't bad enough, Ben,

we also have an increased number of Somali pirates when a ship gets out of either the Strait of Hormuz or the Baba Bandab, and they're in that Saudi or in that larger waterway of the Red Sea and into the ocean, the Somali pirates are becoming very active again. Now, everybody who's most people who are listening to us right now are saying, what? Somali pirates, what the hell are you guys talking about? Is it 2011 all over again?

It is 2011 all over again. Plus, the way we used to contest and make those waterway clear against Somali pirates, excuse me, is to have a NATO naval force there, normally led by either the UK, Portugal, Spain, or the United States. And given the dynamics of our current alliances with NATO, that counterpiracy force is not as active as it once was. So not only do shippers now have to maintain control of those different choke points, but they also have to be concerned about their ships going into open waters and being attacked by pirates. And it harkens back to the movie Captain Phillips to tell us a little bit about that. But I'll just add that as one more complex element of this entire operation. Yeah, I want to talk.

Let's get a little bit into the sort of tactics and operations of how this is all going down. You've worked with pipelines when you were in Iraq. You've worked with protecting pipelines, trying to get them operational. How do you protect something like that? I wrote my master's thesis on the Iraqi Air Force, and that was one of the first things they wanted airplanes for is they said we got a lot of pipelines and not enough people to watch them. So we need airplanes to look at them to try to protect them from sabotage. how are you supposed to, in the age of drones and, you know, off-the-shelf weapons like that, how are you supposed to defend a pipeline from attack?

Well, as I mentioned in the article we wrote today for 9-11, when I was working in the Pentagon after the 9-11 attacks, Secretary Rumsfeld asked us to provide a list of critical targets, critical infrastructure targets across the United States. And when we compiled that list of what were the most dangerous targets that are in might attack, it was over 7,000 locations across the United States. Now, we're a big territory, and we've got a lot of buildings and bridges and waterways and nuclear plants and things like that. That's different than what we're talking about right here. What we're talking about in Saudi Arabia is lots and lots of nothing. Across that southern desert, there is nothing there. And that's

exactly where the pipeline runs. You'll see in the picture here, I think that's the Aramco facility that's in the picture. And the pipeline that is exploded or damaged right outside the Aramco facility was attacked by somebody that was close by to make a point. But if you follow that pipeline, I think it's about 2,000 kilometers long from east to west coast, I believe. Don't quote me on that. But when you get to the port of Yambis on the Red Sea, that's the end point of it. And that's where it loads up onto ships to go through the Suez Canal or out through the Baba Mandat. So it's basically stuck in there if both of those waterways are closed down and if that ship or if that pipeline is damaged. But to get back, that's a long way of answering your question, Ben, when there's not a whole lot out there and it's 2,000,

kilometers long, it's real hard to defend with any kind of forces on the ground or even air forces that might be flying over that every single day. Yeah, it seems like just an incredibly complex problem. We can only speculate about this, but I'm really curious, why now? Why do we think the Iranians were, you know, what, seven months almost into this war? Why do we think they waited until now to start striking these kinds of oil facilities when they've apparently had the capability for a long time. Yeah, well, I think it has to do with them activating the Houthis, and perhaps even the Houthis acting on their own without any activation from the Iranian government.

But what was interesting, you remember right after the early attacks in February and March against Iran, there were a lot of threats made against the Houthis. don't try anything right now. Israel and the United States are focused on Iran. But if we have to divert, we'll get you too. And there was a lot of firepower flying across the Gulf. Well, Iran has basically taken all that firepower in. We've damaged their missile supply and their equipment to be sure. There's no doubt about it, but it hasn't been completely depleted. And I think right now what is happening are those who are seeing the Gaza negotiations fall apart and the fact that Iran has the US and Israel on the ropes. The hoodies are now saying, because they're reading the reports of our

depleted ammunition, they can't come after us, so let's play some games with them a little bit. And Saudi Arabia is looking at a variety of different ways. The other Gulf cooperation states are all being attacked by Iran. And it's just an expanding space. spiral of a conflict throughout the entire Middle East and Saudi Arabia, who has been Iran's nemesis for the last, oh, I don't know, a couple of decades are now being caused to suffer a little bit. And we have to talk about the diplomatic aspect of this too, because at the strategic level, that's so important.

We're seeing reports of the Gulf Cooperation Council. That's sort of the regional grouping of all the Gulf countries who are now going to have independent talks with Iran. we were talking about this a little bit before we got on. Good thing, bad thing, little of both, depends on where you are. I think it's a lot of both. When you're talking about Saudi Arabia, Oman, well, let's leave Oman to last. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and maybe even Jordan, saying, we want to talk to the Iranians.

And, hey, Oman, can you basically set those talks up? that's dangerous because whenever you have allies coordinating, not so much as a group, but as individuals, you're going to get a whole bunch of different solutions. Can I throw one more puzzle piece into this mix, Ben, as if we don't have enough already? Sure. Let's not forget the cooperation of security between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey. Right. They just signed that recently. Oh, yeah. That's going to be a little bit sporty too, because there's

There's an awful lot of pipelines inside of Turkey that actually go into the Beji-Kurdish oil fields. I'm sorry, the Kurdish oil fields, not the Beji fields. But they take a lot of pipelines across the border there that supply natural gas and oil. But what happens if Saudi Arabia says, hey, you guys signed a treaty with us to give us security, and we're getting our asses handed to us by missiles and strikes against our fields. one of you guys coming in and Turkey says, well, we kind of got this commitment to NATO too, to one nation being attacked. And then what happens is Turkey does help Saudi Arabia and they get attacked by Iran. Does NATO get involved there? Man, you could spin this all different kinds of ways.

And we haven't even talked about the third member of that party, Pakistan. Do you think Pakistan's going to get involved with this, another nuclear power? Who-hoo. We're going to. We're with, you know, that borders Iran directly, right along a long border. It is, it is, it is scary stuff. And I can't help but notice that there's one country that is conspicuously missing. And that's the United States. We are nowhere to be found in any of this, right? We're not at these meetings with the Iranians.

There's, I don't, I haven't heard of a meeting with all of our Gulf partners in the United States. I haven't heard of much of anything apart from. from the Scentcom commander going to Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia calling up Trump and asking for help and Trump's saying no. We seem to be kind of a drift, don't we? We do. And I think it all boils down to Iran's strategic objective right now on the 11th of September. Their strategic objective is increasingly clear. They want to impose a much higher price for the U.S.

tanker for tanker, oil supply for oil supply, strategy for strategy, and Iran wants to demonstrate that military pressure will not restore deterrence. They want to say, you can't keep hitting us and think it's going to change our ideas. And this is basically, I think, the reason why you're seeing Iran controlling the escalation ladder. We used to say that the U.S. was controlling that ladder, but I think it's Iran that's controlling it right now. And I'd add one more thing to that. The speed of Iran's decision making is significant. They have adapted to this conflict much greater than we have. We are a one-trick pony. If things go bad, use more military, bomb more things. Teran seems to have established actually what I heard one analyst call it a menu of retaliatory options.

And it looks like they're choosing from that menu different items to eat on a daily basis. And it's increasingly dangerous. Yeah, it seems like they have the initiative. They're deciding how we're fighting, where, when, with what intensity for the most part. we respond in sort of a predictable way when we feel like it, but they're the ones choosing today it's going to be missiles in Jordan, tomorrow it's going to be a pipeline in Saudi Arabia, and the next day it'll be one of our proxy groups somewhere in the Middle East. You get to, you know, we get to decide when.

It's, it's, they've got us on the back foot. It feels like we are now responding to them rather than vice versa. Well, and this instance with Mohammed bin Salman is a perfect example of that because what, But Iran has done is strike the U.S. at facilities in Middle Eastern countries. So they have not only damaged the U.S. presence in those countries and overwhelmed them like they did in Jordan the other day or like they did in Bahrain against the naval base there, but it makes those countries say to the United States, and there's about seven of them that are all screaming for anti-missile defense systems.

And we just don't have that much to go around. Again, it's a strategic choice. But if we start saying, we can't help you, we're tied up on our own. What happens is those countries go directly to Oman and say, let's work a deal directly with Iran. We no longer need the United States. And it was publicized last night when President Trump told MBS, no, we're not going to help you again to push back against the Houthis. who, by the way, the Houthis have been at war, for those of who don't know, with Saudi Arabia since 2015, I think, in a hot war.

And the Saudis have not been able to solve that terrorism problem. And with us, we, in, what was it, summer of 2025, we fought a six-week campaign against the Houthis that most people didn't notice because it was mostly, it was mostly the Navy doing it, and it was sort of relatively quiet in a faraway part of the world. But it was a six-week campaign that was pretty high intensity and had kind of, what would you say, mixed results? I mean, the Houthis are still here and they're now up here to be more powerful than ever. Yeah, there were not a whole lot of Saudi Arabian victories in that fight and even government of Yemen's victory. The one thing I read this morning, and I don't know how true this is, there was an assessment.

You know, the Houthis are an Iranian-back group. So they are Shia Muslims. But from what one analyst pointed out is they seem to be consuming some of the Sunni moderates within Yemen to fight against the Yemeni government because a lot of the citizens of Yemen don't believe the government can protect them and that they've queried a deal with Saudi Arabia that's not workable. So when you have Shia Muslim terrorists forming up with other fighting organizations that are Sunni Muslims, you really have. have a problem with countering any of that activity. That is exactly the same thing we saw in many cases in Iraq. Everybody thought it was the United States against al-Qaeda. When I was in Iraq in 2007 and eight, we had 27 different terrorist insurgent organizations

in multinational division north, which is north of Baghdad up to the Turkish and Syrian border. That is a lot to deal with. general, it is going to continue to get sporty. I'm afraid it's only going to get sportier from here. But in case something worse happens, or I should say in the event something worse happens, we will be right back here on command posts. Thank you so much for joining me for this emergency episode. Thanks, Ben.

Appreciate it.