Image depicts a destroyed Saudi pipeline pumping station.
My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
If last week has had a geopolitical main character, it was Ansarallah in Yemen. In under 24 hours, they managed to seize a very large amount of territory to their west from Saudi-backed mercenary groups. Tens of thousands of enemy soldiers fled, thousands more were captured, and hundreds of combat vehicles and all sorts of military equipment and ammunition are now in Ansarallah’s hands. The entire Red Sea coast of Yemen is now under their control, as well as some of the islands in and around the Bab el-Mandab, which is the narrow strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, which then goes on to connect to the Arabian Sea.
While Ansarallah had a pretty good grip on the Red Sea beforehand and could blockade it to the extent that traffic through the Red Sea plummeted in 2024 and 2025 and remain subdued to this day, it is now capable of much more direct control. And the strait is considerably narrower than Hormuz, meaning there is little hope for any covert operations like those of which the US regularly tries and fails to do over there. The only alternatives for the enemies of Ansarallah both now and in the future are the route all the way around Africa, which becomes even less attractive than usual as fuel prices rise into daily record highs, or the newly inaugurated Northern Sea Route under the firm control of Russia.
While Ansarallah is likely to continue their territorial acquisitions to an extent - with Marib looking like an obvious target - how things will continue from this point seems likely to be increasingly diplomatic. Yemen was once divided between North Yemen (which is, really, western Yemen) and South Yemen (which is, really, eastern Yemen), and this division reflects several genuine historical differences between the populations. Ansarallah has repeatedly stated that they have no intention to militarily occupy the south, and indeed, they ended this most recent offensive at approximately the historical border. Nonetheless, the government in once-South Yemen’s capital of Aden is considered the sole internationally recognized government of Yemen, which doesn’t sound sustainable for the future, so we’ll just have to see how the situation develops geopolitically from here, even if it’s unlikely to be militarily in the case of the southern and eastern territories.
While all this has been going on, Ansarallah was additionally applying major pressure on Saudi Arabia itself, by bombing their military airfields and, even more critically, their oil transportation and production facilities. These strikes were mostly limited to the port facilities in e.g. Yanbu and Jazan, and the Western air interceptor famine has meant that these strikes were mostly unopposed and caused substantial losses. However, Ansarallah has now destroyed some pumping stations for the East-West pipeline that spans Saudi Arabia, bypassing Hormuz for some (but not all) of Saudi Arabia’s oil production to the tune of around 4 million barrels per day, which is, in a happy numerical coincidence, about 4% of pre-2026 oil production. I’ve seen several wildly varying estimates for how long it might take to repair the stations, with some saying a few days and others stating at least a month; the damage does look pretty gnarly on the images. Of course, it might not really matter, because Ansarallah can easily just fire another missile at a station once it’s repaired, unless and until the Saudis give in to Ansarallah’s demands and end the war.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
President Trump has decided to cancel planned U.S. airstrikes against Yemen, according to the New York Times. Trump had briefly told the Pentagon to prepare a large strike package for dealing with the Houthis, after a personal appeal from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Most of the President’s inner circle opposed opening another front in the Middle East, citing energy insecurity and overextension. In the end, Trump decided against ordering the strikes just moments before they began.
New York Times: ‘The strikes against the Houthis were close to beginning, with target lists approved and bombs being loaded onto U.S. warplanes when Trump pulled back.’
Admin note: Now we know why those security alerts were issued & why we saw B1-B Lancers taking off from RAF Fairford; they were headed for Yemen.
- Middle East Spectator
accidentally
UK and Ireland currently has restricted airspace due to air traffic control issues. Source: I’m going to the airport in a few hours and I just got the notification :)))
Through a friend I got a picture of how Cuba is being depicted in neighbouring Jamaica right now. Here’s page 6/7 of today’s Sunday paper:
Bit disappointing. No mention of the US, not attempt to explain why Cuba’s conditions are like this. They just are like this, like these conditions are just a natural weather phenomena.
Page 3 has a decent enough anti-British article though:
And page 22/23 is doing anti-ICE
The reformists are at it again. Also Mr Dr Pezeshkian is chef’s kiss if that’s how it actually is in Farsi:
https://x.com/IzadiFoad/status/2101721299923919260Trip to New York—Why?
Just a few months after
the martyrdom of the Leader,
after the martyrdom of more than 5,000 Iranian civilians,
after the martyrdom of senior commanders of the IRGC and the army and other devoted military personnel,
after the extensive destruction of the country’s infrastructure…Is a trip to New York at the presidential level necessary under the current circumstances?
The enemy’s perception of the Iranian President’s trip to America would be this:
1- Iran has still not learned a lesson from the unsuccessful experiences of the past and is ready to be bitten again from the same spot for the umpteenth time.
2- Iran has no option other than giving more concessions to America.
3- Trump is busy managing the Iranian side, and by managing Iran, the price of oil is also managed. Trump’s talk about meeting with the Iranian President is for this very reason.
It is noteworthy that, simultaneously with the granting of a visa to the Iranian President, the visa of Mahmoud Abbas—the record holder for unsuccessful negotiations with Israel and America—was rejected by America.
In the past few days, the issue of America’s official and overt entry into the Saudi war against Yemen has been raised. One of Trump’s options is to officially announce this matter simultaneously with the Iranian President’s presence in New York.
What achievements have Mr. Dr. Pezeshkian’s previous trips to New York truly had that this costly trip under the current circumstances could be justified?
Der Linke(‘The Left’, the successor to Socialist Unity Party of Germany of the DDR) set to win Berlin:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/20/two-german-states-go-to-the-polls-after-far-right-gains
A little good news after recent AfD wins
And of course Merz engages in some horseshoe theory conflating two diametrically opposed parties as ‘authoritarianism’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvwyz29n0nn2o
Pakistani analyst Salman Rafi Sheikh points out that Western “Israel sanctions” lack teeth:
This reveals a deeper contradiction in Europe’s emerging policy. The governments imposing these measures are not primarily confronting an autonomous settler economy operating outside the Israeli state. They are responding to Israeli government policy. Their own statement makes that explicit: “The Government of Israel’s actions in the West Bank” are, they argue, undermining the two-state solution. Yet the principal economic response is directed at goods produced in settlements, not the Isarel state and government themselves. Thus, the policy totally ignores the fact that the settlement enterprise is consequently embedded in the institutions and policies of the Israeli state. Sanctioning settlement products therefore addresses one manifestation of the policy while leaving the broader economic relationship with the state largely intact.
Britain’s approach illustrates this particularly well. London has sought to distinguish between economic relations with Israel and activities connected to settlements. The House of Commons Library notes that Britain has long maintained that settlement goods should not receive the same preferential treatment as goods produced within Israel’s internationally recognized territory. Before the latest announcement, however, the government had resisted a comprehensive ban, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing the interconnected Israeli and Palestinian economies. The new measures are therefore a significant political escalation, but not a fundamental economic rupture with Israel itself.
https://journal-neo.su/2026/09/20/how-real-is-the-impact-of-western-sanctions-on-israel/
Iran shoots down an Israeli Orbiter drone over SoH. Air activity around the SoH is still elevated, but the US still hasn’t cleared out most their refuelers in Qatar. If they plan to attack, they need to get them out first.
Death to Israel, death to America & the EU!
CNN National Security Correspondent Alex Plitsas says that President Trump’s meeting at Camp David was to deliberate and review strike options for Yemen. U.S. Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, is also returning to Washington D.C.
- Middle East Spectator
Nancy Pelosi comments on the Iran War: “Our country is at war. We always root for our country under any circumstance. So let’s get this done, Mr. President.”
Leading political parties in Scotland, Wales, and North Ireland have released a memorandum announcing their intent to leave the UK and rejoin the EU
You are correct, there is no evidence of nuclear components on that ship. I am sorry that my report caused WW3. I will work to correct the error next time.
The US military was prepared to board a Chinese vessel in the Middle East earlier this spring – during war with Iran – after an intel report concluded it was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.
But just before the planned operation, officials discovered the report had been generated w/ help of AI & chatbot used by the analyst inaccurately identified what the ship was carrying
The AI-assisted intelligence report was “entirely false,” per 1 of the sources. But it also “almost started a war,” the source said.
Exclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say
Ansarallah downed a Saudi F15 over Marib
Update: they downed a Wing Loong 2 Drone of Chinese production now as well.
Rumor is that all Saudi oil deliveries to Europe for the next few months have been ‘force majeure-d’, meaning everything is cancelled.
[Edit] Routers is now confirming it. “Late September” cargos are being cancelled.
