Tanker Hit Multiple Times in Arabian Gulf, Casualties Reported

Courtesy UKMTO

By The Maritime Executive 2026-10-07 15:52:28

[Breaking] The Royal Navy's maritime security tracking office, UK Maritime Trade Operations, has released a report of a significant vessel attack in the middle of the Arabian Gulf - hundreds of miles from the Strait of Hormuz, the region affected most by the U.S.-Iran conflict. 

At about 1900 hours UTC, the master of a tanker reported that the vessel was "struck by multiple projectiles" at a position about 50 nm to the north of Madinat ash Shamal, Qatar. The name of the vessel has not yet been released, as is UKMTO's practice in initial reports.

Casualties have been reported in the incident and the authorities are currently investigation, UKMTO said. 

It is the first reported tanker attack in the western half of the Arabian Gulf in weeks. U.S. military airborne security patrols have been active in the southern reaches of the Strait of Hormuz, defending a narrow maritime corridor with some success, but American forces have only a limited presence to the west of the waterway - rendering tankers transiting off Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar comparatively vulnerable. The U.S. Navy no longer maintains an operationally significant presence in Manama, Bahrain, former home of U.S. Fifth Fleet, and there are no U.S. surface combatants operating west of Hormuz. On land, U.S. air and ground forces have been drawn down at bases around the region due to the threat of Iranian drones and ballistic missiles. 

This is a breaking story and will be updated as details emerge.

 Congress Must Investigate War Profiteers Once Again

Hank Kennedy
Sat, October 3, 2026 
JACOBIN


Illustration by Rakhmat Jaka Perkasa

Key takeaways

President Donald Trump requested a $445 billion increase to the defense budget, bringing the total military spending to around $1.5 trillion, benefiting major war contractors like Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX (formerly Raytheon).


In April, President Donald Trump requested a $445 billion increase to the defense budget, meaning the United States will be spending around $1.5 trillion on the military. Much of the largesse will benefit the Big Five war contractors: Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX (formerly Raytheon). These are the companies behind such budget-shredding boondoggles as the F-35 and the littoral combat ships.

If the promises of these weapons salesmen are to be believed, the US war with Iran should already be over. The enormousness of the Pentagon's budget, on paper, means that any conflict the United States enters should be a decidedly short and lopsided affair. Yet Iran has not crumbled against an onslaught that one analyst calculated has cost the United States $72 billion and counting. What has all this spending accomplished?

A US Patriot interceptor missile costs $4 million; a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor runs around $13 million. America has fired plenty of both in the war with Iran. Contrast that with the Iranian attack drones these systems are meant to shoot down, which run anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 apiece. These swarms of cheap drones are able to effectively counter US aircraft carriers whose price tags run into the billions (that is, when laundry room fires don't do the job). The United States has fired off so much ordnance that talk has turned to a possible missile shortage.

All this weaponry comes at a steep price for the average American back home. In April, a report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that the average taxpayer spends approximately $4,000 per year on war and weaponry. What is all this money going toward? Who has really benefited from over a trillion dollars a year in annual military spending? In a spirit sorely lacking today, Congress tried to answer these and other questions ninety years ago when it forthrightly challenged the Pentagon and military contractors in its famous Nye Committee of 1934.

The Big, Corrupt Business of Arms Sales

In the wake of the Great Depression, a wave of anti-militarism and anti–weapons manufacturer sentiment swept the United States. Books like Iron, Blood, and Profits by muckraker George Seldes and the bestseller Merchants of Death by H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen exposed the workings of the international arms trade. Even Fortune, no hotbed of radicalism then or now, published its own exposé, "Arms and the Men," which was reprinted for a wider audience in Reader's Digest.

A shocked public demanded action. Dorothy Detzer of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom approached Nebraska Senator George Norris about launching a Senate investigation into the munitions industry. Norris was a natural choice given that he had strongly opposed World War I, arguing the country was "going into war upon the command of gold. We are going to run the risk of sacrificing millions of our countrymen's lives in order that other countrymen may coin their lifeblood into money." But Norris begged off, citing illness and overwork.

Instead Norris suggested North Dakota's Gerald Nye. Although a Republican, he was supported by the left-wing Nonpartisan League. Nye was a firm anti-militarist who condemned Uncle Sam for "helping to crucify" the people of Nicaragua via military interventions to shore up business interests. Nye had already served on two Senate investigations and was picked to chair the two-year inquiry.

The Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, commonly referred to as the Nye Committee, uncovered some explosive evidence: arms manufacturers frequently bribed officials. Clarence Webster of Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation objected to the "rather harsh" term "bribery" before admitting that the greasing of palms was employed, "strictly speaking."

Curtiss-Wright played countries against one another for profit, telling one sales representative in Peru during the Colombia-Peru War to "diplomatically inform interested parties that your neighbor to the extreme north [Colombia] is still purchasing large quantities. Do not overlook such items as bombs, ammunition, machine guns equipment, etc." They were not alone.

A Colt salesman explained to the Bolivian consul that "it would be advisable for [Bolivia] to act quickly if [it] wanted to get these guns, intimating that a certain other government might get them if Bolivia did not act quickly." The Paraguayan government was the other party, then fighting Bolivia in the Chaco War.

Frank Jonas of Remington Arms proclaimed during the war: "The unsettled conditions in South America [have] been a great thing for me, as I sold a large order for bombs to Brazil and also a fair cartridge order. I also sold very large bomb orders for Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia."

Arms manufacturers complained of US diplomatic efforts that might put a damper on business. A representative of Electric Boat (today a part of General Dynamics) complained to a counterpart from Vickers (today a part of UK defense contractor BAE Systems), "It is too bad that the pernicious activities of our State Department have put the brake on armament orders." Peace, it seems, was just too unprofitable.

It even turned out that a commander in the US Navy was moonlighting as an arms salesman. James H. Strong helped peddle the wares of two munitions makers and received a tidy commission for doing so. Nye was shocked to find "governments — especially our own war and navy departments — have been actively promoting the munitions-makers, for years."

The committee also investigated the sky-high profits arms manufacturers had made during World War I. DuPont, headed by one of the oldest and richest families in America, saw an increase in its profits of 1,130 percent. Eugene Grace, president of Bethlehem Steel, testified to how "unfortunate" it was that Bonus Marchers had marched on Washington to protest for their World War I bonuses. He then admitted, with no seeming sense of irony, that he had received almost $3 million in bonuses during the war. The situation, he averred, could "leave a bad taste" in veterans' mouths.

Shocking revelations aside, the Nye Committee produced little substantial legislation. Efforts to nationalize the arms manufacturers failed despite widespread public support, as did a campaign to require a national referendum before declaring war. The Neutrality Acts that did result were whittled away as the country moved back on a war footing in the lead-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. In his farewell address, Nye said he was "more proud of having" led the Senate inquiry than of anything else in his career.
Under Trump, War Is More Profitable Than Ever

Recent books like The Trillion Dollar War Machine by William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman and The Spoils of War by Andrew Cockburn have followed the trail blazed by Engelbrecht, Hanighen, and Seldes. The authors have documented the revolving door between military contractors, government, and think tanks; the corrosive effects of arms-industry and foreign lobbying; and efforts to influence the media. The merchants of death are still on their bad behavior. In January 2025, a citizens' tribunal found that American weapons contractors are themselves guilty of crimes against humanity, including genocide. Open bribery — "rather harsh" or not — has not disappeared, as Raytheon's recent legal troubles have proven.

Conflicts of interest and public officials acting as salesmen for private arms manufacturers are also still with us. Palmer Luckey of Anduril Industries is both a major Trump donor dating back to 2016 and a recipient of Pentagon liberality, with his company receiving a $250 million contract to produce missiles and drones for the military. Luckey has suggested the United States needs to "hyperscale manufacturing" for a potential showdown with China, ideally (and conveniently) with his company's Arsenal-1 weapons factory in Ohio. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has pushed for a Pentagon shake-up to better facilitate the overseas arms trade. Even the president's sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump have positioned themselves for a windfall through their investments in various companies manufacturing military drones. Ninety years later, General Smedley Butler's war racket continues to make a killing, regardless of how unpopular a war like the one in Iran might be. It's a big, well-armed club, and we aren't in it.

"Investigations serve a most healthy purpose," Nye said, the year before chairing the committee. "With economics and political influence coming into such concentrated control it is of greatest importance that legislative bodies be on closest guard against encroachment which further threatens a free government. . . . We should have not less, but more legislative investigations."

The issues raised by his investigation have only worsened in the intervening years. After the boondoggles of Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran, the time has come for a twenty-first-century Nye Committee. If we don't act, those wars — no matter how unpopular — will grind on. There's simply too much money to be made.

This article originally appeared in Jacobin, a democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analysis on politics, economics, and culture. Subscribe to the print edition for $20 a year.

The Illusion Of Hard Power: Reflection On How Democratized Technology And Strategic Geography Broke The Superpower Monopoly On War

October 5, 2026

By Dawit W. Giorgis

Key Takeaways:

A former infantry officer argues that Vietnam, Iraq, and African interventions show firepower does not buy compliance when a population treats the fight as existential, and that external backing or neglect left long instability from Congo and Somalia to Libya and the Sahel.

The 2026 Iran war and Ukraine are presented as a cost inversion: cheap mass drones and missiles force million-dollar interceptors, and Hormuz pressure moved the contest into shipping, insurance, and energy; Ukraine’s sea drones against the Black Sea Fleet are cited as the same pattern.

The conclusion is that total destruction is politically and strategically unavailable, so China’s caution on Taiwan and future stability depend on defensive sustainability and compromise rather than regime change—an argument, not a demonstrated law.

Written from the unique perspective of a former infantry officer of the late sixties, this paper examines the paradigm shift in 21st-century geopolitics, in which conventional military dominance no longer guarantees political control. Tracing an evolutionary line from the ideological endurance of Vietnam to the urban insurgencies of Iraq, the paper argues that contemporary conflicts involving Iran and Ukraine mark a watershed in modern warfare. By pairing fierce nationalist resolve with cheap, mass-produced asymmetric technology, weaker states have triggered a severe industrial-economic inversion, bankrupting expensive Western defensive systems through supply-chain attrition. Crucially, the paper highlights how Iran successfully weaponized its strategic geography—specifically the Strait of Hormuz—shifting the center of military gravity into global shipping, insurance, and energy networks and holding global markets hostage. Confronted with the reality that victory against an existential defense would require total destruction, superpowers such as the United States, Russia, and an island-facing China are hitting a structural wall. The paper concludes that absolute military coercion is obsolete; future global stability depends on balancing defensive sustainability with soft power, diplomatic tolerance, and mutual compromise.

The Illusion of Hard Power

In 1967, I was a young officer training at the Advanced Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, alongside American officers. The ghost of the Vietnam War hung heavy over every field exercise, tactical briefing, and grueling march we endured. We were trained by men who had just returned from those jungles, and the lesson they drilled into us had nothing to do with a lack of American firepower. Instead, they forced us to confront the limits of willpower. We learned the hard way that you cannot militarily break an indigenous population when they are fighting for their own dirt. Fifty years have passed since my time in uniform, and as I get older, I watch the news and realize that our strategic leaders are still trapped in the same fallacy. We continue to assume that an overwhelming accumulation of military might can force a weaker nation to surrender its independence and existence. History has shattered that illusion across my lifetime, from Southeast Asia to the deserts of Iraq, and now to the tech-driven battlefields of Ukraine, the proxy conflicts of Africa, and the waters of the Persian Gulf. The basic reality of modern conflict is that military dominance no longer equals political control. When a nation views a conflict as existential, hard power can only achieve two things: death and destruction. It cannot buy compliance. Today, because the means of resistance have been cheapened and widely democratized, the pursuit of absolute control is a path toward mutual ruin. True strength for the future lies not in our capacity to destroy, but in our willingness to tolerate, compromise, and engage the world through mutual respect.

To understand why US military dominance is broken, we must look closely at how resistance has changed since my time. In the 1960s and 70s, US conventional doctrine was pushed to its limits. The United States dropped millions of tons of ordnance on Vietnam yet failed to achieve its political objectives. The failure was not a lack of tactical skill on the ground; it was a fundamental strategic failure to recognize that a population defending its homeland measures victory purely by its willingness to keep dying. Against deeply rooted nationalism, conventional bombing campaigns could not break the enemy’s resolve. As my generation learned through immense trauma, a democracy simply cannot sustain a war of indefinite casualties for non-existential goals. Decades later, I watched the next generation of American soldiers march into Iraq. While the initial conventional phase of that war was won in a matter of weeks through “Shock and Awe,” the secondary phase of controlling and governing the country was completely lost. Our political leaders were blindsided by the raw willpower of a population that flatly rejected a foreign occupation. The battlefield quickly evolved into a decentralized, borderless insurgency fueled by improvised explosive devices and urban terror. Iraq demonstrated what any seasoned infantryman fears in his bones: demolishing a state’s conventional armor and infantry is the easy part. Holding and controlling a hostile nation is politically, morally, and economically unsustainable. The sheer friction of trying to enforce compliance against an unwilling population eventually drains a superpower’s resources and erodes its domestic political capital.


Yet this failure to understand the limits of hard power is not confined to the Middle East or Southeast Asia. When evaluated against my twenty-eight years as a UN peacemaking consultant across Africa’s most volatile war zones, the limits of conventional military coercion become even more starkly apparent. In all the wars I have witnessed on the African continent, there was always a degree of heavy-handed, unbalanced, or indifferent Western and global involvement that excluded local populations and created a legacy of perpetual instability. Cold War logic led to American support for the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For Washington, this was a low-cost transactional alignment; for the DRC, it left behind a legacy of systemic fracture and a perpetual war that refuses to heal. Similarly, American indifference during the Rwandan genocide left a scar on America’s declared role as an advocate for genocide and crimes against humanity, and its unwise, heavy-handed intervention followed by a disgraceful exit in Somalia fundamentally altered the regional landscape, leaving Somalia trapped in a cycle of warlordism from which it cannot recover. In Libya, a relatively low-cost NATO aerial intervention to overthrow Gaddafi resulted in a fractured state that became a breeding ground for human trafficking, weapon proliferation, and militia warfare that spilled across the Sahel. Historical alignments like the American-supported Charles Taylor created havoc and civil war across both Liberia and Sierra Leone, proving that short-sighted external backing yields catastrophic regional consequences on the back end.


Today, this cycle continues as global superpowers and regional actors treat the continent as a theater for cheap geopolitical disruption. In Central and West Africa, Russia uses its mercenary arm, formerly Wagner and now Africa Corps, as a low-cost tool to loot mineral resources and displace Western influence. Meanwhile, in the Horn of Africa, the absence of a clear, balanced US policy has allowed its allies, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to wage destructive proxy wars to secure their strategic and mineral interests. This echoes the historic “Françafrique” policies of control in West and Central Africa, where foreign dictation systematically excludes local people from the economic value chain. When war is supported, sponsored, or neglected by global powers, it becomes a negative-sum game where everyone loses. Because of these heavy-handed or neglectful policies, Africa’s true potential is suppressed, making it impossible to establish equitable, win-win trade or security architectures. Instead of being a robust global partner, these destabilized regions are forced into a state where they become involuntary exporters of instability through migration crises, piracy, and transnational terrorism. The West is then forced to spend trillions on reactive border security and counter-terrorism operations—a massive, unsustainable defense expenditure triggered by the long-tail consequences of original policy failures. Africa is left unable to heal itself, the West remains trapped in a cycle of reactive containment, and the global rules-based order faces an asymmetric threat to peace that cannot be solved by expensive weapons alone.


This structural failure of global foreign policy mirrors the tactical crisis we see on the modern battlefield, driven by the brutal mathematics of the Cost-Imbalance Doctrine. Modern warfare is no longer dictated by platform sophistication but by logistics, replacement speed, and lopsided economic exchange ratios. The collapse in the cost of commercial electronics, additive manufacturing, and open-source autonomous systems has shattered the traditional cost curve, tilting the strategic advantage sharply toward mass-produced, low-cost offense. The 2026 war involving Iran represents the ultimate, terrifying evolution of this trajectory, presenting a style of warfare that my peers in the seventies could scarcely have imagined. If Vietnam required dense jungles and Iraq required complex urban networks, modern asymmetric warfare requires only three things: basic, a determined population, universally manufacturable technology, and the strategic weaponization of geography. Iran effectively rewrote the global rules of engagement by manufacturing mass-produced, low-cost weapons—primarily twenty-thousand-dollar kamikaze drones and standard ballistic missiles. This has created a catastrophic economic and industrial imbalance for Western forces. Today, advanced militaries are forced to defend multi-billion-dollar assets like aircraft carriers by firing two-million-dollar air-defense interceptors at targets that cost less than a used car. When a five-hundred-dollar FPV drone or a thirty-thousand-dollar Shahed loitering munition forces a defender to fire a multi-million-dollar Patriot, THAAD, or SM-3 interceptor, the exchange ratio becomes unsustainable. This is no longer a war of tactical maneuver; it is a war of supply chain attrition, and the mathematics favor the cheap.


Furthermore, Iran’s true stroke of strategic genius was recognizing that its geographic position is a more powerful weapon than any nuclear arsenal. By sitting directly astride the Strait of Hormuz—the narrow maritime bottleneck through which twenty percent of the world’s petroleum flows—Iran shifted the center of military gravity entirely out of the mud and into global financial markets. By deploying its low-cost sea-denial arsenal to menace commercial shipping, it effectively nationalized a global commons. This strategy weaponized marine insurance networks, sent global energy prices soaring, and proved that controlling a geographic bottleneck allows a weaker state to hold the entire global economic system hostage. This is why Iran marks a watershed moment: it demonstrated that geography, activated by cheap tech, can completely bypass a superpower’s military superiority to strike directly at its domestic and economic vulnerabilities. We see proof that this shift is a universal law, not an American exception, in the stagnation of the Russian war machine in Ukraine. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, conventional military wisdom predicted a rapid collapse of the Ukrainian state within days. Instead, the world witnessed the brutal stagnation of a traditional military giant. Ukraine countered massive armored columns and superior air power by leveraging the same formula: boundless national will paired with asymmetric technology. Armed with relatively inexpensive, mass-produced anti-tank missiles, first-person-view kamikaze drones, and decentralized digital command networks, Ukraine transformed the battlefield into a meat grinder for conventional assets. Ukraine’s ability to completely neutralize Russia’s Black Sea Fleet—not with a rival navy, but with low-cost, domestically manufactured explosive sea drones—perfectly mirrors how the vulnerability of multi-billion-dollar warships has been exposed globally.


This new reality explains the profound caution we see in East Asia regarding the Taiwan Strait. Objectively, China possesses the overwhelming conventional means—the world’s largest navy, advanced missile arsenals, and proximity—to launch an invasion of Taiwan. Yet Beijing hesitates. This caution stems from a clear-eyed analysis of these new rules of engagement. The Chinese leadership understands that invading Taiwan would mean wading directly into an asymmetric trap. Taiwan has spent decades preparing a “porcupine strategy” centered on cost-imbalance warfare. Crossing a hundred miles of open sea leaves Chinese transport ships highly vulnerable to swarms of low-cost, domestically produced anti-ship missiles and autonomous sea drones. Even if Chinese forces landed successfully, controlling a highly urbanized island of twenty-three million people against a deeply nationalist insurgency would mirror our catastrophic occupation failures in Iraq, multiplied tenfold, while inflicting an estimated two-and-a-half-trillion-dollar hit on the global economy. China’s hesitation proves the thesis: they recognize that while they have the hard power to cause immense death and destruction, they cannot guarantee surrender or control.

When a superpower faces a determined populace armed with universally manufacturable denial weapons and backed by strategic geography, it hits a wall. Because economic sanctions and localized strikes fail to break a deeply nationalist population, a superpower is left with only one military option to force an unconditional win: total destruction. Forcing a sovereign nation to abandon its existential interest today would require sustained, uninhibited bombardment or the use of nuclear weapons. However, as any strategist knows, this is a dead end. If the resisting nation or its allies possess even primitive nuclear or chemical deterrents, any escalation toward total destruction guarantees mutually assured destruction(MAD). Furthermore, neither the domestic population of a democracy nor the international community will tolerate the absolute annihilation of a country. Because total destruction is morally, politically, and strategically impossible, unconditional surrender is a relic of the past. Hard power has reached its absolute limit. If the accumulation of military might can no longer buy security or compliance, the global architecture must undergo a pragmatic revolution. This is not an appeal to utopian idealism; it is hardheaded realism from someone who has spent a lifetime reflecting on the cost of war. When conflict becomes too expensive for the strong and resistance too cheap for the weak, coexistence is the only affordable strategy left on the table.

Conclusion

True national security must be built on a balanced matrix of defensive sustainability and soft power. Superpowers must pivot away from a doctrine of regime change, containment, and forced compliance and toward policies of tolerance, compromise, and mutual respect. If a powerful nation needs resources, stable trade routes, or geopolitical cooperation, it can no longer acquire them bythe barrel of a gun or the threat of a carrier strike group. It must acquire them through diplomatic reciprocity. By recognizing the sovereignty and existential interests of smaller nations, superpowers can foster partnerships built on mutual benefit rather than perpetual, exhausting hostility. The lessons of my lifetime are clear. The world will never know peace, and superpowers will never achieve stability, until they accept that hard power is a blunt instrument capable only of wreckage. True strength lies in the capacity to compromise, to tolerate difference, and to engage the world through the sustainable lens of mutual respect.

Bibliography

Angell, Norman. The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage.London: William Heinemann, 1910.

Batmanghelidj, Esfandyar. “Drones Like Bicycles: The Real Economics of the Shahed Fleet.” Phenomenal World, March 11, 2026. Phenomenal World.

Boyle, Michael J., and Anthony H. Cordesman. Regime Change Revisited: The Intersecting Failures of Post-Conflict Governance and Hard Power. Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2016.

Brown, Seyom. The Illusion of Control: Force and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003.

Brookings Institution.
Center for Strategic and International Studies. Assessing the Air Campaign After Three Weeks: Iran War By the Numbers. CSIS Missile Defense Project Report, March 25, 2026.

CSIS Analysis

Cordesman, Anthony H. The Lessons of Ukraine and the Changing Nature of Asymmetric Attrition.Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2024.

Fard, Erfan. “Iran Didn’t Need to Win the War. It Needed to Outlast It: AI Targeting and Strategic Geography in the 2026 Conflict.” Small Wars Journal, July 8, 2026. Small Wars Journal.

Malahila, Letsema. “The Contradictory Logics of International Intervention in Africa: Structural Fragility from Mobutu to Françafrique.” GIGA Focus Africa, no. 4 (2022): 1–9. GIGA Hamburg.

O’Hanlon, Michael E. The Porcupine Strategy: Asymmetric Sea Denial and Taiwan’s Defense Dilemma.Brookings Institution Policy Brief, 2025.

United Nations Department of Peace Operations. The Intervention Dilemma: 28 Years of Multilateral Peacekeeping and Political Vacuums in War-Torn States. New York: United Nations Blue Book Series, 2024.

Zenodo Research Repository. Iran’s New Grand Strategy, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Search for a Regional Security Order. Open-Access Strategy Paper, Archive ID 21707611, July 2026. Zenodo Records.



About Dawit W. Giorgis
Dawit W. Giorgis is originally from Ethiopia, US citizen, permanent resident of Namibia; served as P.S of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Governor of Eritrea (prior to independence) and Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner during one of the most publicised famine relief operations. He later served as UN consultant in 11 African conflict and post conflict countries; was a visiting fellow at Princeton University, University of Cape Town and Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Wash, D.C. at different times.
View all posts by Dawit W. Giorgis →

Middle East oil exports return to pre-war levels, excluding Iran

Copyright Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP

By Doloresz Katanich with AFP

Published on 05/10/2026 - EURONEWS

Oil exports from the Middle East, excluding Iran, exceeded their pre-war average last week, Kpler data showed, as pipelines helped bypass the Strait of Hormuz despite continued attacks on shipping.

Despite attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, crude oil exports from the Middle East Gulf region, excluding Iran, returned to pre-war levels in September, according to maritime tracking firm Kpler. The recovery followed changes to the region’s export routes.

"At least 16.5 mbd (million barrels a day) left the region between 1 and 28 September, matching the pre-war average excluding Iran. That is 10.5 mbd above March's monthly average," said the firm.

However, 40% of those exports now bypass the Strait of Hormuz, compared with 17% before the war, with pipelines in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates providing key alternative routes. Most crude crossing the strait changes tankers offshore.

The figures cover crude oil and condensate

The export figures include shipments via the Red Sea, which exporters increasingly use to bypass Iran’s attempted blockade of Hormuz. Around a fifth of the world’s oil supplies passed through the strait before the conflict.

Oil prices remain well above their pre-war levels. International benchmark Brent crude futures for December delivery traded at $102.25 a barrel on Monday morning, while US benchmark West Texas Intermediate traded at $90.50 a barrel.

Relat

Brent futures were around $72 before the war. The disruption to shipping through the strait has sent shock waves through the global economy, prompting countries to scramble for alternatives and sending fuel prices soaring.

Iran continues to claim control over the waterway, and ships travelling without its authorisation risk attack. Nevertheless, more vessels are getting through, while alternative routes are operating at full capacity.

Despite the recovery in exports, experts warned that conditions remained far from normal. A US blockade of Iranian ports continues to restrict a large share of Iran’s own oil exports.

Saudi Arabia has benefited from the reopening of its East–West pipeline, which connects its main oil fields in the east to the Red Sea terminal at Yanbu, bypassing Hormuz.

The pipeline shut down on 11 September after strikes launched from Iraq and resumed operations on 22 September, Kpler analyst Amena Bakr said last week.

The UAE also has a route around Hormuz through its pipeline linking Abu Dhabi’s oil fields to Fujairah, a terminal on the Gulf of Oman outside the strait.

The recovery in exports comes as the seven core members of OPEC+, which comprises the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, including Russia, agreed on Sunday to leave their production targets unchanged for November, in line with expectations.

The seven countries produced about 25 million barrels of crude oil a day in August, up 630,000 barrels a day from July, according to OPEC’s September report.

Anxiety reaches fever pitch as Wall Street sours on Trump economy

REUTERS Jonathan Ernst

Adam Lynch

September 29, 2026

ALTERNET

Bloomberg reports analysts and investors alike are finally wising up to President Donald Trump’s up-and-down roller coaster of oil prices, and they’re finally settling in for a long-term slog with Trump in the White House.

“The conflict in the Middle East and the implications for forward inflation remain the primary macro narrative and are likely to dictate price action in US rates for the foreseeable future,” BMO Capital Markets’ Ian Lyngen told Bloomberg as a Tuesday drop in oil prices failed to keep stocks and bonds from sliding into an ugly drop.

Previously, Wall Street investors had rallied whenever Trump announced progress in ending his unilateral war on Iran — which has bottlenecked global oil supplies and driven up prices on the international market. But Tuesday drop in oil prices “did little to allay Wall Street’s concerns that still-elevated energy costs could fuel inflation and spur Federal Reserve rate hikes,” according to Bloomberg.


This means Trump’s magic button for temporarily manipulating stock markets with unreliable claims of peace now appears to be failing. Bloomberg reports the dollar rose and Brent crude dropped below $103 a barrel as the Trump administration ordered another release of oil from emergency reserves amid a stalemate in US-Iran talks — but to no avail with investors.

“In economic news, US job openings fell to a five-month low, suggesting employers grew more cautious about expanding their workforces toward the end of the summer, while layoffs remained subdued,” reported Bloomberg. “Consumer confidence dropped to the lowest level since 2014,”

eToro’s Bret Kenwell told Bloomberg that the latest labor-market data reinforces the “low-hire, low-fire” backdrop that has taken hold of the nation, and he added that lagging consumer-confidence “should not come as a surprise.”

“Sentiment now sits at multi-year lows as persistent inflation and higher costs weigh on households,” Kenwell said. “The question becomes whether we’ll see this materialize into weaker consumer spending — a question that earnings season will help answer.”

But in the meantime, Bloomberg reports market worries sent Treasury 30-year yields to the highest level since 2002. Most companies in the S&P 500 fell, with the gauge posting back-to-back losses.

The year 2002, notably, was marked as a terrible time for the U.S. economy with former President George W. Bush’s onerous tax cuts raiding federal coffers and Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq devastating budgets and consumer confidence.

Kurdish leader in Iraq slams 'shameful' withdrawal of US forces

DPA
Sun, September 27, 2026 


PAK Peshmerga members stand stand amidst the debris at the PAKShar camp in Erbil's Ashkawt Saqa district. The Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) is a prominent opponent of the Iranian regime based in the Kurdistan Region. (is associated with: «Kurdish leader in Iraq slams 'shameful' withdrawal of US forces»)

Ismael Adnan/dpa

Key takeaways

Prime Minister of Iraq's Kurdish region criticizes US withdrawal from the country as "shameful" due to vulnerability to attacks.

The prime minister of Iraq's Kurdish region has described the imminent withdrawal of US forces from the country as "shameful."

"The threat is real - we are vulnerable, we are being attacked," Masrour Barzani told the Financial Times. "Now, to be left alone without any, let's say, appropriate defensive system, it's shameful."

The Kurdish regional government could not purchase its own air defence systems, he said. Only the central government in Baghdad could do so.

The withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is due to be completed by September 30, this coming Wednesday. The move was agreed in 2024, after the combat mission against the extremist militia Islamic State was declared over in 2021.

US forces invaded Iraq in 2003, when ruler Saddam Hussein was toppled. After the mission ended in 2011, US troops returned in 2014 to fight Islamic State.

Since the start of the Iran war in February, the Iraqi Kurdish region has been struck by hundreds of rockets and drones, including an attack on Barzani's own office.

Iran regards the autonomous Kurdistan Region as an ally of the West and Israel on Iraqi soil. Erbil is home to a multinational base where US and German soldiers are stationed. That base has also come under fire. US forces repelled some of the attacks.

The Kurds are an ethnic group of an estimated 30 million people living mainly in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. They have fought for decades for their own state and were long persecuted and suppressed in both Iraq and Iran.

The semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq emerged after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Before that, the region had been protected by a no-fly zone enforced by the US military from 1991. Relations today between the Kurdish government, based in Erbil, and the central government in Baghdad are marked by ongoing disputes.

France to send military to protect Saudi Arabia on Red Sea oil route

France will send troops and defence systems to Saudi Arabia to help protect the Red Sea port city of Yanbu, which is key for energy transport, French President Emmanuel Macron has said in a TV interview. He also denied a report by Spanish newspaper El Mundo that the US Central Intelligence Agency had warned European governments of possible Russian drone attacks from the Mediterranean.


Issued on: 25/09/2026 - RFI

"The situation is serious", President Emmanuel Macron said in an live interview on Thursday on the international situation. © LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP

"We are going to send military resources, that is to say, soldiers, radar systems and defence systems, to protect this site – not to get us involved in any conflicts, but to protect this site," Macron told TF1 and France 2 on Thursday in a wide-ranging primetime interview on the international situation.

Crude oil prices have surged recently as the main alternative route for Saudi oil exports through Yanbu has come under missile attacks from Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis.

Facing growing pressure at home over high fuel prices, Macron sought to reassure the French people that France has adequate gas and oil supplies as winter approaches.

He said Paris was actively working to ensure flows were not disrupted.


On the subject of a 90-day US ban on diesel exports, under consideration by the White House but which Washington denies, the president said it would be "catastrophic" both globally and for the US economy.

“I think all the experts around [President Donald Trump] and all the American refiners can only tell him the same thing: 'this decision would be a bad one – not just for the rest of the world, but for the US economy as well'," he said

No CIA warning

President Macron also talked about possible Russian attacks on French soil.

He denied a report in Spanish newspaper El Mundo that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had warned European governments about the threat of potential drone attacks from the Mediterranean.

"I can deny it. The CIA did not inform French services," he said.

Macron nonetheless said Russia is multiplying its hostile and criminal acts against European countries, and France could face strikes similar to the failed attack in Leipzig airport in August, which Germany has blamed on Russia.


Growing Russian threat

Macron gathered French party chiefs at the Elysée last week to brief them on the growing threat from Russia. He later said he had ordered his government to draw up a plan to protect critical infrastructure against drone and cyber attacks.

Macron said Moscow was seeking to intimidate Europe and break the continent's resolve in supporting Ukraine.

On Monday , rance's interior minister said the hybrid warfare threat being waged by Russia is "real and documented".

Russia says European allegations of hybrid attacks are baseless and the result of anti-Russian hysteria.

Macron's position on Russia was weakened this week after France persuaded EU members to get Russian-Uzbek metals tycoon Alisher Usmanov exempted from EU sanctions, citing national security concerns.

That prompted Azerbaijan to pardon a French national jailed for espionage.

What Washington’s Defense Pledge To Saudi Arabia Means As Houthi Attacks Intensify – Analysis

SWEET FUCK ALL!


September 25, 2026
Arab News
By Gabriele Malvisi

Key Takeaways:

Gulf Research Center chair Abdulaziz Sager tells Arab News that Rubio’s Wednesday pledge to honor the Nov. 2025 U.S.–Saudi Strategic Defense Agreement will be judged on kit, operational know-how, and intel—not an automatic U.S. fight on Riyadh’s behalf.

 Coalition spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki: six ballistic missiles toward Taif and Yanbu intercepted Thursday; Houthis claimed strikes on Jazan sites without evidence.

Sager wants planning help, timely imagery, and treating Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb as one problem. Chatham House’s Neil Quilliam calls Rubio’s line a “sop”: reassurance without promising intervention if the waterways worsen. Tests he names: a major strike on energy/civilians, or a lasting Red Sea shipping campaign. 

CENTCOM’s Adm. Cooper (May): 6,000+ drones and 1,500+ ballistic missiles intercepted since the Feb. 28 war began; an Arab News tally had GCC states taking 83% of early Iranian missiles/drones vs. 17% at Israel.

Sept. 8–19: reported hits and intercepts from energy sites to Riyadh; East–West pipeline shut Sept. 11 (Saudi blame on Iraqi militias), restart reported this week. July civilian nuclear cooperation deal is background. Quilliam: “America First” and Gulf self-help.

From the perspective of Saudi Arabia, the value of Washington’s renewed defense assurances will lie in the support they deliver as Houthi attacks intensify, according to Abdulaziz Sager, founder and chairperson of the Gulf Research Center.

“For Riyadh, that support rests on three areas: military equipment, operational expertise and intelligence,” he told Arab News.

A partnership intended to strengthen deterrence is now being tested by attacks on Saudi territory and threats to the waterways on which regional trade depends. The immediate question, Sager said, was how Washington would put its commitments into practice.

On Thursday, the Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen said Saudi air defenses had intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis toward Taif and Yanbu. Damage or casualties were not immediately clear, Reuters reported.

“Escalations and violations by the terrorist Houthi militia will be dealt with firmly,” the coalition’s spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki, said.

The Houthis separately claimed, without providing evidence, that they had used missiles and drones to attack military sites in Jazan.

The latest developments followed an assurance from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday that Washington would honor its defense commitments to Saudi Arabia, and was closely monitoring the regional situation.


“We have a very strong defense agreement with Saudi Arabia, and we will live up to our commitments in that agreement,” Rubio said when asked whether President Donald Trump was prepared to take further action against the Houthis.

Rubio declined to specify what further military action Trump might take, while reiterating Washington’s commitments to Riyadh.

“The US has made commitments to them. We will live up to those commitments. We are living up to those commitments now,” he said, adding that Trump had “many options available” without specifying what they might be.

The distinction between practical defense assistance and direct US intervention is central to understanding that pledge, Sager said.

“Rubio’s remarks should be understood as a commitment to continue the defense support Saudi Arabia expects from the US, rather than a promise that American forces would fight on its behalf,” he explained.

The US-Saudi Strategic Defense Agreement, signed in November 2025, built on more than eight decades of defense cooperation. The White House described its aims as a strengthening of the partnership, and reinforced deterrence across the Middle East.

According to Sager, the immediate question was not whether Washington would honor the agreement, but how it would do so, particularly in terms of strengthening readiness and coordinating defense capabilities.

“Saudi Arabia would expect assistance with planning and identifying threats, alongside timely intelligence and satellite imagery to help it defend its territory and critical infrastructure,” he said.


“Rubio’s words offer reassurance on those practical forms of cooperation, but they leave open the question of whether Washington would take a direct military role if the crises in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea escalate.”

Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, offered a slightly different reading of the scope of Washington’s assurances.

“Rubio’s remarks were essentially a sop to Riyadh, offering reassurance without removing the ambiguity that surrounds US support for Saudi Arabia,” he told Arab News.

“He reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to the 2025 defense agreement, but avoided any promise of automatic military intervention should the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea crises intensify.”

Those questions have become more pressing as the war with Iran increasingly places Gulf states under sustained security and economic pressure, despite their efforts to contain the conflict through diplomacy.

The scale of the pressure was apparent even early in the war. An Arab News analysis published on March 26 found that Gulf Cooperation Council member states had faced 83 percent of the Iranian missile and drone attacks tallied since the conflict began on Feb. 28, compared with 17 percent directed at Israel.

The defensive response has also been substantial. Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, told Congress in May that regional missile defenses had intercepted more than 6,000 attack drones and more than 1,500 ballistic missiles targeting US and partner forces, according to reporting on a subsequent Pentagon inspector general’s review.

Houthi attacks have intensified over the past month, targeting Saudi cities and energy infrastructure. On Sept. 8, a wave of strikes wounded 73 people and caused fires that halted operations at some energy facilities, Saudi authorities said.

The following day, the Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen reported further ballistic missile and drone attacks on Abha, Khamis Mushayt and Jazan.

By Sept. 19, the escalation had reached Riyadh, with the coalition reporting it intercepted a ballistic missile aimed at the capital, and thwarted attacks on Yanbu, Taif, Baish and Farasan.

The expanding geographic reach of the attacks underscored the challenge of protecting population centers and critical infrastructure while also safeguarding the Kingdom’s Red Sea export route.

The pressure on energy infrastructure has come from more than one direction; Saudi Arabia attributed a drone attack that forced its East-West Pipeline to close on Sept. 11 to Iraqi militias. Reuters reported on Tuesday that pipeline operations had restarted, citing sources briefed on the matter.

The pipeline provides an alternative delivery route to the Red Sea for Saudi crude when passage through the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted. Protection of that route therefore requires security for both the infrastructure that carries the oil and the shipping lanes used to export it.


Rubio did not directly address media reports of requests to Trump for US intervention, but described attacks on regional energy infrastructure as “very disturbing.” His remarks came as a Houthi military adviser told news agency Agence France-Presse that the group would target US interests in the region if Washington intervened in the conflict in Yemen.

Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz and the escalation in the Red Sea have underscored how closely interconnected are the Gulf’s territorial security and economic interests. Attacks on energy facilities or shipping can affect regional revenues, international supply chains and global markets.

Sager said a key test of the US-Saudi defense agreement would be whether Washington treated Hormuz and Bab Al-Mandab as parts of the same security challenge.

“If Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia or shipping near Bab Al-Mandab intensify while Washington remains focused primarily on Hormuz, Rubio’s pledge will come under scrutiny,” he said.

Quilliam said there were several scenarios that could test the US commitment.

“The most immediate test would be a major Iranian or Houthi strike that causes substantial damage to energy infrastructure or results in significant civilian casualties,” he said.

“A second scenario would be a sustained campaign against shipping in the Red Sea that disrupts Saudi exports and impacts global energy markets.”

He suggested that Washington might act before either scenario fully materialized, although Rubio had announced no such decision.

“The US appears to be preparing for another round of escalation against Iran and may use that opportunity to intensify military operations against the Houthis,” Quilliam said.

“Rubio’s remarks may therefore have been intended to reassure Riyadh ahead of a possible expansion of US military activity in the region.”

The security debate is unfolding alongside broader bilateral collaboration. In July, Washington and Riyadh signed a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement, providing a legal foundation for US participation in Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear energy program.

That expanding relationship provides context for Rubio’s assurances, but does not in itself define at what point Washington would commit forces to another military campaign. Quilliam said any such decision would be shaped by the administration’s approach.

“We should bear in mind that the Trump administration is focused on ‘America First’ and it will only intervene if to do so serves that interest,” he added.


According to Quilliam, Gulf “decision-makers have learned over the past decade — and even more so during the current Trump administration — that US policy is now unpredictable and poorly served by an overarching strategy, and so must plan for all eventualities and take regional security into its own hands and share the burden with regional partners.”

Sager said the most immediate measure of the partnership remains the practical support available to Saudi Arabia across the connected threats it faces.

“Riyadh would expect its defense partner to recognize the links between the threats and provide timely intelligence, equipment and operational support where they are needed,” he added.

“Protecting navigation in the Gulf while leaving the Red Sea exposed would address only part of the security challenge.”

The test, then, is how assurances from Washington translate into the capabilities Sager identified — and whether those capabilities help protect Saudi territory, critical infrastructure and access to both waterways.

America’s Arsenal: While Supplies Last

American imperial overstretch is coming home to roost in Saudi Arabia.

by Nolan Denaro | Sep 25, 2026

Smoke rose over Riyadh last week as Houthi forces launched strikes on the Saudi capital, as well as on crucial oil infrastructure in major coastal cities.

It has been a disastrous month for Saudi Arabia as Houthi forces have made substantial gains along the west coast of Yemen. The Yemeni group scored massive victories in early September, capturing the port city of Mocha along with other key islands in the Red Sea. This will allow the Houthis to more effectively restrict Saudi transit through the Bab Al-Mandeb strait, dealing a severe blow to the already battered global oil market.

The problems for Saudi Arabia don’t come solely from their south, however. Militia groups in Iraq have gotten involved, and they’ve begun launching missiles from Saudi Arabia’s north. Targets have included crucial oil infrastructure, most notably the East-West Pipeline – a crucial means of getting oil trapped in the Persian Gulf across the country to the Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia is in a moment of serious peril. Pinched between militias from Yemen in the south and Iraq in the north, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has sought the assistance of President Donald Trump. MBS called Trump two times on September 10 urging him to take military action against the Houthis, a request Trump has refused thus far.

Mohammed bin Salman’s plea for help highlights a broader dynamic in his relationship with the U.S., one which places Saudi Arabia in the position of relying heavily on America for their military. This is not only true offensively for Saudi, but also defensively. Their ability to shoot down incoming missile fire is reliant on American-made defensive systems, such as Patriot interceptors. Their supply of these systems has been dramatically reduced in recent months due to the conflict in Iran.

With America being similarly low on crucial defensive systems, which are needed to protect U.S. bases, Saudi Arabia is now left unable to effectively defend key oil and military sites. Iran – which is aligned with the Yemeni and Iraqi militias in a coalition known as the Axis of Resistance – is able to watch as economic pressure builds on Saudi Arabia, and by extension the United States.

Conventional strategic thinking is being thrown into question due to this war. America’s military bases in the region have been a burden rather than an asset. They’ve served as easy targets for Iran to strike, helping them climb the escalation ladder at their own pace. The Gulf Arab nations – who were under the impression that these bases would deter Iranian attacks on their soil – are now reconsidering their close ties to the United States. The decision by these nations to become reliant on America for their defense is also being questioned. They’ve been battered by Iranian missiles and drones all throughout the conflict, and have been left largely defenseless due to the shortage of American-made interceptor systems.

America has served as the world’s arms salesman for decades. Our government has built up a long list of clients who rely on our country for their defense, as Patrick Buchanan pointed out in his book A Republic, Not an Empire. After going down a list of the many foreign entanglements Washington has roped us into, Buchanan pointed out that we have become, in effect, a global empire.

“Nothing can destroy this country except the overextension of our resources, Republican Senator Robert A. Taft once said. Indeed, it would be an understatement to describe the commitments above as an overextension of our resources. In their totality, they make the nineteenth-century British Empire look isolationist; truly, this is imperial overstretch.”

“Our situation is unsustainable. The steady expansion of global commitments, as relative national power declines, is a prescription for endless wars and eventual disaster.”

Buchanan’s decades-old assessment has been proven correct.

What has been made apparent by the shortage of defensive weapons is that we cannot maintain this posture of perpetually arming nations across the globe. Not only are we being tasked with ensuring the defense of nations in the Middle East amid the Iran war, but we also must protect our own troops – stationed at U.S. military bases – from incoming fire.

Of course, we must also supply Israel with the defensive systems necessary to strike at Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, and elsewhere while enjoying protection guaranteed by the United States.

Escalation also continues in eastern Europe, as Ukraine’s provocative strikes on Moscow will undoubtedly lead to a Russian response. America will once again feel obligated to ensure Kyiv’s defense, not only by supplying them with weapons, but also intelligence assistance. In the Pacific, American weapons stationed in South Korea and Japan were relocated at the beginning of the Iran war due to the lack of defensive systems in the Middle East, further proving that American attempts to police the entire world are futile. The U.S. does not possess infinite resources.

American troops at bases across the Middle East have tragically been killed by Iranian strikes, as the military is forced to ration the remaining stockpile of defensive weapons. Just days into the war, America’s client-states in the Gulf were said to have depleted years worth of munitions. In the months of conflict that followed these dire reports, the effects of what Buchanan called “imperial overstretch” were being felt. Bases faced an onslaught of Iranian missiles and drones. Damage was so severe that many will likely not be returned to by the U.S. military. A chaotic withdrawal, of sorts.

The American regional order in the Middle East is collapsing in real time. In this period of chaos, there is the option to change course. Our leaders could realize the errors of their ways and bring the troops home.

This is not what Washington is known for, however.

My fear is that rather than acknowledge the failures of imperialism and chart a new path of restraint, the War Party will dig its heels in. The tendency of those at the helm of all failed government programs – especially war – is to blame every factor but themselves for the disaster. We often hear “if only we stayed longer,” or “we just needed more funds.” Many war hawks are more appalled at the act of leaving a war than they are at the decision to launch one unnecessarily. Take the neoconservative’s response to Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal or Trump’s attempts to leave Syria, for example.

If every crisis is met with another new foreign commitment, this cycle of imperial overstretch will never end. Eventually, something has to give. We can only hope that somebody in power can recognize that the empire is decaying, accept this reality, and guide us back to a sane foreign policy with grace.

It would be delusional and reckless of me, however, to tell you that I am hopeful. Our leaders possess no such humility.

Nolan Denaro is a political analyst, writer, and host of “The Quest For Clarity” podcast, available on YouTube and Spotify. He is a columnist at Antiwar.com, and his work has been published by Responsible Statecraft, the Libertarian Institute, The Daily Caller, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes on U.S. foreign policy, economics, and current events, with a particular focus on war and imperialism. He maintains a personal Substack blog, and you can follow him on X @nolandenaro. Nolan can be reached for correspondence at nolansdenaro@icloud.com.