Saudi Arabia stopped issuing public warnings of imminent military attacks days before four strikes on Riyadh airport killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 300, leaving residents without alerts as attacks intensified across the kingdom.
The government has not explained why its national early warning system fell silent. The absence of warnings has raised concerns among regional officials and analysts about Saudi Arabia’s ability to protect residents, visitors and critical infrastructure while pursuing military operations against Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis.
The alerts, introduced in May through mobile phones and social media, had provided advance notice of potential threats. The last warning before the attacks was issued on 29 September for the southern province of Najran, according to posts on the Saudi civil defence authority’s account on X. Despite increasing Houthi attacks in the period leading up to last week’s strikes, no further public alerts were issued until Monday, when warnings resumed for Riyadh and southern cities.
Four Western and Arab officials in the region and political analysts told Reuters that the absence of warnings had also reflected an effort to preserve a sense of normality during the conflict. Sultan Alamer, a US-based Saudi academic and senior resident fellow at the Middle East Policy Council, said the government was attempting to sustain public confidence while conducting military operations.
“They (the Saudi government) want to have it both ways: to launch a military operation and at the same time try to give confidence to the population and external stakeholders,” he said.
Two officials with direct knowledge of the matter said officials from an allied Western government had asked Saudi authorities why public alerts had stopped before the airport attacks. They were told that the warnings were too disruptive and that many citizens had complained about being woken at night. Saudi officials and the government media office did not respond to requests for comment on that account.
Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Michael Ratney said Riyadh appeared to be balancing the need to communicate the threat with its desire to avoid disruption. However, he said the policy risked producing the opposite effect.
“Their approach to public messaging seems like a corollary to the quandary they are in: They need to respond to the Houthis but don’t want that to result in societal disruption and their public messaging is a reflection of that,” Ratney said. “But the lack of alerts of incoming Houthi attacks creates the very nervousness they are trying to avoid.”
The approach differs from that of other Gulf states targeted by Iranian drones and missiles since the US-Iran war began in February. Qatar has issued mobile phone warnings before nearly every attack, while Bahrain and Kuwait have repeatedly sounded sirens instructing people to seek shelter.
Saudi civil defence continued to issue public advice about adverse weather, including rain and flooding, and on Monday warned residents against sharing images, rumours or information about interceptions and impact sites. The restrictions followed government regulations issued in March. Reuters could not establish whether anyone had been prosecuted for sharing such material.
Saudi analyst Ali Shihabi, who is close to the government, said the kingdom’s size made it difficult to defend all its strategic assets simultaneously, regardless of whether warnings were issued.
“In Saudi Arabia you have too much to protect. It’s a huge country with airports, pipelines and oil facilities. There is just not enough coverage to defend everything at once, not enough Patriots (missile defence systems), interceptors and missile batteries to do it all,” he said. “Saudi Arabia has an unlimited need for air defences.”
Despite the attacks, Riyadh hosted the World Petroleum Council Energy Congress on Monday, although several major oil executives withdrew. Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told delegates he was grateful they had travelled because “you know this country is safe”, while acknowledging that “our gathering here does not mean the risk is gone”.
Western embassies had issued their own internal missile and drone alerts to staff during a period in which Riyadh was attacked about a dozen times, according to two Western officials. Three people familiar with the arrangements said the warnings drew on Western government intelligence and information from Saudi authorities. However, they said embassies had received no internal warning before Saturday’s airport strike, the deadliest of the attacks.
On Sunday, Saudi state television released surveillance footage of the strike showing travellers waiting inside the airport terminal before a bright orange flash from a missile explosion.
