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In this week’s Agenda: Trump is trying to keep Yemen out of the Iran war, even as the Iran-backed Houthis advance around Bab el-Mandeb squeezes Saudi Arabia’s alternative oil-export routes, pushing up world energy prices. The question now is how long Washington can hold that line if the attacks are linked to higher American gas prices.
Elsewhere, Iran-backed fronts are flaring; energy infrastructure is proving difficult to defend; Iraqi militias are resisting state control of their weapons; and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads into Israel’s election facing questions about his decision making, after keeping his fractious coalition together for nearly four years.
Alexis Thomas, Dalshad Hussein, Mustafa Saadoon, Yehia Qasim and Sakina Abdallah contributed to this week’s Agenda.
Washington Signals
How Far Can the Houthis Go?
President Donald Trump has spent most of the Iran war trying to keep Yemen from becoming another front for U.S. forces. Since last week, the Houthis’ rapid advances against Saudi Arabia and Riyadh’s alternative oil-export routes have tested how much damage they can inflict on U.S. allies – and the global economy – without crossing a line that would force Washington into the fight.
The Iran-aligned Houthis, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist group, have in one week seized Mocha, Mayun and the Hanish islands, giving it a formidable position around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, through which Saudi Arabia has been exporting oil while the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted. It has also escalated direct attacks on Saudi Arabia, including strikes on air bases. Meanwhile, from the north, a drone attack by an Iran-backed group in Iraq temporarily shut Saudi Arabia’s Hormuz-dodging East-West Pipeline. As a result, Brent crude was trading around $108 a barrel Monday.
Trump has been here before, of course. In May last year, after weeks of U.S. bombing in Yemen, Oman brokered a deliberately narrow deal: Washington agreed to stop striking the Houthis and they stopped targeting U.S. vessels. The deal explicitly did not cover Israel, leaving the Houthis free to continue attacks on Israeli-linked targets.
Something close to that logic appears to be guiding Trump again.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally pressed the U.S. president last week to order new strikes on the Houthis, but Trump reportedly declined. Washington instead offered Riyadh intelligence and targeting support, while directing U.S. forces to remain focused on Iran and Hormuz. A day later, Trump said the Houthis themselves had contacted Washington to say they again “don’t want to fight with us,” and would prefer that the United States stay out.
Trump’s undeclared red line therefore looks familiar: protect U.S. forces and freedom of navigation, and leave Saudi Arabia and Yemen to fight the Houthis.
Still, the Iran-backed Houthis are making it difficult for Washington to keep their advances separate from the wider Iran war. Iran has already used Hormuz to squeeze global energy supplies, and the Houthi gains around Bab el-Mandeb are cutting off the other end of the Saudi escape route. The more pressure those fronts put on oil and U.S. fuel prices before America’s Nov. 3 midterm elections, the less separate Yemen looks from Trump’s broader Iran war problem.
Diplomacy is not providing much relief, either. A Gulf-Iran meeting in Oman that was supposed to explore arrangements for Hormuz was postponed over the weekend, reportedly after objections from Riyadh as the Houthi campaign intensified. That leaves Washington with few good options just as it is trying to keep the worsening fight around the Red Sea from drawing in U.S. forces.
All this is happening as Trump begins to describe an Iran war endgame considerably broader than simply reopening Hormuz. Over the weekend, he suggested that the United States could remain in Iran after the war and exploit Iran’s vast oil supplies, explicitly comparing the idea to his recent Venezuela oil deal. But he again also suggested the war could run well beyond the midterms and said he would only accept an end to that war that is favorable to Washington.
So how far can the Houthis go? Trump’s narrow bargain has so far allowed them to attack American partners without triggering retaliation. But if their advances keep squeezing Saudi oil exports – and pushing up prices for U.S. consumers – the pressure before the midterms may test how long that red line holds.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
They don’t want us to go after them. They would much prefer not having us involved.
— U.S. President Donald Trump, describing recent contacts with Yemen’s Houthis as their offensive around the Red Sea intensifies.
Iran Watch
Tehran-Backed Fronts Flare Across the Region
Satellite image shows smoke rising from Aramco oil depot near Abha, Saudi Arabia, following a Houthi attack / AFP.
Washington insists that its core Iran war strategy is holding, but many of the conflicts surrounding it are starting to come back to life. American officials say the U.S. Navy controls Hormuz and Israel-Lebanon talks remain on track, for instance, even as U.S. and Iranian forces resume attacks at sea, the Houthis escalate against Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah and Israel again trade fire.
Yemen is the most immediate pressure point, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that he believed there was “clearly the Iranian hand” behind the new Houthi campaign against the Saudis and their oil-export infrastructure.
The broader problem for Washington is that squeezing Tehran is proving easier than controlling the conflicts around it. U.S. officials insist Iran is being weakened militarily and economically, but renewed fighting in Yemen and Lebanon shows how pressure on Tehran can still spill outward through its network of proxies.
Regional Watch
Iran’s Pressure Campaign Targets the Bypasses
Drone view of oil tanker HELGA berthed at one of Iraq’s southern offshore oil terminals near Basra, as it prepares to load crude oil, becoming the second vessel to arrive since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, April 24, 2026. REUTERS/Mohammed Aty
The biggest vulnerability for U.S. allies is proving to be the infrastructure designed to keep energy moving when maritime routes are disrupted. Across the Gulf and Iraq, static pipelines and gas fields are proving significantly harder to defend than ships in complex ocean shipping lanes, giving Iran and its proxy groups additional ways to impose economic costs without relying on the Strait of Hormuz alone.
Iraq’s Khor Mor gas field illustrates the problem. Repeated drone attacks have exposed gaps in Iraqi air defense just as U.S. Patriot and C-RAM systems are being withdrawn ahead of the Sept. 30 coalition deadline. Baghdad is buying new South Korean and Turkish systems, but will be forced into an extended period of triage with more fields, pipelines and pumping stations than weaponry available.
For Gulf states, the answer may be as much about resilience as drone interception. Analysts told MBN that hundreds of miles of pipeline cannot be defended continuously, leaving many facilities permanently exposed to drones and missiles. As one expert put it: “The threat can come from every direction.”
Iraq Watch
Iran-Aligned Militias Resist State Control
An Iraqi policeman carries a weapon at a checkpoint in Falluja / Reuters.
Two of Iraq’s most powerful Iran-aligned factions are signaling that they may accept new laws governing their weapons, while still refusing to surrender them as demanded by the U.S. government. Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, U.S.-designated terrorist groups, have told mediators they may accept “regulation” of their arsenals, a formula that would leave the weapons in their hands, instead of giving them to the state.
The dispute has split Iraq’s ruling Shiite Coordination Framework. One camp wants militia weapons transferred to the state-linked but Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces, while another favors allowing the factions to retain them under agreed restrictions. Washington, meanwhile, has insisted to Baghdad that any disarmament process must be substantive rather than cosmetic.
The Sept. 30 deadline for disarmament is also becoming less firm. Iraqi officials now describe the deadline as the start of a gradual process rather than a hard cutoff, even as Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi says he remains committed to bringing all weapons under state control. The unresolved question is whether Baghdad can impose real authority over the factions most closely aligned with Tehran.
Israel Watch
Netanyahu’s Coalition Survived, but Now Comes the Election
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a statement to members of the press, in Jerusalem, September 8, 2026. REUTERS/Ammar Awad TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has spent nearly four years looking perpetually on the verge of a catastrophic collapse, only to survive each crisis and move on. The coalition’s durability has come less from any sense of unity than mutual dependence: they either stuck together or lost power.
But the coalition’s skin-of-its-teeth survival is now set to be evaluated critically by Israeli voters. Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has emerged as Netanyahu’s strongest electoral challenger in years, but Israel’s fragmented parliamentary system means neither side is assured a governing majority. The campaign turns in part too on unresolved questions over the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, including what warnings Netanyahu received and his resistance to an independent inquiry.
The Oct. 27 vote looks set to be about more than whether Netanyahu’s Likud comes first. Israel’s longest-serving premier is asking voters to credit him with holding together a government through years of war and political turmoil, while his opponents are trying to turn the same period into a referendum on his decision-making, and whether Israel is due for a change at the top.
