The picture above is from an Ansar-Allah (Houthi) strike on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline. That and the Red Sea are how they were getting around the Iranian blockade.
About the Red Sea:
Yemen appears to have captured four islands plus the West coast of Yemen, most of which they didn’t previously control. This is… remarkable… because they have no navy, no airforce and one of the islands had an air base.
Saudi (and a few UAE proxies) were routed. They basically fled on contact. This is what happens when merecenaries go up against real troops, and the US isn’t there to help. Saudi Arabia has a huge air force, but it appears to have done basically nothing. (It’s an open secret that the Saudi military is a complete joke.)
MBS begged Trump for help and got none:
Saudi Crown Prince MBS called US President Trump twice on thursday, urging the US to carry out strikes but Trump reportedly declined as there are currently no plans for direct intervention. (Axios)
The US is over-stretched, and not just low on interceptors on missiles, glide bombs and so on.
The war in Yemen was a big project for Obama, and it included a hell of a lot of US support. Even with all that support they were only able to contain Ansar-Allah, not defeat it. (It’s worth knowing that while most of Yemen is not under Ansar-Allah control even now, the areas they control have 80% of the population.)
This is what it looks like when an Empire is in fatal decline.
I consider this good news, overall, but it’s going to absolutely suck for almost everyone. I have warned before, I’m warning again: stock up on staple foods, fuels and so on. Ansar-Allah now has complete control of the Strait, plus that pipeline is down for a while, and they can take it out again, or hit more refineries. Combined with the Iranian blockade, hardly any Saudi oil will be getting out, nor will the precursors for fertilizers.
Much of what was holding the oil market down (other than massive manipulation and releases from the reserves) was China reducing its purchases for months, but they’ve started up again, so demand is actually increasing.
We’ll see if Saudi Arabia has more sense than America: the correct action is to make whatever concessions are necessary. The Sauds cannot protect their infrastructure, their army is garbage, their mercenaries won’t fight and Ansar Allah has them by the throat. If they insist on fighting on they risk losing everything, because without oil revenue, Saudi Arabia is not viable, right down to not having enough food.
Much like the Iranians, Yemen has escalation dominance and is more willing and able to take pain (they lost millions to the last war) than the corrupt and effete Saudis. The Sauds have LOST and if they refuse to admit that, the House of Saud itself may fall. (No one will miss it, except people like Kushner, whom it has bribed.)
I consider yesterday one of the best days, geopolitically, of my life. The American Raj is taking body blow after body blow and is fatally overstretched. But it is going to SUCK for most of us, as prices rise and there are shortages, unless Trump has surgery to correct his chronic case of head in ass and agrees to Iran’s terms, while the Sauds do the same with Yemen.
It’s hard to predict Trump, but my guess is his Israeli masters won’t let him make peace, so get ready: the next year is going to be awful in much of the world.
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spud
this is out of the you can’t make this stuff up world, oil down three dollars a barrel, the dow up over 500 points so far today. you simply can’t make this stuff up.
prices will go even higher, perhaps through the roof, the markets will explode in value, GDP goes up. the more people starve and die from lack of just about everything, the more profits will rise, GDP will explode upwards, and the fairy tale lets pretend its real economy, will be praised for its resiliency!
Feral Finster
The New Hotness is for Saudi Arabia and the US to drag Turkey and/or Pakistan in.
Both are playing coy, but I suspect that this is just dickering over price
The US will likely go nuclear, following the midterms (thus ensuring the voters get no say).
And believe me, I’d love to be wrong.
GrimJim
It is almost as if Trump is doing everything he can to ensure it is “absolutely necessary” to nuke Iran to “win the war.”
Huh, funny that…
Purple Library Guy
Hard to say what Turkey and Pakistan might do. Erdogan is treacherous, you never know what he will do, and the Israelis just for some bizarre stupid reason bombed a Turkish air base. And Pakistan has its own problems; the military which is running things is pretty damn unpopular–not unpopular in the “point to an outside enemy” kind of way but more in the “if the troops were not available to hold people down there would be a revolution, maybe three or four different ones” kind of way. Not sure they want to be diverting their military away from holding down the people to go help the US attack fellow Muslims.
StewartM
Grimjim,
Either that, or have Israeli do it for him. While Israel also nukes Gaza, as a “final solution” to the “Palestinian problem.” Lots of people may die both directly and indirectly from oil product shortages.
(Great thing we don’t have “Genocide Joe” and “Killer Kamala” in charge anymore, and have a “peace President” like Trump, right Nat?
Meanwhile, we’re having a COVID summer, which I can’t believe is true, because nobody in the Trump administration is talking about it or taking any action whatsoever. How can that be true, Nat? “Everyone knows” that Covid was all Biden’s fault, right Nat? Just like the National Debt is all the “Democrats’ faults and Trump is just trying to deal with the “disaster economy” Biden left him).
mago
Cue Randy Newman’s Let’s Drop the Big One Now.
Major Kong’s ready to roll.
spud
Feral Finster:
if russia and china stand by and let it happen. they are next. if iran has not developed the bomb by now, they do not understand deterrence.
the west for the first time in over 500 years, is almost flat on their backs and cannot be revived. why deterrence by the three has not entered into the fray yet, is pure incompetence.
they should just drop the charade, knell, and kiss the ring and save the west, and get enslaved.
Feral Finster
@Spud:
And yet the Russian and Chinese leadership still don’t act like they get it.
At all.
And yes, Iran was foolish not to have gotten The Bomb a long time ago.
mago
Um, StewartM, maybe you’re responding to Nat’s post and not this one?
Either way, what’s the beef?
Your defense of Biden and Blinken and Nod aka Kamala the San Francisco bitch/witch—take your pick, is indefensible.
Give it up man.
Nat Wilson Turner
@StewartM, Biden backed the genocide in Gaza and there’s every chance the senile fool would have been dragged into the Iran War. He never met a war he didn’t like.
JFC, just because the current psychopath is awful doesn’t make the previous psychopath suddenly good.
American politics is like “I’m for John Wayne Gacy! Ted Bundy kills women!” vs “I’m for Ted Bundy! Gacy kills kids!”
The thing you’re missing is the POTUS is entirely fungible. We’ve been warmongering nonstop with neo-cons running our foreign policy since 1992. Clinton-Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump = tens of millions dead from wars and sanctions. America is a death machine. I’m glad you enjoy it more when there’s a blue tint in the windows.
Carborundum
The oblique shot is showing as image matching a strike on a pipeline in Ukraine. I can’t find anywhere in the area where the satellite detection of thermal anomalies are located that would have that juxtaposition of urbanity and fire, so it seems likely that someone is recycling images.
Not really sure how to assess the pipeline – something is clearly up, but I’m seeing wildly differing views of how to interpret the satellite data. I think we’ll have to see whether this has taken it out of action or if it’s a repeat of the April strike. Certainly the scale looks significantly larger; the April strike involved one pumping station but this looks to have hit more targets (eyeballing it, it looks like station #11 and a bunch of above-ground manifolds for several kilometres in each direction – assuming the thermal anomalies indicate impact points).
FWIW, the Saudis are apparently maintaining that the pipeline was hit by drones out of Iraq. I guess at least theoretically feasible, given that the April strike looks to have come out of Iran.
marku
the Iraqi denial of the Saudi Attack is classy:
“it is not our honor to claim this attack.”
different clue
I wonder if this progressively advancing oil-shipment shut-in is just fine with Trump. Trump has for a while affected to believe in ” American energy dominance” as a goal. And perhaps he really does believe in it. If so, with an America selling off more oil and natural gas than ever before, stopping other people from being able to sell their oil and natural gas would make America ever more dominant over the market for what remains and can be shipped.
Perhaps Trump is quietly happy with Bab al Mandeb being as closed as Hormuz.
“American Energy Dominance Is Back Under President Trump”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/02/american-energy-dominance-is-back-under-president-trump/