It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A worker suspended for refusing to handle ‘Israeli’ products in a Northern Irish Tesco branch has won a major victory. The price-gouging retailer has now reinstated their employee, after a two-month long campaign that saw a wave of protests erupt across Ireland and Britain.
The worker – who wishes to remain anonymous – is employed at the Newcastle, County Down branch of the supermarket. They told managers they were not prepared to run ‘Israeli’ products through the tills as the money goes to funding the ongoing Zionist holocaust in Gaza. A portion of profits from selling items made in the illegitimate pseudo-state go back to companies there. The Zionist regime then taxes those companies, and that income can be used to buy weapons and pay the salaries of ‘Israeli’ Genocide Forces (IGF).
Following Tesco’s humiliating climbdown, the official Tesco Worker Campaign page issued a statement. In it, they emphasise the possibility for all workers to take a stand against their employer forcing them to be complicit in funding genocide. They point out that the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW):
…passed a BDS proposition in 2021, recommending they “support and protect, with the full force of our Union, any member who wishes on moral grounds to refuse to handle goods originating from the currently occupied lands of Palestine by the State of Israel.”
They stress that a precedent has now been set for a worker successfully defying instructions to handle blood-soaked ‘Israeli’ goods, and USDAW have proven their capacity to back such an action.
Unions ready to back Tesco workers standing against genocide
As a movement, we are clear: we will not be found wanting in protecting our members where an employer seeks to discipline or dismiss a worker in such circumstances.
Tesco’s suspension of the worker triggered an immediate backlash, with 100s of pro-Palestine activists rallied at the Newcastle superstore which ordered the disciplinary proceedings. What followed was a weekly wave of protests under the banner ‘Descend on Tesco‘. At times, more than 20 separate demonstrations were taking place across Ireland, alongside others in Britain.
At some of these, activists symbolically removed items such as ‘Israeli’ dates from the shelves, and delivered speeches asking customers not to buy them. The tactic has previously proven successful against Lidl Ireland and Lidl Northern Ireland. There, campaigners frequent removal of genocide-funding products led to these national branches of the German retailer ceasing to sell them.
Activists also bombarded Tesco’s phone lines, holding regular phone jams in which supporters of the worker would repeatedly call up to voice their disapproval at the worker’s treatment, and the continued sale of products imported from stolen Palestinian land. Additionally, campaigners conducted mass email storms to the Tesco CEO Ken Murphy.
Damian Quinn, a member of BDS Belfast, who was part of the coordinating group for the Tesco campaign, told The Canary:
This is a win for the brave Tesco worker, and for all the solidarity activists and unions who protested outside Tesco branches every week for nearly two months. It’s a win for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Palestine solidarity movement as a whole; it shows what collective power can do.
No Israeli products should be sold anywhere, so refuse to take part in complicity, refuse to handle Israeli products. We can all do something; follow BDS and boycott companies complicit in genocide.
BDS movement going from strength to strength
The BDS movement is the Palestinian-led campaign to hold the Zionist entity to account by crippling its economy. It has been described by the terrorist land theft project as its “greatest threat“. Founded more than 20 years ago by a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups, it has won numerous victories in its bid to isolate the criminal settler-colony. One notable example is Intel pulling out of constructing a $25 billion chip factory. Another is the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund’s decision to begin withdrawing investments from ‘Israeli’ companies.
The Tesco Worker Campaign statement concludes by thanking those who took to the streets in support, and emphasises that this support will be there again for any workers looking to replicate the Newcastle defiance:
The actions of the committed and compassionate activists, in Ireland and GB, who turned out every weekend for the past two months in support of this worker and all workers who want to reject genocide goods, have been hugely uplifting. Your support and solidarity has been immense. Thank you.
Our campaign will continue as we aim to support any worker taking a similar stance to this Tesco worker. For anyone who wishes to take action – rest assured that you will have support from across the nation if you follow your conscience, and refuse to play a part in genocide complicity.
Throughout the campaign, those protesting routinely cited the example of the 1980s Dunnes Stores workers, whose refusal to handle products from apartheid South Africa ultimately resulted in Ireland banning imports from that racist regime. Its even worse equivalent, so-called ‘Israel’, now stands on the brink of a similar fate, and the Tesco worker’s victory may now be the catalyst for a repeat of the strikers’ achievements 40 years ago.
Featured image via the Canary
Israel’s Somaliland Gamble is Repeating the Bloody History that Created Al-Shabaab
The Boxing Day recognition will not bring stability but will ignite a conflict that empowers extremists and spills into Ethiopia’s troubled east.
Nineteen years later to the day, another seismic shock struck the Horn of Africa. Israel’s recognition of the secessionist region of Somaliland has been met with vehement repudiation from Somalia, the African Union, the Arab League, the EU and the United Nations Security Council. The diplomatic crisis is evident. The impending security catastrophe is being perilously disregarded.
History is not merely rhyming; it is preparing to repeat its most violent verse. In Somalia, clans, not the state, control territory. Somaliland claims the territory of British protectorates, including Isaaq, Gadabursi, Issa, and Daarood Harti clans. Ironically, Somaliland does not control the eastern part, which is part of the Federal Government and known as the Northeastern State of Somalia. Most Gadabursi and Issa populations want to join Somalia. The western region, called Awdal, is named after the Adel state led by Ahmed Gurey, who conquered current Ethiopia. Gurey’s legacy, documented in the 16th-century chronicle Futuh Al-Habasha, remains a potent symbol that can be invoked to frame modern conflicts as a timeless religious struggle. The eastern region traces back to Dervishes who fought colonial powers: the British, Ethiopia and Italy, making Somalia the first African country to be bombed from the air. It is into this deeply fractured and historically charged arena that Israel has now intervened.
Israel’s move, driven by its own strategic needs to attack the Houthis and because Somaliland agreed to relocate Gazans, recreates the exact toxic conditions of 2006: a controversial foreign power colluding with a local faction, fracturing Somali politics and alienating its population. The result will be the same: a devastating empowerment of Al-Shabaab and a bloody spillover of conflict into the fragile states of the region, particularly Ethiopia.
The 2006 blueprint: the nationalist bridge to Jihad
The Ethiopian invasion, blessed by the US as part of the War on Terror, shattered this. It was justified as a mission to remove a terrorist threat, but its effect was to turn a domestic political entity into a cause for resistance. Critically, the intervention itself transformed the ideological landscape. The ICU’s initial platform was not one of global jihad. However, the foreign invasion provided the catalyst for a fateful pivot. Sufi-oriented scholars within the ICU, like Sheikh Abdulqadir Ali Omar, saw their nightly, soft-spoken radio sermons shift from governance to an explicit call for defensive jihad—a direct and radicalising response to the US-backed Ethiopian incursion. This created a bridge: first, a legitimate nationalist grievance against foreign occupation, which was then channelled into a religiously framed conflict. The US and Ethiopia justified their actions mainly by viewing the ICU as a potential threat to their security interests. The subsequent statistics tell the story of the brutal blowback that followed: over 16,000 civilian deaths, 30,000 wounded, and 1.3 million displaced. From this cauldron, Al-Shabaab emerged, mastering the fusion of Somali as “nationalist as well as a transnationalist.”
The 2025 catalyst: laying the nationalist plank
Fast forward to the present. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is not an act of altruistic diplomacy. Israeli sources frame it as a strategic necessity: to secure the Red Sea from Houthi attacks and to relocate Palestinians from Gaza, potentially. For the isolated Somaliland elite, it is a desperate, decades-long quest for recognition, finally answered by a powerful but deeply controversial partner.
The dynamic mirrors 2006 with chilling precision, and the ideological playbook is already in motion. Just as the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was seen as a puppet of Addis Ababa, the Somaliland administration will now be painted—across Somalia and much of the Islamic world—as a client of Tel Aviv. We are witnessing the critical first phase of the 2006 replay: the construction of the nationalist grievance. Following the Boxing Day recognition, Sheikh Adan Sunni, a high-ranking member of Al-Shabaab’s leadership and originally from Hargeisa, issued a warning statement. Significantly, its tone was not initially one of fiery jihad, but of Somali nationalism—a deliberate framing to attract, recruit, and lead broader Somali opposition to what is framed as a Zionist-abetted betrayal of Somali unity. This is the essential first step. It lays the nationalist plank over which the jihadist march will later travel. The group’s narrative is being carefully set to defend the Somali nation under the Islamic banner. The near-universal condemnation from the UN, EU, AU and Arab League validates this nationalist framing, ensuring the crisis creates a vast pool of alienated Somalis from which Al-Shabaab can recruit. While rooted in Somaliland’s understandable, decades-long pursuit of sovereignty, this partnership with Israel comes at a catastrophic cost to regional stability.
The permeable border: from “don’t ask, don’t tell” to open door
Critically, this crisis will rupture a delicate, existing balance. While many Somalis allege direct ties between Somaliland elites and Al-Shabaab families, the more accurate relationship has been a pragmatic, “don’t ask, don’t tell” coexistence. My own research in the region confirms this permeability.
In one telling encounter, a former MP and international consultant described being in a mosque during a Friday sermon in Harageisa and realising the man a few feet away was Ibrahim Mecaad, aka “Ibrahim Afghan,” a notorious Al-Shabaab facilitator. “When he realised, I recognised him, he left the mosque,” the former MP told me. This anecdote reveals a stark truth: Al-Shabaab elements have moved in spaces where official Somaliland authority is tacitly ignored.
A full-blown political and military crisis over recognition will destroy this fragile understanding. Somaliland’s security forces will be stretched thin as they defend a new, contested international status. Internal opposition will flare. In the resulting chaos and governance vacuum, Al-Shabaab will not just slip through—it will march in, positioning itself as the true defender of Somali unity. Sheikh Adan Sunni’s nationalist framing is the recruitment poster; the coming conflict will be the training ground where that nationalism is hardened into jihad.
The spillover: lighting Ethiopia’s eastern front
The fallout will not be contained within Somalia’s colonial borders. Al-Shabaab has long coveted access to Ethiopia, viewing it as a key frontier. A revitalised Al-Shabaab, armed with a potent new nationalist cause and a burgeoning recruitment drive in the north, will direct its energised forces eastward.
Ethiopia, beset by internal rebellions, drought, and deep ethnic fractures, is a tinderbox. A confident Al-Shabaab, now leading a cause that resonates from Bu’aale (Al-Shabaab’s headquarters) to the Bali region of Oromia, will be the spark. The group’s prayers for access to eastern Ethiopia will have been granted. The conflict will metastasise from a Somali civil dispute into a direct assault on the stability of Africa’s second-most populous nation, with catastrophic humanitarian consequences for the entire Horn.
Conclusion: a predictable catastrophe, phase by phase
The script for this disaster is being followed, phase by phase. We have seen this film before: foreign intervention, local clientism, nationalist grievance, ideological pivot, militant backlash, and regional conflagration. Sheikh Abdullahi Ali Omar’s call in 2006 and Sheikh Adan Sunni’s nationalist framing in 2025 are not disconnected events. They are Act I, Scene I of the same tragedy—the deliberate construction of a popular, defensive platform that will be used to legitimise and fuel the coming jihad. In seeking tactical advantages in the Red Sea and Gaza, Israel is not just altering a map; it is activating a deadly radicalisation algorithm with known outputs.
The international community, currently focused on diplomatic outrage, must look ahead. It must see the looming security nightmare and act decisively to de-escalate this recognition gambit. To ignore the lessons of Boxing Day 2006 is to guarantee a future of bloodshed that will dwarf the horrors of the past. The alternative is to watch, again, as a geopolitical calculation births a generation of terror. The lessons of 2006 are not just history; they are a blueprint for the disaster now being assembled.Email
Abdiweli Garad is a researcher and analyst specialising in security and politics in the Horn of Africa. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham.
Sunday, January 18, 2026
My Dream for BRICS and its Critics
by Bruce Lerro / January 17th, 2026
Orientation
With the recent kidnapping of President Maduro by Yankee imperialists, I wonder about how BRICS nations and other countries sympathetic to them such as North Korea and Iran will respond. Venezuela has made an attempt to join BRICS and clearly they are in the socialist camp so I would expect it would be especially important to China. Were BRICS countries and their allies aware of the build-up for the kidnaping and what kind of help did they offer?
Some of my Facebook friends with an especially deep appreciation of geopolitics think I am naïve in my hopes that BRICS can be an operative to intervene politically in these events or other coups by a desperate United States. After all, BRICS is a formidable economic organization with infrastructural commitments like China’s Belt and Road Initiative to name just one economic commitment. Also, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to name another. However, they are not just international political organization. BRICS, after all has a wide variation of political orientation within its countries. There is a socialist country (China), Hindu fundamentalist (India) and capitalist nationalist (Russia) not to mention two Islamic allies, Saudi Arabia (Sunni) and Iran (Shia). Can all these countries muster enough unity to stand up to the United States now and in the future? Time will tell. Let me provide a world historical perspective as to the uniqueness of BRICS in the overview of the history of capitalism.
A World-Systems Theory of the History of Capitalism Capitalism gets around. In his great book The Long Twentieth Century Giovanni Arrighi claimed capitalism has gone through four stages, including:
commercial capitalism of the Italians trading cities in the high Middle Ages;
commercial seafaring Dutch in the 17th century;
industrial manufacturing of the British in the 19th century and
industrial manufacturing, financial and military capitalism US in the 20th century.
Another world systems theorists, Immanuel Wallerstein writes that each of these countries has gone through 5 phase of capitalism:
commercial;
slave;
industrial;
financial and
military.
Arrighi points out that the speed through which the four hegemons go through the cycles speeds up so that their risk and decline accelerates. It ranges from 220 years for the Italians to 100 years for the United States (1870-1970). Why did they collapse? It was because of wars and financial ruin. What we have is the rise and fall of four hegemons having gone through the five phases of capitalism. This is all laid out in detail in my articles: “Beyond Socialist Purity” and “The Cycles and Spirals of Capitalism.”
If the United States has been in decline for 55 years. Where will the world economy go? These days it is easy to say it is China. Both Andre Gunder Frank, in ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age and Giovanni Arrighi Adam Smith in Beijing put their money on China and did so over 25 years ago.
However, today there is something new that neither Arrighi nor Gunder Frank predicted. In the whole history of capitalism over the last 500 years it is only individual political entities that have risen and fallen. Today we have a regional configuration on the rise, BRICS and a regional confederation in decline, the United States and Western Europe. So, if economics was the only thing that matters, BRICS with China in the lead will be the new hegemon. But as most radicals know it is not economics on one hand and political science on the other. There is only political economy. The attack on Venezuela was an international political act in the service of economics (oil, gold and other natural resources). Can or will BRICS countries respond to this politically, either individually or as a collectively?
Can My Dream Come True? How much do the Russian and Chinese leaders understand this world historical picture of the history of capitalism? My hope is that they do. My hope is they act not just as single nation-states within a region but rather as a regional consciousness within the national policies. Secondly, my wish is that they operate under the following political and economic values:
nationalism as a political force that fights against the globalization of capitalism;
nationalization that fights imperialism and colonialism;
support of industrial capitalism as opposed to finance capitalism whether that system is socialist or capitalist;
support of surplus value for technological innovation as opposed to investment in military aggression, and
a new concept of the political spectrum which unites left and right against political centrism.
It seems to me that China, Russia and Iran have the most potential to come closest to this dream. India and Brazil seem to still want to imagine deals can be made with the West.
Skeptical Leftist Responds: No Illusions about China and Russia This is from my friend Raul:
“I am sorry, my left-leaning ideologue camaradas, but after many disappointments and fiascos from Syria, to Libya, to Palestine, to Venezuela and beyond, I no longer believe in the illusion of Russia and China representing a multipolar option to the empire. I used to believe in that illusion, but the well documented arguments presented by a couple of friends and easily verifiable historical facts broke the spell (and I am glad about it.)
While not exercising the same form of brutal gangster-like form of imperialism as the U.S. or Israel, Russia and China are certainly not going to put their hands on the fire for no one but themselves, and I hope Iran is taking notes of the Syria and Venezuela fiascos before they deposit their trust blindly in Russia and China as allies not willing to do a damn thing when they are attacked by the sick satanic Zionist forces.
Just look at Russia welcoming with open arms the illegitimate terrorist government of Ahmed al-Sharaa former leader of Al Qaeda/Daesh in Syria. Not making any unfounded accusations here, but literally the last meeting Maduro had before his abduction was with China’s Qiu Xiaoqi, special representative of the Chinese government on Latin American affairs, at the Miraflores Palace a day before the U.S. attacks. Again, I am not accusing them of participating in these crimes, but at the very least, they decided to remain passive and limit their response to issuing a few toothless platitudes condemning the war crimes in Venezuela and criminal abduction of the leader of a sovereign nation which was supposed to be their ally.
Now, let us discuss Russia and China’s backstabbing of Palestine. On the 15th of November Putin initiated a phone call with Netanyahu to discuss Middle East affairs which included discussions on both Syria and Gaza. Just two days later a Russian military delegation showed up in Damascus and was filmed touring Southern Syria just before Russia’s abstention at the UN allowing Trump’s colonial plans to proceed while giving the green light to Israel to bomb a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
Israeli military claimed that the attack targeted a Hamas training compound where militants were preparing to carry out terrorist operations. In fact it was a sports field within the refugee camp – 15 civilians were killed, many of them young teenagers who were playing football at the time
As we speak, Russian and China are enabling and endorsing war criminal Trump’s ethnic cleansing project in Gaza. So seriously, from now on pro-Russia/China ideologues should spare us any multipolar world rhetoric and stop at once with the foolish notion suggesting that Russia and China are moral models of reference, because evidently they are not. Blind ideology is wrong on the right side of the political spectrum and blind ideology also happens to be wrong on the left side of the political spectrum…”
In the Name of Marxist Leninism Here is another comment by a friend that Ismael passed on.
Just quick thoughts: China does not practice romantic anti-imperialism. It practices historical materialism under conditions of uneven power. It just cannot come rescue you and trigger a full-fledged confrontation. All socialist states understand the need to avoid actions that collapse contradictions too early, especially when such actions can allow Washington the opportunity to reframe the conflict as “democracy vs authoritarianism”.
In fact, this is what distinguishes Chinese anti-imperialism based on dialectics from isolationist, “civilizational” or elite-led selective populist anti-imperialism that avoid the real battlefield of global capitalism itself, its circuits of rent, debt, logistics and surplus. Venezuela (even as I understand real constraints it faced under severe sanctions) could be cited as one such example with some nuance.
I thought we knew this as Marxist Leninists. China will not die on someone else’s barricade… It expects states to manage their own internal contradictions. Solidarity means keeping the system open for future autonomy, not rushing in with gunboats to prove ideological virtue.
I know this is exactly what is frustrating inqilab types (not saying history doesn’t favor them when time is ripe and they did make sense in Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria). And I can actually sympathize with them. But premature showdown with empire (from Hungary 1956 to Chile 1970s) tends to end in obliteration. China as a really existing socialism knows these lessons deeply and avoids fetishizing “the moment” that seduces the weak into fatal confrontations, taking away its weapon of time in asymmetric equations. It is this very strategic patience and peace that makes China more “violent” and revolutionary in the most radical sense.
So when China refuses dramatic confrontation over Venezuela, it’s protecting this hard-won positional advantage. Rescue is a liberal fantasy! Trump would LOVE China to break the Western Hemisphere taboo (the Monroe Doctrine). We don’t want that. If China were practicing “dirty realpolitik” we would be seeing it perform coercive “protector” politics, not otherwise. And this makes the BRICS alliance all the more important!
It would be a dirty realpolitik if China was trying to win imperialism’s game. Realpolitik has no concept of negation of the negation. It only knows adjustment. The ethical structure is “immanent”, not performative. This is the key historical point. China’s ethics are expressed through rules of engagement with history. Do we want China to win imperialism’s game or outlive the dirty game itself?
I’m not being a cynic. This is class calculus at the level of the world-system. We are communists, we drag down the heaven from clouds and nail it to the material history. Keep marching, it is always obvious only as an “after the fact”.
Lastly, I would like to show you a 17-minute video by a geopolitical analysis which claims that far from “deciding” to invade Venezuela, the CIA, the Neocons and Trump were trapped by a strategic plan laid out by Russia and China that was three years in the making. While the United States in a case of imperial overstretch will be preoccupied with Venezuela, the Chinese will consolidate their power in the Pacific region, including Taiwan and North Korea. Here is the video:
Conclusion
I began this article with the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro as a way to take stock of the power and limitations of BRICS as an alternative to Western imperialism. Then I placed Western imperialism in the world-historical context of the history of capitalism to show:
the collapse of the United States as the latest capitalist hegemon and
the rise of China.
Then I suggested that in today’s world the regional federation of BRICS expresses a transference of the world economy from the West to the East and that BRICS might be the future of the world economy. My dream for BRICS included the following:
nationalism as a political force that fights against economic globalization;
nationalization that fights political imperialism;
support of industrial capitalism as opposed to finance capitalism whether that system is socialist or capitalist;
support of surplus value invested in technological innovation as opposed investment in military aggression and
a new concept of the political spectrum which unites left and right against political centrism.
I closed my article with three skeptical arguments about BRICS. One is the failure of Russia and China in the past and present to come to the aid of Syria, Palestine, Libya and Venezuela. The other defends Chinese anti-imperialism against a romantic kind of anti-imperialism and says China cannot jeopardize it gains and that other states, even socialist ones have to fight their own domestic battles. The last video presents the power of two countries within BRICS: China and Russia. They have developed a political and economic strategy to trap the United States and limit its capacity to undermine their BRICS projects.
I am sure there are many other international dynamics between the East and the West that are not covered in my three examples. So what else needs to be said? Are there more cynical arguments against the power and reach of BRICS? Are there even more optimistic outlooks based on facts that are about BRICS than my dream? Your comments are most welcome. Reply at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism.
Bruce Lerro has taught for 25 years as an adjunct college professor of psychology at Golden Gate University, Dominican University and Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has applied a Vygotskian socio-historical perspective to his three books found on Amazon. He is a co-founder, organizer and writer for Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism. Read other articles by Bruce, or visit Bruce's website.
As Suez Traffic Cautiously Returns, Houthis Make New Threats
Houthis previously paraded their anti-ship missiles through the streets (Houthi media)
Shipping lines have been exploring a reopening of their container line services through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.
CMA CGM has led the way. After having maintained some transits using naval protection during the conflict with the Houthis, the French carrier has returned two regular container line services starting this month. It follows the passage through the Red Sea by their French-flagged CMA CGM Jacques Saade and Marshall Island-flagged CMA CGM Adonis, both of whom have both made transits since Christmas without incident.
Danish shipping company Maersk has also been exploring a reopening, having sent the US-flagged containership Maersk Denver north through the Bab el Mandab Strait into the Red Sea on January 12, which followed a transit earlier in December by Singapore-flagged Maersk Sebarok. Maersk announced on January 15 that it is restoring its first route, one between the U.S. and India to sail through the Suez – Red Sea corridor. It said it would continue to closely monitor security in the region.
Although the last incident was on September 29, when the Dutch-flagged general cargo vessel MV Minervagracht fell victim to a Houthi attack, traffic through the Suez Canal has not yet recovered. Suez Canal traffic transits in 4Q25 were 19 percent lower than in 2023 and 45 percent lower than in 2024, figures skewed by an increase in product tanker transits, while container traffic has still not recovered.
This caution may be justified.
On January 15, Houthi leader Abdel Malek Al Houthi made new threats on Al Mayadeen television. He warned that reconnaissance was being conducted preparatory to the launching of attacks on what he described both as Israeli and Zionist fixed positions in Somaliland. He called the positions a threat to Houthi oversight of the Red Sea and Bab el Mandeb Straits.
The Houthis previously have never been very precise in their targeting threats, making very broad or perhaps imprecise interpretations of what constitutes an Israeli or Zionist target. It must be assumed, therefore, that Emirati and U.S.-operated sites are also vulnerable, and that such sites anywhere in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden littoral are also covered by this Houthi threat.
It is unclear what sites, presumably for intelligence collection purposes, are maintained by the Israelis in Somaliland, although rumors have persisted for some time that such sites exist. Hilltop intercept and radar sites need not have a large footprint, and indeed could largely be unmanned, using satellite links to rebroadcast intercepts to safe locations for analysis. The Somaliland government, newly recognized by Israel, has already indicated its continuing support for military ties with Israel.
Similar sites may also have been supported by the Emirati presence on islands and coastal areas in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, although their presence has never been reliably established. The Yemeni Internationally Recognized Government (IRG), with much enhanced support from the Saudis, appears to have taken over the coastline south of Hodeida, with the Emiratis having left their recently-constructed airfields at Mocha and Dhubab. Based on a rush of heavy-lift cargo air movements, the Emiratis appear also to have left the Red Sea islands of Perim and Zuqar. The Emiratis still, however, have a foothold in Assab on Eritrea’s Red Sea coast. The UAE is also maintaining its military footprint at Berbera in Somaliland and Bosaso in Puntland on the south side of the Gulf of Aden, with the support of the autonomous governments of these areas and despite falling out with the Somali government.
The UAE has, for the moment, retained some form of presence on the island of Socotra. But Emirati companies, such as Prime Fishing, which used to wholesale the local fishing industry, have closed shop, as have hospitals, ADNOC selling fuel, and Eastern Triangle generating electricity. Socotrans serving in the UAE-sponsored local militia have been paid off. Social media has shown a Saudi force boarding ships in Mukalla en route to consolidate the IRG’s hold on Socotra. If, as is likely, there were intelligence collection sites in the Socotra Archipelago overlooking the Maritime Security Transit Corridor (MSTC), and they served a useful anti-Houthi purpose, it is possible that the IRG would wish to support their continued operation, notwithstanding a full Emirati withdrawal.
The geopolitical situation for the Houthis has also changed. While the Houthi leadership has declared its continuing support for the Iranian religious leadership, and is Iran’s last remaining reliable ally, Houthi ranks have been severely depleted by the targeted attacks on its leadership cadre last summer. Confidence (and bravado) has taken a knock, and the Houthis may be keen not to broaden any reactivation of hostilities, particularly with the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group making its way to the region. But they remain an enduring threat to the maritime community.
U.S. Sanctions Captains, a Vessel, and Networks Supporting Houthis
Gas tanker offloading at Ras Issa port in Hodeida in 2023
The U.S. Department of the Treasury, through its Office of Foreign Assets Control, launched a new effort to break up the networks supporting the Houthis. They pointed to conduits and front companies used to finance the Houthis and smuggle materials with links to Iran.
Today’s action included the designation of five ship captains who had commanded vessels previously designated for delivering petroleum products to Houthi-controlled ports. The U.S. highlights that vessels have continued to deliver petroleum products to the Houthi-controlled ports, providing vital economic support to the militant group. OFAC had issued a humanitarian license to allow in-progress deliveries after the designation in March 2025 of the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Those licenses expired in April 2025.
“Despite the pressure of international sanctions, the Houthis continue to acquire a significant amount of revenue through illicit oil sales, generating over $2 billion annually. As part of the Houthi oil sales operation, the Iranian government both sells and provides a free monthly shipment of oil to the Houthis using Iranian-owned or affiliated companies based in Dubai, UAE,” the U.S. asserts.
A shipping company named Albarraq Shipping they contend, continued to make deliveries using a tanker named Albarraq Z (71,522 dwt). Built in 2003, the vessel appears to have been acquired in 2025 for this purpose and was registered in the Comoros. The U.S. added it to the sanctions today.
The captain of the vessel was one of the individuals designated by OFAC. They also listed the captain of a vessel named Sarah that they said delivered LPG to Ras Isa port in June 2025, and the captain of the Atlantis MZ, which discharged gasoline in June 2025. They also listed the captain of the Akoya Gas, which discharged its cargo in Ras Isa in April, and the captain of the Valente, which discharged gas at Ras Isa in May 2025.
The U.S. charges that the Houthis’ leaders are behind the oil and gas trade and sell the products at “exorbitant prices” to Yemenis. They report the proceeds are pocketed for personal gain and used to fund the group’s military operations.
The broader program also targeted the network that is helping the Houthis procure weapons and other equipment, as well as providing financial services. The U.S. cites key front companies, facilitators, and operatives located in Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates that are part of the Houthis’ vast revenue generation and smuggling networks.
The U.S. designated a total of 21 individuals and entities, including oil and gas facilitators in the UAE and front companies used to facilitate financial transactions between the Iranian government and Houthi-affiliated oil companies. They also targeted logistics firms and shipping facilitators used to transport weapons and other military-grade materials into Yemen.
All of this came as the Houthis reappeared on Thursday, making new threats against Israeli installations in Somaliland. It was their first threat of new attacks since the ceasefire in Gaza agreed to in the fall of 2025.
