Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry has confirmed on social media that the US embassy in Riyadh was hit by two drones, according to initial estimates, and caused a limited fire and minor material damage to the building.
A loud blast was heard and flames seen at the embassy early on Tuesday morning, reports said. Black smoke was seen rising over Riyadh’s diplomatic quarter, which houses foreign missions.
Reuters quoted two people as saying there were no reported injuries, given the building was empty in the early morning hours.
The US will take action to mitigate rising energy prices due to a spike in the price of oil caused by the Iran conflict, secretary of state Marco Rubio has said.
Speaking to reporters at Capitol Hill, Rubio said treasury secretary Scott Bessent and energy secretary Chris Wright would announce the plans on Tuesday.
“Starting tomorrow, you will see us rolling out those phases to try to mitigate against that … We anticipated this could be an issue,” Rubio said.
President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Bessent and Wright at 2pm (1900 GMT) on Tuesday, according to his itinerary released by the White House.
Oil and gas prices surged on Monday following Israeli and US strikes on Iran and retaliation by Tehran that forced shutdowns of oil and gas facilities across the region and disrupted shipping in the crucial Strait of Hormuz.
Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry is being quoted as saying the country has intercepted and destroyed eight drones near Riyadh and Al-Kharj.
Earlier the ministry confirmed that the US embassy in Riyadh was hit by two drones, according to initial estimates, and caused a limited fire and minor material damage to the building.
There were no reported injuries, according to news reports.
Benjamin Netanyahu has said the Middle East conflict triggered by US and Israeli strikes on Iran won’t be “an endless war” but could “take some time”.
The Israeli prime minister was reported as telling Fox News on Monday that the campaign would be “a quick and decisive action”, later adding: “It may take some time, but it’s not going to take years.”
Oil prices have lifted for a third day on Tuesday as the widening Middle East conflict and threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz heightened fears of supply disruptions from the key producing region.
Brent crude futures were at $78.83 a barrel, up $1.10, or 1.4%, by 0107 GMT. On Monday, the contract surged to as high as $82.37, its highest since January 2025, though it pared those gains to settle 6.7% higher, Reuters reports.
US West Texas Intermediate crude jumped 74 cents, or 1%, to $71.97 a barrel. In the previous session, the contract initially climbed to its highest since June 2025 before sliding back to still settle up 6.3%.
“With no quick de-escalation in sight, the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed and Iran showing a willingness to target energy infrastructure in the region, upside risks remain and they grow the longer the conflict drags on,” an IG market analyst, Tony Sycamore, said in a note.
Travellers stranded by the widening war in the Middle East began departing the United Arab Emirates aboard a small number of evacuation flights on Monday, as mentioned earlier, while governments around the world work to extract their citizens from the region.
Airlines Etihad Airways and Emirates, based in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and budget carrier FlyDubai said they would operate limited flights in the wake of the chaos and damage sparked by Iranian missiles and drones after US-Israeli attacks.
Since Saturday at least 11,000 flights into, out of and within the Middle East have been cancelled, affecting more than 1 million passengers, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
The travel chaos looks set to continue, with Donald Trump saying on Monday that the conflict had been projected to last four to five weeks but that it could go on longer.
Late on Monday the US state department called on Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE amid the spiralling conflict.
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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Iran was building new nuclear weapon sites that would have been impossible to attack within months, creating an urgent need to strike the country.
“They started building new sites, new places, underground bunkers, that would make their ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program immune within months,” Netanyahu told Fox News on Monday.
If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future. And then they could target America, they could blackmail America, they could threaten us, and threaten everyone in between. So action had to be taken.
Iran’s nuclear programme is among the reasons Israel and the US have given for the attacks, alleging Iran was getting too close to being able to eventually make a nuclear bomb.
However, what remains of Iran’s atomic facilities after the two militaries attacked them in June appears to have been largely spared in this campaign so far.
“We have no indication that any of the nuclear installations … have been damaged or hit,” the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Rafael Grossi, said on Monday.
Israel’s determination to attack Iran and the certainty that US troops would be targeted in response forced the Trump administration to take pre-emptive strikes, secretary of state Marco Rubio has said, in a new explanation for Washington’s surprise entry into the conflict.
The rationale drew divided reviews from top members of Congress, who on Monday evening received the first briefing by the Trump administration since it ordered the air campaign to begin over the weekend.
Rubio, CIA director John Ratcliffe and joint chiefs of staff chair Dan Caine spoke to the lawmakers behind closed doors in the Capitol ahead of a vote expected later this week in the House of Representatives on a war powers resolution that presents an unlikely opportunity to force Donald Trump to end hostilities against Iran.
Rubio told reporters at the Capitol:
It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone – the United States or Israel or anyone – they were going to respond, and respond against the United States.
We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.
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Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry has confirmed on social media that the US embassy in Riyadh was hit by two drones, according to initial estimates, and caused a limited fire and minor material damage to the building.
A loud blast was heard and flames seen at the embassy early on Tuesday morning, reports said. Black smoke was seen rising over Riyadh’s diplomatic quarter, which houses foreign missions.
Reuters quoted two people as saying there were no reported injuries, given the building was empty in the early morning hours.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly claimed Iran’s nuclear program would have been beyond attack in months.
Amid the Middle East upheaval, holidaymakers on the first flights out of Abu Dhabi since Saturday have described petrifying experiences.
Thousands of flights have been cancelled across the region, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.
A small number of flights have found their way out of the United Arab Emirates, including one that landed at London’s Heathrow airport on Monday evening, Isaaq Tomkins reports.
As passengers emerged they described their fear as missiles flew overhead.
“We could hear the explosions. We could sometimes feel them … and then [there was] black ash landing in the breakfast,” said Pen Harrison, who was on a cycling tour in Sri Lanka and had been on a stopover in Abu Dhabi.
Sahib Matharu, a 31-year-old from London who was also on a stopover through Abu Dhabi, said:
We were on edge the whole time. It was surreal.
Every passenger on the flight who spoke to the Guardian reported seeing missile interceptions from their hotel.
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The US embassy in Riyadh has issued a security alert advising American citizens to “shelter in place immediately”.
The embassy’s post on X said:
The US Mission to Saudi Arabia has issued a shelter in place notification for Jeddah, Riyadh and Dhahran and are limiting non-essential travel to any military installations in the region – we recommend American citizens in the Kingdom to shelter in place immediately.
The US Mission to Saudi Arabia continues to monitor the regional situation.
The alert came as a Saudi defence ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying an attack by two drones on the embassy had caused a fire.
Fox News is reporting that the embassy was empty at the time of the strike and there were no injuries.
The Saudi defence ministry is reportedly saying the US embassy in Riyadh has been hit by two drones, resulting in “limited” fire and minor damage.
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