Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Ansar Allah

Defending Most Infrastructure Is Now Impossible But No One’s Getting It

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On September 14, 2026

11 Comments

After Ansar Allah grabbed a huge chunk of territory, including coast and islands which let it control the Red Sea, and after blowing up a pumping station and pipeline which will require weeks to repair, the Sauds are doubling down with airstrikes and missile attacks.

And I’m wondering what’s going thru their heads.

Because we’re in a period where, with a few exceptions, anything can be destroyed by missiles and drones if you’re within range. That especially mean port infrastructure, airports, refineries (which have also been hit) and, yes, pipelines.

Whatever one thinks of Ansar Allah, they have shown an ability to absorb massive amounts of damage, and frankly, they have almost nothing. If it comes to a tit-for-tat exchange, they can take the punishment, while Saudi Arabia has all sorts of vulnerable infrastructure.

It’ll take, supposedly, six weeks to repair the pipeline.

Then it can just be hit again, because there is no way to protect it.

This is the new calculus of missile power. It’s hard to defend against, and in the context of western interceptor stockpiles being almost depleted, it’s effectively impossible.

In Ukraine/Russia this favors Russia, because they can hit more. In Yemen/Saudi Arabia it favors Yemen because what they can hit matters much more.

As with the Iran war, the correct play here is peace. Yemen wants an end to the blockade. Give it to them.

Saudi Arabia’s army is an infamous joke. They’re flirting with the end of the House of Saud here, because if the money stops, then their population will become a serious threat. The military is weak to avoid a possible coup, but that means it can’t stop a major uprising or invasion. The secret police are scary, but they only work at stomping out small fires, they can’t stop anything major.

Everyone hates the Saudi Royals. I’ve never met anyone who dealt with them who didn’t despise them, even if they were being paid well by the Sauds, they hated them.

This is a new world. Saudi Arabia bet on America to protect them, and that worked for generations. But America can’t any more. The royal family needs to find a new way, and so far the Pakistan/Turkey alliance is a dud.

It’s not looking good for them, but the first thing they need to do if they want to survive is get real about their situation, and about how warfare has changed.

I rather hope they don’t.

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Ansar-Allah’s Blitz Likely To Reduce Saudi Oil Exports To Near Zero

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On September 11, 2026

13 Comments

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.

Meanwhile, they completely routed Saudi mercenary forces, capturing vast amounts of land in thirty six hours:

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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Israel’s Economy Is Collapsing & Other Good News

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On August 13, 2024

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Sometimes there is good news:

Over 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel’s credit rating was lowered, Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost “junk bonds” levels, and the foreign investments that have already dropped by 60% in the first quarter of 2023 (as a result of the policies of Israel’s far-right government before October 7) show no prospects of recovery. The majority of the money invested in Israeli investment funds was diverted to investments abroad because Israelis do not want their own pension funds and insurance funds or their own savings to be tied to the fate of the State of Israel.

What this means is that Israeli is surviving on American charity. Not only is it impossible for Israel to wage war without American supplies, it is impossible for the Israeli economy to avoid collapse without American aid.

Meanwhile, about 40% of settlers who evacuated the north under Hezbollah attacks are likely to not return after the war.

Russia, it appears, now has advisors on the ground in Yemen. If they were intending to give Ansar Allah weapons, this would be the first step. American weapons have been used to sink Russian ships, and Putin has warned that if America supplies weapons and helps with the firing and targeting of those weapons against Russia, Russia will return the favor.

Sinking some American ships would be revenge served cold and I wonder if one of the reasons that Iran and its allies are taking their time with a retaliation attack for the assassinations is because of coordination with Russia.

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The Sun Sets Slowly—Then Quickly

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On January 14, 2024

15 Comments

And there are moments when you realize it is setting:

The people of the mountain have checkmated the people of the sea. As commenter VietnamVet wrote:

The Five-eyes Oceanic Empire is dying before our eyes. UK, Canada, Australia, and the USA (let alone New Zealand) simply do not have armament or manpower to occupy Yemen to push the Houthi back far enough from the Gate of Grief at the mouth of the Red Sea to reopen the Suez Canal to western shipping. A global logistic choke point has closed. The second, the Panama Canal, is limiting ships due to the drought.

The American and UK navies both have manpower shortages. When the aircraft Carrier Gerald Ford left the region, it was already vastly undermanned:

In the face of a massive shortage of Navy sailors, America’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has downsized, cutting the crew aboard by hundreds of sailors.

The cuts appear to be deep and dramatic. Over the past six months to a year, some 500 to 600 sailors have left the USS Ford and not been replaced. In fact, the USS Ford has shed so many crew members that the ship’s company (core crew members that operate the vessel) is now below the Ford-class Carrier Program’s original Acquisition Program Baseline objective of 2,391 billets—a goal set back in 2004 that many observers considered unrealistic.

On top of this, ships can only store so many missiles. Every missile salvo reduces the amount of time before they have to return to base. America and Britain have been sending vast numbers of missiles to Israel and Ukraine and western manufacturing capacity is vastly below what is needed to refill stocks.

Meanwhile the Yemenis live in a mountainous country and their missiles are all mobile. It is impossible to take them out just with naval power: boots on the ground are necessary: a full invasion and occupation, in fact and that just isn’t happening: the US might be able to do it by going all out, but it would have nothing left for anywhere else.

So fundamentally, the US can’t invade and it can’t stop the Yemenis from shooting missiles. It might be able to bomb a lot, but that won’t stop the Yemenis: the endured one of the longest and most brutal bombing campaigns of the last hundred years just recently.

The US — the West, doesn’t have deterrence. We can’t do anything to the Ansar Allah which will make them back down and we don’t have the ability stop them by main force.

Trying to stop them by main force has made the situation worse: now even more vessels can’t enter the Red Sea—commercial cargo lines are not going to chance being shot up.

America is a naval empire. It, like the old British empire, rests on being able to keep the shipping lines open and on using naval power (and air power) to hurt nations while those nations can’t fight back. In the 19th century the Brits would park ironclads off the coast and just pound cities, and there was nothing those cities could do in return.

This is, then, one of the key moments in the end of Western hegemony. The point at which we no longer have deterrence; at which we can no longer “big foot” other nations.

The end of Western dominance is close, very close. I can taste it, like a hint of salt on a sea breeze. The Chinese are only behind in a few technological areas. Once other nations can get everything they need from China/Russia and other lesser nations they will be free to throw off the Western order, because the new and improved missiles make “stand off and bomb” far less effective than it used to be.

They don’t have to be scared of us, and soon they won’t need us.

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