Can Washington stay out of Yemen after American dies at Riyadh airport?

A missile strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh killed at least 13 people and injured more than 300 on Saturday, Oct. 10, according to Saudi authorities. The dead included four Saudi citizens, one American, two Bangladeshis, and one person each from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Sudan, the General Authority of Civil Aviation said.

The next day, an unidentified projectile hit Terminal 4 at the same airport, starting a fire, killing one person and injuring 11, Saudi civil aviation authorities said. Air defenses intercepted a cruise missile near the airport.

The Iran-backed Houthis claimed responsibility for both attacks. The weekend strikes marked the third on the kingdom's main international airport in a week, following a Saudi-led coalition offensive against the Houthis and a week of attacks on Saudi airports, military facilities and oil infrastructure.

President Donald Trump said he is evaluating whether the United States should join Saudi strikes against the Houthis in Yemen.

The toll makes the weekend the deadliest strike on a Gulf state since the start of the Iran war and the worst in Saudi Arabia in over a decade. The attacks threaten to draw more countries into the Yemen conflict and widen the regional fallout of the US-Iran war, which has already spread to Lebanon and Iraq. An American decision to join Saudi strikes would be a significant escalation — with American casualties already among the dead.

Trump declared an immediate Russia-Ukraine energy ceasefire on Sunday, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy supported. Russian strikes continued afterward.

Whether the U.S. joins the campaign, and whether the energy ceasefire holds, remain open.