Why Salaried Armies Keep Losing to Mobilizational Islam When Houthi forces entered Mokha on September 10, they took more than a port on Yemen’s Red Sea coast. They broke through a military zone that Gulf governments had spent years and billions of dollars trying…
The fighting in Yemen since September 3, 2026, runs along a sectarian line. The Houthis, Zaydi Shias backed by Iran, opened an assault west of Taiz and south of Hodeidah after the 2022 ceasefire collapsed in July, and they face the internationally recognized government…
“These are three important countries in the region. We are reviewing our options, but for now, we have not made any decision about joining it,” Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani told journalists in Islamabad on August 20. He was answering a question about…
“Don’t be fooled,” a senior Israeli security source told Al-Monitor on August 21. “Turkey intended to place radar systems and attack drones at the Syrian air force base under Syrian cover. The information is very solid. The Turks know that we know, and the…
“Their navy is gone, their air force is destroyed, their military factories are now rubble, their currency is worthless and their country is hanging by a thread,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday evening, August 19. Two hundred words later, in the…
For several weeks the US military has been running 15 to 20 tankers a night through the southern channel of the Strait of Hormuz, hugging the coast of Oman. About 10 million barrels of oil a day reach world markets through that corridor, roughly…
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told the Security Council on August 19 that the body had become “very good at holding meetings but very bad at making a difference.” Instead of spending its time on Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis,…
“If Hezbollah fires at us, we strike Iran. A strike by the Iranian octopus’s tentacles inside Israel’s borders will exact a price inside Iran’s borders,” Naftali Bennett said on August 19 at the security conference of B’Yachad, the joint list he formed with Yair…
Five commodity vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday. None crossed on Sunday. The weekend before, the same two days carried thirty-one. Reuters published the figures from the ship-tracking firm Kpler on Monday, August 17. Before the war began on February 28, more…
On August 16 Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, his own social platform, that he was happy Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan had signed the Mecca Pact, formally the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, which shows “how Countries will finally be able to defend themselves…