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Video posted by government forces in Yemen showed them driving armoured cars over Houthi ⁠fighters ⁠as they recaptured areas around the vital Bab el-Mandeb Strait from ⁠the Iran-backed group on Monday in a deadly new phase of the fragmented country's war. The videos gave a glimpse into the brutal closing stages ​of a pitched battle for control of territory near the strait that the Houthis had captured last month. The Houthi advance sent shockwaves through the oil market and pushed up petrol and diesel prices worldwide. Fighting continued near Bab el-Mandeb ‌on Tuesday as Saudi-backed government forces battled to consolidate...

Yemeni government forces claimed on Monday to have retaken control of key positions near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a vital chokepoint for global trade, as they launch a renewed campaign to roll back recent gains made by the Iran-backed Houthi movement. Military spokesperson Majid Al-Nuzaili claimed on X that government forces “have succeeded in controlling Bab al-Mandeb,” adding that they have “cut off” and taken control of the road between Dhubab district, which overlooks Bab al-Mandeb, and the port town of Mocha, previously seized by the Houthis. CNN hasn’t independently verified the claim. Forces, which are backed by Saudi Arabia,...

A Department of Energy electrical engineer has been arrested on charges of providing support to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, including by buying materials for homemade explosives and drones and traveling to Yemen, the Justice Department said Thursday. Ashton Hamed Ellaboudy, 51, of Richland, Washington, was arrested Thursday and is due to make his first court appearance Friday. Court records do not list an attorney available to speak on his behalf. The FBI says Ellaboudy had a goal of helping the Houthis improve their communications capabilities and traveled last September to Yemen, where the Houthis and Saudi-backed government forces are now...

MECCA: A suicide bomber reportedly attempted to detonate explosive-laden vest inside Grand Mosque here Friday night. The device malfunctioned and no blast occured. According to reports the alleged bomber got close to Kaaba. However, Saudi authorities on Friday, while denying suicide bombing reports, clarified that a man was arrested for harassing passerby, causing fear and panic. No details apropos the nabbed person has yet been provided. Reuters reports on Thursday: The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Houthis said on Thursday the terrorist group had attacked a power distribution station in the holy city of Medina this week, putting one transformer out...

While the UK has swapped out its previous prime minister, Keir Starmer, who failed to prosecute Muslim sex grooming gangs while heading the Crown Prosecution Service, for current PM Andy Burnham, who did little about Muslim sex grooming gangs when he was mayor of Greater Manchester, Shabana Mahmood, a Pakistani Muslim, has been heading up the UK’s security and immigration ministry. Mahmood has promised a swift crackdown on illegal migration, but don’t worry, it’s a swift crackdown on Christian and non-Muslim migrants. According to Oxford’s Migration Observatory, “the number of asylum seekers in the UK reached the highest number on...

From my balcony in the Judean mountains, I can see the lights of Jordan on a clear night and the skyline of Amman at sunrise. On other nights, I simply look south and east and know that the same Iranian missiles and drones from the Houthis in Yemen threatening my children and grandchildren are also threatening the mosques, holy cities, the oil fields, and the very capital that keep the House of Saud in power. That is the uncomfortable intimacy of this region. We are not friends. We are not yet even fully acknowledged as legitimate neighbors. Yet Riyadh is...

Broad international front at UN: Iran and the Houthis in Yemen face condemnation from dozens of countries and the European Union over disruption to shipping routes and threats to energy security. Statement calls for immediate implementation of UN Security Council resolution: "Shipping and seafarers must never be used as leverage."

The defense minister accused Erdogan of financing and embracing Hamas, and claimed that he dreams of "restoring the Ottoman Empire" in a post on X/Twitter. "Now he's signed the 'Mecca Agreement' to defend Saudi Arabia," he said, "But when the Houthis fired missiles at Mecca and it was time to honor his word, he vanished into thin air." "Israel is strong and knows how to protect itself. We're not the Kurds and the desperate people he still oppresses in Turkey today," he said

Gas Prices Are Out Of Control. Here’s What No One Is Telling You.We aren't simply wasting money on Ukraine. The return on investment has been overwhelmingly negative.Conventional wisdom is that “high gas prices” are the result of the war in Iran, that they’re going to result in heavy losses for the Republicans in the midterms, and that the cost of living is going to remain high for the foreseeable future. This consensus view, while not entirely wrong, is actually a simplistic and very optimistic version of events. The truth is actually worse than what conventional wisdom says. The truth is...

FBI agent Pellegrino; "But there were missed opportunities before. And you always have to wonder what else could have been done to possibly have picked him up. And if we had picked him up, I just, I can't imagine that an event like 9-11 would have happened." CBS. Sep 11, 2026. How '9/11 mastermind' slipped through FBI's fingers. BBC. Sep 5, 2021. Mohammed seems to have been tipped off about the US interest in him and fled Qatar, ending up in Afghanistan.''

This is the first time since Yemen's civil war resumed that strikes have threatened Riyadh.The United States warned on Saturday (Sep 19) that hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Houthis could "escalate rapidly" after a missile attack targeted Riyadh for the first time since the Yemen conflict resumed. US President Donald Trump cut short a weekend at Camp David, a secluded presidential complex in rural Maryland, to return unexpectedly to the White House on Saturday. The White House gave no explanation for the early return, which comes as a new threshold was crossed in the conflict between Saudi Arabia and...

The Houthi militia in Yemen said on Saturday that it had attacked Saudi Arabia’s capital and oil facilities with a barrage of missiles and drones, a significant escalation in the renewed war between the kingdom and the Iranian-backed group. The Saudis intercepted a Houthi missile launched toward Riyadh, the capital, according to Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki, the spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen. He added in a statement that air defenses had fended off assaults on “civilians and civilian infrastructure” in several other cities in the kingdom, including coastal Yanbu, where the Houthis said they attacked oil facilities....

For quite some time now we’ve been keeping a close eye on the border region between Pakistan and India. The two nuclear powers have never gotten along well, with frequent skirmishes breaking out over disputed territory. But as of yesterday, Pakistan has experienced a flare-up with a different neighbor. Iran has launched attacks on what it claims are terrorist centers in Pakistan and now Pakistan has fired back, launching airstrikes into Iranian territory and killing at least seven people. So if there wasn’t already enough warfare in that region (both declared and undeclared), there’s one more conflict to toss on...

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi on Thursday denied claims that Yemeni forces had targeted Mecca, calling the allegation "the lie of the age" and "a great slander," and claimed that the "Zionist enemy" represented the true threat to Mecca and other Islamic holy sites. "The real threat is the Zionist enemy, which seeks to target all Islamic holy sites, including Mecca, Medina, and Al-Aqsa Mosque," al-Houthi said. "We are ready to confront it as an Islamic alliance." Addressing the allegations against Yemeni forces, al-Houthi said: "This is an exposed lie intended to conceal failure on the battlefield and to incite others."...

These days one reads fewer stories proclaiming the turning of the tide in the Russia-Ukraine war. There are also fewer tweets from Donald Trump threatening Iran with imminent destruction. Now that the noise has receded, it is a good time to listen. I am not hearing of a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive. What I am hearing instead is the thud of Russian jackboots marching deeper into the parts of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that Vladimir Putin does not yet control. Meanwhile, in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula, the Houthis have taken control of the strategic port city of...

Anthropic says Claude users in northern Yemen, territory controlled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, tried to use the AI model to develop advanced missiles. AI is already transforming warfare from Ukraine to Gaza, and its use on a rugged and remote battlefield is likely to increase concerns about its rapid spread. Anthropic said the users of the accounts, which it blocked after identifying them, did not succeed in “fielding an operational device” but did carry out a failed test of a guided rocket. It said it knows that because the users returned to its Claude chatbot to find out why it...

My, what a difference a few days makes.On Wednesday, it looked like a surprise offensive by Yemeni government forces had knocked Iran's proxies, the Houthis, back on their heels. In just a day of hard fighting, the Houthis had been routed from several strongholds and Yemeni Deputy Defense Minister Samir al-Sabri declared that “the decision has been made to retake Sanaa.”🇾🇪⚡- In the past hour, Presidential Leadership Council forces have launched a major offensive in the al-Bayda' Governorate, southern Yemen.The fighting is no longer confined to a few directions, Yemen is once again engaged in a full-scale civil war, with...

Iraq's government was racing Saturday to contain the fallout after local Iran-backed militias were accused of attacking and shuttering a key Saudi pipeline. Though an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias in Iraq denied their involvement, Iraq's government confirmed the attacks had originated from its territory. The government pledged to investigate and dismissed a military commander. The country is under mounting pressure to prevent local militias from aiding other Iran proxy groups across the region. The Iraqi government has set a Sept. 30 deadline for non-state groups to disarm, but several of the most powerful militias have said they will not...

Saudi Arabia’s critical East-West oil pipeline system was struck on Thursday, with multiple pumping stations hit in an attack that could threaten one of the kingdom’s most important crude export routes, according to CNN, citing two U.S. officials familiar with the matter... ...OilPrice.com reported that NASA FIRMS had detected multiple large fires near the East-West pipeline, while Sentinel-3 imagery appeared to show a massive plume of black smoke stretching across western Saudi Arabia. One U.S. official said the attack involved drones originating from Iraq, although responsibility for the strikes has not yet been established... ...It also remains unclear whether the...

Houthis HUMILIATE Saudi Arabia, Massive BREAKTHROUGH To Bab el-Mandab! - video at link