一名胡塞武装士兵正在也门首都萨那观看反对沙特阿拉伯的抗议活动，时间为2026年10月9日。
A Houthi soldier watching a protest against Saudi Arabia, in Sana’a, Yemen, 9 October 2026.
胡塞武装对沙特阿拉伯的最新袭击可能对地区造成的灾难性后果远超世界想象。周六，胡塞武装对沙特阿拉伯首都利雅得发动了一场震惊且致命的袭击。截至撰写本文时，对哈立德国王国际机场的导弹袭击已造成至少13人死亡、300人受伤，标志着一场正日益加剧的地区冲突出现重大转折。这是自美国和以色列于2月对伊朗发动战争以来，对任何海湾国家造成的单次最致命袭击。沙特阿拉伯是一个不习惯如此高死亡人数的国家，死亡人数令人震惊，很可能引发一场血腥的报复。
The latest attack by Houthi rebels on Saudi Arabia may prove to be more calamitous for the region than the world imagines n Saturday, Houthi rebels launched a shocking and deadly attack on Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh. At the time of writing, the missile strike on King Khalid international airport has killed at least 13 people and left 300 injured, marking a significant turn in a regional conflagration that is only getting more intense. It was the single most deadly attack on any Gulf country since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran in February. In Saudi Arabia, a country that is unaccustomed to such fatalities, the death toll is bewilderingly high and likely to prompt a bloody response.
过去一年，海湾地区进入了一个非临时且不可逆转的新动荡时代。这可能听起来有些夸张——毕竟，与加沙和伊朗相比，伤亡人数相对较低——但沙特阿拉伯、卡塔尔和阿联酋等地和平与安全的逐步侵蚀，正以地区领导人不愿承认的方式，深刻改变着整个地区。
Over the past year, the Gulf has entered a new era of instability that is not temporary and cannot be reversed. This may feel like an overstatement – casualties have been relatively low, after all, compared with Gaza and Iran – but the gradual erosion of peace and security in places such as Saudi Arabia Qatar and the UAE has changed the region more dramatically than its leaders would like to acknowledge.
第一个大胆而不可思议的事件发生在一年多前，当时伊朗向卡塔尔一处驻有美军的空军基地发射导弹，以报复美国对伊朗核设施的打击。导弹点亮了多哈的天空，散落弹片，对卡塔尔人来说是一个令人沮丧的时刻，他们一直试图与伊朗保持良好关系。但即便如此，仍有一定程度的警告和协调，表明这是伊朗方面的面子工程。
The first audacious and unthinkable thing happened just over a year ago, when Iran fired missiles at an airbase in Qatar that hosts American troops, in retaliation for US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Lighting up Doha’s skies and scattering shrapnel, it was a dismaying moment for the Qataris, who have tried to maintain good relations with Iran. But even then there was a degree of warning and coordination that signalled this was a face-saving measure on the part of the Iranians.
然而，2025年晚些时候，以色列在没有类似警告或协调的情况下袭击了多哈，目标是哈马斯成员，造成五名巴勒斯坦人和一名卡塔尔人死亡。这标志着一个长期存在的规范和期望的终结——即海湾国家人民的生命和主权具有神圣性，这种神圣性是通过管理与伊朗的关系以及与美国的联盟所维系的。
Yet later in 2025, with no similar warning or choreography, Israel struck Doha targeting Hamas members and killing five Palestinians and one Qatari. That was the beginning of the end of a longstanding norm and expectation – that there was a sanctity to Gulf lives and sovereignty, one secured by the management of the relationship with Iran and alliances with the US.
随后，唐纳德·特朗普和本雅明·内塔尼亚胡对伊朗的战争彻底将海湾地区卷入了冲突。作为对伊朗认为其在政治、军事和后勤上支持针对伊朗的进攻的报复，德黑兰袭击了沙特阿拉伯、卡塔尔、阿联酋、巴林、科威特和阿曼。伊朗打击了军事设施、能源设施、海水淡化厂——这些国家经济的命脉基础设施。正常生活的中断、学校数月停课、机场和领空关闭造成了巨大损害。
Then came Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran which drew the Gulf once and for all into the fray. In retaliation for what Iran perceives to be political, military and logistical support for the offensive against it, Tehran struck Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. Iran targeted military sites, energy facilities, desalination plants – an entire infrastructure that underpins the economies of these countries. Much damage was inflicted by the suspension of normal life, the shuttering of schools for months, the closure of airports and airspace.
从海湾统治者的角度来看，最灾难性的后果是这些袭击破坏了这些国家融入国际化国际社会的进程——作为旅游、创业、体育和娱乐的目的地。他们花费数十亿美元争取一级方程式、高尔夫和拳击特许经营权及赛事，却被一阵廉价无人机的袭击毁于一旦。
The most disastrous consequence of all, from the perspective of Gulf rulers, has been the way the attacks have disrupted the integration of these countries into the cosmopolitan international community as places for tourism, entrepreneurs, sports and entertainment. They spent billions in securing Formula One golf and boxing franchises and tournaments, only for a flurry of cheap drones to put it all at risk.
结果是一场纷争不断的解体，重新点燃了曾经沉寂的敌对局势。也门内战始于2014年，当时伊朗支持的胡塞武装为在什叶派少数民族聚居地获得更大自治权而发起行动，夺取了首都萨那。2015年，由沙特阿拉伯领导的国家联盟发动了一场残酷的军事行动，试图将胡塞武装驱逐出其已控制的领土，这场持久的内战因此加剧，导致数十万人死亡并引发人道主义灾难。
战争在2022年缓和，事实上实现了胡塞武装与国际承认、沙特支持的政府之间的事实上但未正式确立的国家分裂；随后，沙特阿拉伯与伊朗实现了和解。
The result is a fractious unravelling that has reactivated hostilities that had laid dormant. Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels, in aspiration to greater autonomy in the minority Shia homelands, took over the capital city, Sana’a In 2015, a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia led a brutal campaign to dislodge the Houthis from territories they had gained, intensifying a grinding civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe The war deescalated in 2022 with a de facto but unformalised division of the country between the Houthis and an internationally recognised, Saudi-backed government; the ceasefire was followed by rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
但2026年针对伊朗的战争开辟了战略机遇，激发了政治忠诚，引发胡塞武装在也门的推进激增。例如，霍尔木兹海峡的关闭使得更多商业航运转向也门海岸线，促使胡塞武装发起进攻并夺取领土，以控制如今至关重要的红海巴布曼德布海峡。
But the 2026 war against Iran opened up strategic opportunities and stirred political loyalties, triggering a surge of Houthi advancement in Yemen. The closure of the strait of Hormuz, for example, shifted more commercial traffic along Yemen’s coastline, prompting the Houthis to make advances and seize territory in order to gain control of the now crucial Bab al-Mandab strait in the Red Sea.
战争爆发五个月后，紧张局势达到顶点，沙特阿拉伯加大了对胡塞武装的打击力度，而沙特支持的政府甚至轰炸了萨那的本机场，以阻止一架伊朗客机降落。
Tensions came to a head five months after the start of the war, with Saudi Arabia escalating strikes against the Houthis, and the Saudi-backed government bombing its own airport in Sana’a to prevent an Iranian plane from landing.
这些发展不仅仅是一群捣乱分子抓住时机、在伊朗与西方之间的更大竞争中充当破坏者的结果。胡塞武装得到了伊朗的支持，但他们并不是伊朗的空壳代理人；他们有国内野心，并对地区持有尖锐的敌意，尤其是对沙特王室，他们认为沙特王室是一个专横傲慢的主人，他们永远不会向其屈服。一位胡塞武装高级官员表示，周六的袭击发生“是为了让世界明白”也门的民用基础设施一直在，并且正在被沙特所针对，暗示了利雅得将也门生命视为廉价的这种感觉。
These developments are not just the result of a mischievous group seizing the moment, acting as spoiler in a bigger contest between Iran and the west. The Houthis are backed by Iran, but they are not empty proxies for Iran; they have domestic ambitions and sharp regional animosities, particularly against the House of Saud, which they see an imperious and arrogant master to whom they shall never submit. A senior Houthi official said that Saturday’s attack took place “so that the world understands” that Yemeni civilian infrastructure has been, and is being, targeted by the Saudis, gesturing towards that sense that Riyadh treats Yemeni lives as cheap.
从另一个角度来看，我们在该地区所目睹的，是哈马斯于10月7日对以色列发动袭击以及随后在加沙、黎巴嫩和伊朗发生的事件的另一个后果。当特朗普决定美国海湾盟友的安全与保障次于他所谓的伊朗“远征”时，稳定该地区紧张平衡的最后一块拼图就此瓦解。对美国安全保护伞的依赖的局限性，对盟友和敌人而言都变得清晰。
From another perspective, what we are witnessing in the region is another consequence of Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, and what followed in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. The final piece that was stabilising the region’s tense equilibriums fell away when Trump decided that the safety and security of the US’s Gulf allies was secondary to his Iran “excursion”, as he called it. The limits of relying on the US security umbrella became clear both to allies and enemies.
上个月，特朗普政府在美方官员与胡塞武装会晤后，拒绝向沙特阿拉伯延伸军事援助以对抗胡塞武装，胡塞武装向他们保证，他们不会在红海袭击美国船只，只会袭击沙特船只。如今，沙特阿拉伯面临着一场漫长而难以解决的战争，对手是一个富有资源且充满激情的对手，愿以利雅得无法匹敌的方式承受高度痛苦，除非沙特完全转向战争状态。
Last month, the Trump administration refused to extend military assistance to Saudi Arabia to fight the Houthis, after a meeting of US officials with the Houthis, who assured them that they would not attack US ships in the Red Sea, only Saudi vessels. What is upon Saudi Arabia now is a long, intractable war with a resourceful and impassioned antagonist, one willing to sustain a high degree of pain in ways that Riyadh can’t match without orienting itself entirely towards war.
如果2015年的行动能说明任何问题，那么这场冲突将夺走数千条生命，而只有微小的可能性取得决定性胜利。
If the 2015 campaign is anything to go by, it will claim thousands of lives with only a remote possibility of a decisive outcome.
因此，沙特阿拉伯以及整个海湾地区被进一步拉入这场无情的风暴之中。特朗普无法结束伊朗战争，加沙仍是一道未愈合的伤口，以色列继续对黎巴嫩占领区发动袭击。胡塞武装的复苏代表了一个新的现实——在这一地区，人们感到困惑，生命与财富不断流失，陷入于旧有联盟已不再有效、而新的敌对关系又太过灾难性以至于无法直面的困境之中。内斯琳·马利克是《卫报》专栏作家。
And so Saudi, and the entire Gulf, are pulled further into the relentless storm. Trump cannot bring the Iran war to an end, Gaza remains an open wound, Israel continues to strike occupy parts of Lebanon. The Houthi resurgence represents a new reality in a region that is bewildered and losing lives and capital, stuck between old alliances that no longer work and new hostilities that are too calamitous to confront. Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist