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In this week’s MBN Agenda: As tanker attacks spread through the Gulf and Houthi strikes threaten Saudi Arabia’s oil export routes, Trump is looking to Russia for help keeping fuel flowing. The result is a knotty energy strategy: loosen the squeeze on Moscow, tighten it on Tehran and hope Yemen does not force another U.S. intervention.
Also this week: the U.S. Treasury takes its biggest economic swing yet at Iran’s shadow oil fleet, the Gulf states face a harder choice between Chinese tech and American AI chips and Mahmoud Abbas pushes Palestinian elections back to September 2027.
Hani Al-Farash, Jim Snyder, Mustafa Khatib, Zhou Yu, Mustafa Momani, Shaiba alhamd Abdelrahman and Majdi Amin contributed to this week’s Agenda.
Washington Signals
Trump’s Energy Workaround
As attacks on tankers spread through the Persian Gulf and Houthi missiles hit Riyadh, Donald Trump is turning to Vladimir Putin for help.
On Friday, the U.S. president announced a deal for his Russian counterpart to send large quantities of diesel back onto global markets, despite Washington’s continuing sanctions campaign against Moscow over the Ukraine war. On Sunday he announced a companion policy: an “energy ceasefire” under which he said Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop attacking each other’s refineries and power infrastructure, even as the wider war proceeds.
The logic is fairly straightforward. The Iran war is making world energy markets less predictable, so Trump wants to inject some stability from somewhere else. Whether the realities of war yield to that logic is uncertain.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he hadn’t been aware of any such ceasefire and that Moscow struck a thermal power plant after Trump announced it. Zelenskyy said Kyiv would only stop hitting Russian refineries if Russia reciprocated. Meanwhile, six U.S. senators (four of them Republicans) are demanding Trump nix the deal with Moscow, arguing it undermines sanctions imposed over the Ukraine war.
As Washington opens wiggle room on Russian fuel sanctions, it’s trying to squeeze Iranian oil exports even harder. The U.S. Treasury Department last week sanctioned another 17 vessels in Tehran’s shadow fleet, calling it the biggest action yet against the network Iran uses to move sanctioned oil, which Washington says funds Tehran’s continued fight.
That pressure has not yet produced a breakthrough in the Strait of Hormuz, where transits last week were at the lowest level in more than two months. Iran said Monday it was still reviewing Washington’s latest response to its proposal for reopening the waterway. But there is a familiar sticking point: America wants Iran’s nuclear program addressed; Tehran wants to start with just Hormuz.
Then, of course, there’s Saudi Arabia, where the Houthis attacked airports on the weekend, killing more than a dozen people, and openly warned global travellers to avoid trips to Riyadh. Those attacks by a U.S.-designated terrorist group complicate Trump’s efforts to avoid military action to back his Saudi ally.
Riyadh has been doing a good job keeping oil moving despite the disruptions of war. Saudi crude exports climbed back to roughly prewar levels last month, and the kingdom was successfully rerouting about 5.8 million barrels a day through its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu last week.
But that workaround is precisely what the Houthi escalation now threatens.
The group has attacked Saudi airports and oil facilities while fighting around the Red Sea coast and Bab el-Mandeb, the strait at its southern end. Even if Saudi Arabian crude can bypass Hormuz by reaching Yanbu, a sustained Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping — or to the pipelines feeding it — would put pressure on the escape route Riyadh has relied on to keep barrels flowing.
Markets are already noticing, with Brent crude futures for December rising about 2% on Monday to roughly $106 a barrel, as the weekend airport strikes seemed to outweigh hopes that Trump and Putin’s diesel deal might add supply.
As the Nov. 3 mid-terms approach, that increases pressure on Trump, whose preferred formula — keep oil flowing without joining another war — works only as long as Riyadh’s alternative routes remain usable.
Quote of the day
“These attacks by Iran’s proxies are pushing the region into a spiral of violence. They are destabilizing crucial global transport and energy nodes with shockwave[s] sent through the world.”
— European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in a post on X speaking about the Houthi attacks on Riyadh’s airport.
Iran Watch
U.S. Targets What’s Left of Iran’s Shadow Fleet
FILE PHOTO: Vessels at the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Musandam, Oman, October 2, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
The Trump administration has sanctioned 17 tankers in what the U.S. Treasury Department called its “most significant blow yet” to Iran’s remaining shadow oil fleet. The vessels, flying 12 different flags, stand accused of moving millions of barrels of Iranian crude oil and refined petroleum products through networks of front companies designed to evade American sanctions.
The action adds a new layer to Washington’s recent pressure campaign alongside its naval blockade of Iranian ports. Treasury officials say Iran has stopped loading and unloading crude tankers and now has no more than about 20 million barrels aboard vessels outside the U.S. sanctions net.
The pressure comes as the two sides exchange proposals to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said that talks have been “productive” and that the United States would not attack Iran before the November midterms elections, leaving economic pressure as Washington’s main tool for now.
Gulf Watch
Tanker Attacks Spread Beyond Hormuz
Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz near the beach of Bandar Abbas, Iran, October 6, 2026. Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA/via WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iranian attacks on tankers around the Hormuz, meanwhile, have reached their highest level since the U.S.-Iran war began, with strikes now spreading deeper inside the Persian Gulf. Two vessels were hit inside the Gulf in three days last week, and commercial traffic through Hormuz fell to its lowest level since July.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed responsibility for one of the attacks and warned that ships using the U.S.-backed southern transit route would be pursued “throughout the region.” Washington says the strait remains open and that it has helped thousands of vessels transit despite repeated Iranian attacks.
The disruption is not fully choking off Gulf exports, though. Producers are increasingly routing their crude through the Gulf of Oman and Red Sea instead, keeping total regional oil flows close to prewar levels even as the Hormuz traffic falls. Still, the latest attacks have pushed oil and diesel prices higher, showing how quickly the wider Gulf can become part of the same shipping crisis.
Yemen Watch
Why the Houthis Are Targeting Saudi Airports?
Surveillance footage shows smoke and fire as people react at the moment of an attack at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 10, 2026, in this frame from a handout video. Saudi Ministry of Media/Handout via REUTERS
The Houthis have turned Saudi airports into a pressure point in their conflict with Riyadh, with strikes over the past week killing about 20 people. Analysts told MBN that the attacks are meant to raise the cost of Riyadh’s involvement in the conflict in Yemen and disrupt international travel to Saudi Arabia.
Hitting major airports also guarantees attention, with Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute noting that the Houthis are partly trying to “make headlines” around the world. But the attacks could also change Washington’s calculations. Trump has so far resisted joining any Saudi strikes on the Houthis, but he said he would consider direct action after an American was killed in the attacks.
China Watch
Gulf AI Ambitions Force a U.S.-China Choice
News footage on a giant screen outside a shopping mall shows China’s President Xi Jinping (R) meeting with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Beijing on April 14, 2026. Pedro Pardo/AFP
Chinese investment in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is still surging, particularly in cloud computing, payments, telecom and AI. Major Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and Lenovo are expanding rapidly across both markets as Beijing pushes its Digital Silk Road deeper into the Gulf.
But frontier AI is where things get harder for China’s Middle Eastern partners. Washington has made access to its most advanced chips conditional on removing Chinese technology from core networks, forcing Gulf countries to choose between Chinese infrastructure and the American hardware they need for their biggest AI ambitions.
The UAE has already shown it will pay that price: G42 stripped out $150 million in Huawei equipment to secure closer ties with Microsoft and U.S. technology suppliers. For now, Gulf states are still trying to maintain both relationships — Chinese capital and infrastructure on one side, American chips and security ties on the other — but their room to balance is fast narrowing.
Palestine Watch
Abbas Pushes Elections Back to 2027
A police officer stands next to a banner at a polling station during the municipal council election, in Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, April 25, 2026. REUTERS/Mussa Qawasma
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has postponed legislative and presidential elections until Sept. 11, 2027, delaying what would have been the first Palestinian national vote in two decades. Abbas blamed deteriorating conditions, Israeli restrictions and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The delay comes as the Palestinian factions maneuver over who should be allowed to run. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP reject Abbas’s rules requiring candidates to endorse the PLO’s political program, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad have also moved closer to Mohammed Dahlan, a longtime Abbas rival.
The postponement extends a political system in which Abbas has governed largely by decree since the Palestinian Legislative Council stopped functioning in 2007. Mustafa Barghouti, another Abbas rival, told MBN he believed the delay was “regrettable” and that its unilateral announcement was a “major mistake.”
