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War Against Yemen Endangers Saudi Crown Prince’s Position
In the 1930s, during the formation of Saudi Arabia, three provinces were taken from Yemen. The Yemeni have always wanted them back. They are now in a position where they may eventually achieve that aim.
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The western parts of Yemen are unlike the deserts of Saudi Arabia. The area is mountainous and gets a decent amount of precipitation. Some 80% of the 33 million Yemeni live in there. Agricultural production in the mountains is however difficult and Yemen has long been dependent on trade to acquire enough food to keep its people alive.
In recent decades the Saudis had sent Wahhabi preacher into Yemen. This led to conflicts with the Zaidi Shia natives and in 2014 resulted in a revolution against the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh which had allowed the Saudis to gain an ideological foothold. The Houthi, a family clan or tribe of Zaidi Shia with a long tradition, allied with other clans and managed to overthrow the government in Sanaa.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the then 29 year old Minister Defense of Saudi Arabia, started a war against the Houthi and their allies to restore the Yemeni government. The Saudis, with U.S. help, launched an intensive bombing campaign which killed many Yemeni people. They enforced a blockade of the country. Several hundred thousand people died due to the lack of food. The Saudis hired foreign mercenaries, Jihadis and tribal forces in southern Yemen to fight the ruling forces in Sanaa. Enforcing an air blockade they bombed the airport of Sanaa more than 200 times.
It was all to no avail. In 2022 a ceasefire was established along the conflict lines. Under the name Ansar Allah (Ansarullah) the Houthis and their local allies established themselves as the government over some 70% of the Yemeni population. But they knew that the conflict was far from over. With the help of Iran they managed to build and store thousands of drones and missiles.
In October 2023, in support of the Palestinians fighting in Gaza, the Houthi began to target Israeli and U.S. shipping in the Red Sea. In March 2025 the Trump administration, with support from Great Britain, launched air and naval strikes against Ansar Allah targets in Yemen. The campaign went no where. After two months the U.S. declared victory and retreated.
On July 14 2026 the Saudis broke the ceasefire with Yemen by again bombing the airport in Sanaa:
Cont. reading: War Against Yemen Endangers Saudi Crown Prince’s Position
Iran Open Thread 2026-225
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-224
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-223
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-223
Ukraine – Trump Breaks Energy Deadlock – Zelenski In Open Defiance
Last night, in a phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, U.S. President Donald Trump destroyed the political deadlock around an energy ceasefire in Ukraine.
Trump announced that the presidents had agreed on the export of 4.5 million tons of sanctioned diesel from Russia through April 2027. Russia confirmed the deal. The U.S. Treasury announced the lifting of the relevant sanctions.
One ton of diesel is roughly the equivalent of 8 barrels. U.S. consumption of diesel (and the similar heating oil) amounts to 3.9 million barrels per day. The maximum total Russian export under the deal amounts to about 9 days of U.S. consumption. The total global consumption is about 30 million barrels (3.75m tons) per day.
The amount of diesel in question is relatively small but it might impact the currently high diesel prices at the margins. It is unlikely to help Trump to lower diesel prices before the upcoming mid-term elections, but it is a positive sign to the voters that he is ‘doing something’ about it.
Russian diesel exports were blocked by a. U.S. sanctions and b. Ukrainian attacks (supported by U.S. intelligence) on Russian refineries and oil terminals.
Ukraine sees its attacks on Russian fuel supplies as its only strategic means to hurt its enemy.
Russia had stopped its exports of diesel as a result of Ukrainian attacks. President Trump had publicly asked Ukraine several times to stop its attacks on Russian refineries. The Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski had rejected Trump’s requests.
Trump’s current move is intended to destroy the leverage Ukraine had gained by its attacks on Russian refineries:
President Trump decided to make a diesel fuel deal with Russia after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ignored half a dozen U.S. requests to stop attacking Russian oil refineries, a U.S. official with direct knowledge told Axios.
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“Zelensky is misreading the room. By continuing to hit refineries, he is eroding the good will that he has built with Trump over the last six months,” the U.S. official said.
Zelenski is furious:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Axios in a phone interview on Friday that President Trump’s decision to unilaterally lift sanctions on Russia and allow it to export diesel was “not fair and not honest.”
“You know, it looks like a happy birthday present for Putin. It looks absolutely terrible,” Zelensky said in frustration, referring to the Russian president’s birthday earlier this week.
In a Telegram post Zelenski described Trump’s move as “weak” (in Russian):
“… Any easing of sanctions against Russia without a clear and lasting agreement on de-escalation with Russia is an obvious sign of weakness. It plays into Russia’s hands, ensuring that it will kill more, fight longer, respect America even less, and inflict even more losses and damage on the world.
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Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit to the civilized world. Russia will “repay” the diesel with further terror and vile acts. Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that needs to be ended, not continued. We need real de-escalation with Russia, and in a reciprocal format,” the Ukrainian president writes.
A few hours later a Ukrainian drone strike hit the Russian oil export terminal at Rostov-on-Don:
A major fire has erupted at the NZNP petroleum-products terminal in Rostov-on-Don following a reported Ukrainian drone strike.
The facility handles the storage and export of refined petroleum products, with a stated annual capacity of 3.5 million tons.
Just hours ago, Trump announced an agreement with Putin to bring Russian diesel to American and global markets, while Washington moved to ease sanctions on Russian fuel.
Ukrainian officials had already condemned the agreement, with Zelensky calling it an investment in Russia’s war effort.
Trump is likely to be furious about this strike. It is Zelenski’s open defiance of Trump’s action that makes Trump look weak.
Ukraine’s military communication on the battle field is depending on the U.S. controlled Starlink satellite network. Its ability to strike within Russia largely depends on U.S. targeting intelligence.
If Trump wants to be seen as serious he will have to immediately stop both.
Independent of how the situation develops Trump’s temporary retreat from sanctions on Russia should not be interpreted as a change of U.S. strategy. U.S. hostility against Russia, Iran and China is a strategic measure. The current lifting of diesel sanctions is a tactical move forced by domestic circumstances. It does not change its long term plans.
Ukraine – Energy Ceasefire In A Political Deadlock
The NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine is the going into another round of negotiations.
A Ukrainian delegation is currently in Florida to talk with President Trump’s negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner:
Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, and other top officials, including Rustem Umerov, Sergiy Kyslytsya and David Arakhamia, will also attend ..
The main item in this round is a partial ceasefire with regards to energy and transport of agricultural products.
For months the Ukrainian military has attacked various refineries and oil transport hubs within Russia. The attacks are supported by U.S. intelligence. U.S. and British developed sea drones have been used to attack Russian ports in the Black Sea as well as ships transporting Russian oil products. After the attacks Russia has stopped its exports of diesel and other commodities.
Russia has responded in kind to Ukrainian strikes. Ukraine’s harbors are blocked. The country can no longer export its agricultural products. Its energy resources are diminished. A Russian drone and missile attacked earlier today (again) destroyed electricity stations in Kiev. The city is currently under another large black out. People living there will have difficulties to survive during the winter.
Rejecting requests from President Trump, Ukraine has been unwilling to stop its attacks on Russian energy targets. It is seeing these as the only strategic lever it has to pressure Russia.
Russia is willing to agree to an energy ceasefire but demands that it includes the lifting of all energy related sanctions the U.S. and Europe have put up against it.
The global energy prices are currently high. President Trump wants lower diesel prices. An energy ceasefire could help to alleviate the current diesel crunch.
Another inventive for Trump and his negotiators to push towards a ceasefire is a potential deal about the non-Russian assets of the sanctioned Russian company Lukoil:
The ongoing negotiations to end the nearly five-year long war between Russia and Ukraine now reportedly involve a multibillion dollar oil deal that would benefit individuals with ties to top U.S. negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
The group seeking the reported deal includes Todd Boehly, an American investor who donated $2 million to President Donald Trump’s political causes, and two Middle Eastern business executives that have done business with Witkoff or Kushner’s families.
The deal would require approval from both the U.S. and Russia and would include a set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one Russia’s largest energy companies.
While incentives to stop all attacks on energy targets are there, they are unlikely to be strong enough to overcome political resistance.
The Ukrainian leadership is unwilling to concede anything to Russia. Its troops are losing on the battlefield. Its economy is in tatters. It is surviving on subsidies from Europe a large part of which are being skimmed off by the people ruling Ukraine. Their only hope to keep the money flowing is to continue the attacks.
President Trump may want to stop Ukrainian attacks on Russia but the lifting of sanctions would open him up to political attacks by anti-Russian Republicans and Democrats. The current European leadership is also against any relief for Russia. It will be difficult for Trump to press it to lift sanctions. Operational groups within the CIA and the Pentagon are in daily contact with Ukrainians and do not want to stop their aggression against Russia.
While Trump could pressure Ukraine to agree to ceasefire by, for example, withholding access to Starlink for Ukraine’s military communication, it is unlikely that he is willing to take the political penalties that would come with taking that step.
Russia has no strong opinion about an energy ceasefire. Its supplies are not endangered. Its campaign to dismantle Ukraine’s industrial and energy capacities is going well.
Only a guaranteed lifting of sanction would be a sufficient incentive for Russia it to stop its actions. But nobody is Moscow is expecting that Trump can and will deliver on that.
Iran Open Thread 2026-222
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-221
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
Open (Not Ukraine or Iran) Thread 2026-220
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Iran …
Scaremongering About French Debt
There is some scaremongering going on about French debt. It seems to be part of a wider program.
France’s brutal bond sell-off is sparking fears of wider financial contagion – Business Insider, Oct 5 2026
The country, which has the third largest economy in Europe, is teetering on the edge of a debt crisis, threatening social unrest and political upheaval. Yields on French government bonds have spiked in the last week last week as investors balk at the country’s fiscal situation. Broader inflation and political concerns in Europe have sharpened the market’s reaction, resulting in a massive sell-off in European bonds that continued through the weekend.
By any historical measure French government debt is not in a crisis. But those who spread the scare about it do not care about the veracity of their claims:
If you think U.S. debt had a rough year, don’t look at France – Seeking Alpha, Oct 6 2026
Borrowing premiums have gotten out of hand in France, with yields jumping higher than any other G7 country since the Middle East war began, forcing Paris to pay even more than comparable debt from Rome or Athens.
The U.S. and France are both members of the G7. For the record:
[U.S.] Treasury yields reached highs not seen in more than 24 years. The 10-year traded as high as 5.361%, the highest intraday level since April 2002, according to Tradeweb. The 30-year touched 5.730%, highest since May 2002.
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The 10-year French OAT yield rose 17 basis points to 4.923%, …
France 30-year bond yield is of yesterday 5.32%, well below the U.S. 30-year yield.
The claim by Seeking Alpha of French “yields jumping higher than any other G7 country” is obviously factually wrong.
There is a plan behind these claims. The current French President Emmanuel Macron will have to leave after the elections in April next year. He wants to make it difficult for his successor to deviate from his own policies. The scaremongering about debt is designed to cement austerity. It is also an attempt to push the voters towards conservative choices:
The debt burden is becoming a political battleground ahead of next year’s presidential election, with leading centrist contenders Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal making fiscal discipline central to their campaigns.
A lawmaker from the far-right National Rally, Kevin Mauvieux, secured backing from the lower house’s finance committee on Thursday for a report sounding the alarm on the debt snowball effect.
“The longer we wait, the more painful the consequences will be,” he told lawmakers.
There are no ‘bond vigilantes’, just a general oversupply of debt. Governments make currencies. They do not go bankrupt. Debt they have can and will be inflated away.
I see the debt scaremongering in Europe, together with the largely provoked demonstrations in France, in line with a wider strategy of tension.
The electorate in Europe is getting unruly and uppity. The powers that be want it to be scared to able to continue along their ways.
AI Investments Lack Returns – Whatever They Do Is Hard To Measure
So called Artificial Intelligence companies continue to make headlines. The hype they get is not justified by their value for our societies.
They are a danger to economic well being.
The money that has been, and still gets invested in them is wasted. It can not be justified by the potential returns.
I have argued that in a previous piece:
There Is No Justification -But Hype- For Current AI Investment – MoA, Aug 26 2026
The evaluations thrown around by these companies, and the hundreds of billions being invested into data centers to keep them going, are absurd when compared to the potential revenue these companies might make.
Imagine a product which is so good that every household in North America and Europe is willing to spend some $20 per month to use it. Those are 400 million households for a total revenue of $48 billion per year. That is a laughable sum when compared to the ~$1.1 trillion contracted by OpenAI and Anthropic with Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle for current and future compute.
There is no AI product in sight (but hype) and no revenue, that can justify such investments.
BCA Research (via Ed Zitron) agrees:
AI companies may need to ultimately generate $10 trillion per year in revenue to justify their capex. Barring a massive increase in productivity growth, this will be very difficult to achieve.
The capital expenditure that is currently put into LLMs/AI has no relation to its potential future revenue. It is wasted money.
A recent piece by Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal confirms my take:
Will America Spend 9% of Its GDP on AI? The Industry Is Counting on It (archived) – WSJ, Oct 2 2026
Believers in the artificial-intelligence boom need to take a very close look at this number: 9% of GDP.
That is how much American businesses and consumers eventually have to spend per year on the services of companies like Anthropic and OpenAI to justify the staggering sums being committed to the technology right now.
Is it plausible that Americans will spend as much of their income on this one technology as they do on food? Roughly twice what the nation pays for all forms of energy or all computers and software? Seven times what consumers spend on phone, streaming, and internet services combined?
You should be skeptical.
The 9% are the result of a simple calculation. What has been and will be invested in AI and how much return needs to be generated to justify it:
Cont. reading: AI Investments Lack Returns – Whatever They Do Is Hard To Measure
English Outsider: Attrition War With NATO – Attacks On Bridges In Ukraine
by English Outsider lifted from a comment
A couple of years ago Helmer had a theory about the earlier attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. He reckoned those earlier attacks were not designed to wreck but to probe. To map the critical connections, assess speed of repair, and with this information prepare plans for a more incapacitating attack should that be decided on in the future.
Just wonder if the current bridge attacks are on the same lines. The Russians don’t want to wreck the bridges. They just want to know they can stop Ukrainian logistics dead if they want to. The timing of that would be critical. Not too early because that would allow time for workarounds. Not too late because it’d be difficult to do it all at once.
The attacks would be incapacitating but not destructive. The Russians will want the bridges intact later. That assumes the Ukrainians themselves won’t destroy the bridges during the end phase.
As for why the Dnieper bridges weren’t destroyed much earlier, it seemed at the start there were two reasons.
The first was an obvious one. Failing successful negotiations, the Russians knew from day one of their SMO that they had to destroy all NATO could throw at them. Proxies and equipment. Most convenient place for that was the Donbass so let the proxies and the materiel get across the Dnieper to be destroyed.
A simplistic argument, always was, but in practice that’s what’s happened. Not only is NATO now running out of men and materiel, one can look at the SMO as a systematic bleeding dry of the NATO financial resources for both. The proxies have to be funded: without Western money they’d long since have negotiated a surrender . It’s getting increasingly difficult to fund them. As for materiel, NATO’s running out of it and it’s very costly to send in more.
Had the Russians decided to bleed NATO out west of the Dnieper they’d have been fools. They’d have been running around all over a big territory looking for concentrations of men and equipment and coping with partisan warfare as they did so: it’s no accident that the training and weapons NATO supplied before the SMO was much of it for small unit fighting, as would be needed for partisan warfare, and that partisan warfare would have cost very many Russian casualties. In fact the NATO expectation at the very start was that the Russians would thus be bogged down in, as it was termed back then in the West, “Russia’s Afghanistan.”
The Russians sidestepped that scenario. Easier to let the proxies and equipment come to them, to the killing grounds east of the Dnieper, where they could be more conveniently disposed of. Hence, leave the Dnieper bridges standing.
The second reason is also obvious. It’s all very well to talk cold-bloodedly of bleeding NATO resources out and to examine how it was done. But that’s impersonal war game stuff. Doesn’t cover what it’s like for the pawns on the Grand Chessboard. Recently I linked to a video in which Havrysho details (vid) the sheer amount of destruction resulting from NATO using Ukraine as a means of attacking Russia. The destruction’s so horrendous and the death toll so great it’s quite possible Ukraine will cease to exist as a viable country.
Since ’22 the question’s been, how much longer will it last before NATO finally lets our proxies off the hook? We now have the answer. Doesn’t look as if NATO’s giving up unless it has to. US and European politicians have been encouraging Kiev to feed more proxies into the killing fields. Telling Kiev to lower the recruitment age or use women as soldiers. We are generous indeed with the lives of our proxies, as long as we need not risk our own. That’s how it’ll go as long as NATO can keep it up and as long as our proxy lasts.
Was this predictable back in 2022 and in the early stages of the SMO? Predictable, yes, but not at that time inevitable. The wholesale destruction of crucial infrastructure is not what the Russians needed or wanted to do until it became clear that NATO’s determination to use Ukraine as an attack dog, no matter the cost to the Ukrainians, had no limits.
Until that became unavoidably clear, leave as much infrastructure as possible still standing. That, I believe, is the second reason for not demolishing the Dnieper bridges early on, or at all if possible, and together with the first reason it accounts for what is often regarded as the Russian failure to do that at the start.
Looking at more than the Dnieper bridges, those reasons also partially account for the Russian conduct of their SMO to date. Failing negotiation, this was always going to be a slow grind. It was always going to take an age to wear down NATO.
Iran Open Thread 2026-219
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-218
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-217
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-217
War On Iran: – Another Strike As Election Gimmick?
The war on Iran is yet unfinished.
I had stated previously that I, like others, expect another heavy attack on Iran. The general expectation is currently that such an attack would only happen in mid to late November – i.e. after the midterm election.
But why would Trump want to wait for that? Why not use an attack as a tool in the election – to demonstrate decisiveness or whatever other attribute Trump wants have associated with himself.
Axios, am outlet often used by the White House, was tasked with this announcement:
Trump’s top national security aides meet secretly at Camp David on Iran, Yemen
President Trump’s top cabinet members huddled for hours at Camp David on Friday to discuss next steps in the Iran war and the Saudi-Houthi conflict in Yemen, three U.S. officials told Axios.
The highly unusual meeting was not announced by the Trump administration. The last time a similar meeting took place was in June 2025, just days before Israel went to war against Iran.
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Among the other participants were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, White House envoy Steve Witkoff, CIA director John Ratcliffe and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine.
“Things were decided or at least deeply discussed,” one of the officials said, referring to the crisis in the Middle East.
The meeting was likely genuine. It could be a sign of planning for a new attack. There have however been no military moves like they usually appear before a large operation. (The recently announced aircraft carrier and amphibious readiness group deployment do not count. They are replacements for ships which have been deployed near Iran for more than six months and must soon turn home.)
The main question with regards to any new attack on Iran is: “Then what?”
Iran will hit hack. It will not capitulate. It is fighting for its existence.
What then can be achieved by another violent attack on it?
I for one can find no satisfying answer to that question.
Half(?) Crazy Man In A Golden House
What to do when someone has powers but no ethics?
Time has interviewed Trump:
Inside the Oval Office, Trump’s redesign is impossible to miss. There is gold everywhere, from the decorative plasterwork to the inscriptions on the ceiling and the gilded frames crowding the walls. The room is so dazzling you practically need sunglasses. Trumpian tchotchkes are scattered about: a FIFA “World Peace Prize” sits next to the Resolute Desk, where the President keeps a commendation given to his uncle during his years as an MIT professor.
At times, Trump’s train of thought was difficult to keep up with, his conversation moving in streams and eddies before circling back to familiar obsessions. He recounted conversations that sometimes sounded improbable.
One wonders how stable the man’s mind is:
Read the Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s 2026 Interview With TIME (archived) – Time, Oct 1 2026
Q: Last week, you said you might annihilate Iran. That was the word you used.
A: Yeah, I would do that. It’s possible.
Q: You’ve made versions of that threat before. You’ve also called yourself the president of peace.
A: Yeah.
Q: How can the president of peace be calling for the annihilation of an entire people?
A: Because by annihilating Iran, we’ve created peace in the world. With Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace.
Also concerning:
What Trump Has Built (archived) – Time, Oct 1 2026
Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy, according to an official present. At the time, Trump was ordering missile strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were smuggling drugs into the U.S. He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro. According to the official present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.
I don’t remember or find any reports of celebrations in Venezuela after Maduro was kidnapped. Some Americans though were partying in Florida.
The pope was right to call for artificial intelligence to be “disarmed”.
Iran Open Thread 2026-216
News & views related to the war on Iran …
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-215
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
Open (Not Ukraine or Iran) Thread 2026-214
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Iran …
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