The Houthis claim they have been subjected to more than 760 airstrikes in recent days. The Yemeni Armed Forces have a simple answer: Yemeni aviation will keep hunting them across every front. 760 strikes and counting. There will be no safe haven for a militia that chose war.

I’m not Muslim, but sometimes I feel I understand Islam better than many Muslims. Perhaps that comes from my university studies in religious history. Either way, what I see almost every day on X is genuinely disturbing! My feed is increasingly filled with videos from Syria showing horrific animal cruelty and abuse. Animal cruelty is unfortunately not new in Syria - but turning it into something to brag about, film and broadcast is deeply disturbing. What makes it even worse is the people committing these acts shouting “Allahu Akbar” while doing it, as if cruelty towards animals were somehow Islamic. It is not. Quite the opposite. A core principle in Islamic tradition is that animals are living creatures to whom humans have responsibilities. Cruelty and unnecessary suffering carry moral and spiritual consequences, including accountability before God on Yawm al-Qiyamah, the Day of Judgment. This is not some modern Western interpretation of Islam. Compassion towards animals has deep roots in Islamic theology, law and history. Syria should teach this history! The story of Marj al-Akhdar in Damascus and the wider history of Muslim societies developing institutions and traditions concerned with animal welfare could help remind younger generations that compassion towards animals is not foreign to their culture or religion. It is part of their own historical heritage. And there is an important distinction to make: these videos do not represent Syrians, nor do they represent Islam. But they do represent a problem that should not be ignored. Hurting an animal is not an act of faith. Shouting “Allahu Akbar” while doing it does not make it Islamic. It makes a mockery of the words!

My good friend Mohammed Alhamed @M7Alhamed was interviewed by Asia One yesterday, and it was a very good interview. He made a point I have been making for some time: what is happening around Bab al-Mandab is no longer simply a Yemen problem. Houthi attacks and drone activity threaten the Red Sea, international shipping and the wider security architecture of the region. Add militia activity in Iraq and growing pressure around the Strait of Hormuz, and the picture becomes impossible to ignore. When shipping lanes are disrupted, the effects travel far beyond the Middle East - into global supply chains, energy markets and ultimately the economies of ordinary people. That is why securing regional navigation cannot be left to Saudi Arabia alone. It requires coordinated international action, with Washington and Riyadh working closely together. The Red Sea is an American strategic and economic interest too. Alhamed also made another important point: you cannot achieve lasting regional security while leaving Iran’s proxy network intact. The Houthis and other Iran-backed militias depend on networks supplying missiles, advanced drones, technology, training and financing. If the objective is to stop Iran-backed terrorism and destabilisation, the focus cannot remain only on intercepting the next missile. The supply chain itself has to be dismantled. His analysis of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement is equally important. The pact between Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan is fundamentally a framework for collective deterrence and defence cooperation. It is about building capabilities, intelligence cooperation, training and coordination - not simply sending foreign armies into Yemen. The agreement itself states that an armed attack on one member is to be regarded as an attack on all three. Saudi Arabia is not asking others to fight its battles for it. It is building a broader regional security architecture with major Muslim powers. That distinction matters. And Mohammed Alhamed is right about the bigger picture: if the international community wants a safer Red Sea, safer Gulf and a more stable Middle East, it has to deal with the networks enabling the militias - not just intercept the missiles after they are launched. The Houthis did not invent this regional security crisis. But they have made one thing very clear: You cannot secure the world's shipping lanes while leaving the forces attacking them untouched.

The Houthis have perfected a remarkable business model: You chew the khat. They collect the tax. The money helps sustain the machine that terrorizes Yemen and attacks its neighbors. Nothing says “revolution” quite like turning a national habit into a tax base for your militia. Keep chewing. The Houthis will keep collecting!

A Houthi ballistic missile was fired at Riyadh. Saudi air defences intercepted it. Hours later, Trump cut short his stay at Camp David and returned to the White House. CNN reports the meeting was convened to review options for strikes in Yemen. Embassies across the region issued warnings. Other signs point to heightened American military activity. Something moved this weekend. But be precise about what. I have spent two weeks arguing that Washington should act. So let me say it plainly: a meeting is not a strike. Officials describe Camp David as a review of options, not a decision. The White House has confirmed nothing about timing or scope. Ten days ago, Mohammed bin Salman asked Trump twice for exactly this and was told no. I will believe it when aircraft are in the air. But notice what changed the conversation. It was not Mocha. Not Dhubab, Perim or the strait. It was a missile aimed at the Saudi capital. That is the Houthis misreading their own position! They spent two weeks taking coastline and assumed the world would treat it as a local matter. When the world largely did, they escalated to remind everyone they mattered. Firing at Riyadh is what a movement does when it has gained ground but gained nothing from it. Now comes the part that decides whether any of this is worth anything. America has bombed the Houthis twice. Operation Poseidon Archer ran for a year. Operation Rough Rider lasted 53 days and saw 339 U.S. strikes- more in under two months than during the entire year before it. Both hit launch sites, radars and depots. Both ended with the Houthis still firing. Repeat that formula and it will fail again. What has not been seriously attempted is the network behind the missiles: the IRGC personnel directing the Yemen file, smuggling routes through Al-Mahra, Hadramawt and Al-Jawf, and the shipments themselves-interdicted at sea and struck at source. A missile launcher can be replaced in a week. A pipeline cannot. And this time there is something previous campaigns lacked: Yemeni forces capable of taking and holding ground. They cleared al-Labnat. They pushed the Houthis off the southern belt in Marib. They are fighting for the Kahbub heights above Bab al-Mandab now, while Houthi forces are exposed on coastal ground with the sea at their back. Air power failed to produce a decisive result in 2025 because there was no capable ground force underneath it. That is no longer true. One more thing, and it is the part most people will miss. While a Houthi missile was flying toward Riyadh, Iran was passing ceasefire conditions to Washington through Qatar. That is not a contradiction. It is the method. Tehran talks when it needs a pause and fights through others when the pause has served its purpose. Beijing 2023-and the weapons kept reaching Sanaa. The May 2025 deal-and sixteen months later the Houthis hold the coast. A truce in April. Missiles at the UAE in August! Every time, the conversation bought Iran time and cost it little. So if Washington moves, it should target the network, not the noise. And it should not stop because another message arrives from Doha. Let us be honest about who created this moment. Riyadh built the pressure. It assembled a coalition of 43 nations with headquarters on Saudi soil, signed the Mecca pact, went to Cairo in person, and kept flying combat missions from a base the Houthis are shelling-while Washington provided intelligence and declined to do more. Yemenis created the opening. They are on the ridgelines, taking losses for ground that determines whether a global waterway stays open. Washington is not leading this. It is responding to facts Saudi Arabia and Yemen created on their own. If it now decides to help, good. That is what I have been asking for. But the test is not whether America bombs something. The test is whether it cuts the line from Tehran to Sanaa-and stays until the job is finished, rather than until a phone call makes it convenient to stop.

Congratulations to all Yemenis. The reported killing of Brigadier General Firaq Muhsin al-Asar, the Houthi commander of the Bab al-Mandab front, is a significant blow to the militia’s military leadership! One of its most dangerous commanders is gone. One less man threatening Yemen’s future and the security of the Red Sea. The Houthis are learning the hard way: there is a price for terror! 🇾🇪

Israeli security sources have a new story about Syria. It landed in the Jerusalem Post this week, and it is worth reading closely, because what it actually reveals is not a Syrian plot. It is an Israeli preference. The claim: al-Sharaa is diverting tax revenue and international aid away from reconstruction into a hidden military buildup. IDF assessments reportedly hold that his real target is Hezbollah and the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, timed to a thinner American presence. One official says he wants Syria to become a regional power, and warns that "the moment he decides to, he will also direct military force against Israel." All of it anonymous. Not one named official. Not one document. Not one number. Now compare that to the record. Syria's army is growing because the SDF dissolved. That is not a secret. Mazloum Abdi announced it in Damascus on 25 August, ending a process that ran from March 2025. Tens of thousands of fighters, their brigades, their vehicles and their American-supplied equipment all moved under the Ministry of Defence. Coalition bases went the same way. Kharab al-Jir is Syrian now. Washington spent a decade building that stockpile. It did not vanish. It got a new address. So yes, the Syrian military is bigger. That is what happens when a country stops having three armies and starts having one. Israeli planners have known this arithmetic for a year. Calling the result concealed is a choice of adjective, not a finding of intelligence! Then there is the internal contradiction. The same report says al-Sharaa's plans point at Hezbollah and at Iranian militias in Iraq. Israel has spent two decades asking for exactly that. It also says he will not hand Erdogan bases, that he resisted Turkish entrenchment after Abu al-Duhur. Also something Israel wanted. Both get filed as threats. When a man doing the things you asked for is still the problem, the problem was never his behaviour. The tell is in the last paragraph. Sources say Israel missed a historic opportunity for a Golan deal while al-Sharaa was still weak. Read that again. The grievance is not that Syria is dangerous. It is that Syria is no longer weak enough to be dictated to. That is not a threat assessment. That is regret over lost leverage. Meanwhile the on-record Syrian position has not moved. Al-Sharaa has said publicly and repeatedly that Damascus is negotiating a security arrangement with Israel, that it wants the buffer zone vacated, that it is not seeking confrontation. The talks are US-brokered. There is an intelligence-sharing mechanism. In July, Syrian forces intercepted a weapons shipment bound for Hezbollah. That is not the conduct of a state preparing an ambush. Here is what nobody should pretend away. Syria sits in a bad neighbourhood. Iran has not accepted the loss of its land bridge and is working to buy its way back in. ISIS cells are alive in the Badiya and along the Euphrates. Captagon networks, Assadist remnants, tribal scores, a Suwayda file, unsettled borders in every direction. A weak Syrian army does not make any of that safer. A weak Syrian state is what produced all of it. The vacuum after 2011 is the reason Soleimani could drive from Tehran to Beirut, and the reason Raqqa became a capital. You do not get stability from a government too feeble to police its own desert. You get a franchise opportunity. Damascus needs an army strong enough to keep Iran out, hold the east, and finish ISIS. That serves Israel better than any airstrike on a runway ever has. The choice is a Syrian state strong enough to hold its own ground, or another twenty years of everyone else holding it for them.

The Houthis have now openly claimed responsibility for attacks targeting Saudi Arabia, with military spokesman Yahya Saree saying they launched ballistic and cruise missiles and drones at targets in Riyadh and an Aramco facility in Yanbu. There should be no ambiguity about what this means. This is terrorism and aggression against a sovereign state, its civilians and critical infrastructure. It must have consequences! Zero tolerance for terrorism. Zero tolerance for attacks on civilians. Zero tolerance for using missiles and drones to intimidate an entire population. Saudi Arabia has the right to defend its people and its territory. The international community should act accordingly.

I genuinely wish Erdoğan and Türkiye had never tried to turn the Muslim Brotherhood into an instrument of a neo-Ottoman regional project. That strategy came at a real cost. It deepened tensions with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, and pulled Türkiye into ideological rivalries that did little to serve its long-term interests. What I find encouraging is the shift that followed. Türkiye has gradually moved from ideological confrontation toward pragmatic engagement with the Arab world - rebuilding ties with Egypt and developing increasingly close strategic cooperation with Saudi Arabia. In August, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia even signed a joint defence agreement. And now we are seeing another important dimension. Türkiye has revoked Bank Mellat’s operating licence. Mahan Air is suspending flights to Türkiye. Meanwhile, Washington has sanctioned Golden Global Bank over alleged links to Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force. I welcome this direction! A Türkiye that works with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the wider Arab world - rather than trying to dominate the region through political Islam - is a Türkiye that can contribute to a more stable regional balance. And strategically, closer Türkiye–Arab cooperation makes it harder for Iran to exploit divisions between the region’s major powers. That is something I believe the region - and the West - should encourage!

The principle is simple and rock solid: civilians and critical infrastructure must never become collateral damage in conflicts through which Iran and its armed networks seek to reshape the regional balance. An attack on Saudi Arabia is not some distant regional dispute the world can afford to ignore. Saudi Arabia is a sovereign state, and its cities, civilians and infrastructure have the same right to security as those anywhere else. Standing with Saudi Arabia and its people is therefore about more than regional solidarity. It is about defending the principle that no state should be allowed to normalize attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure as a tool of geopolitical warfare. Their safety matters to all of us. Because when attacks on civilians become acceptable in one part of the world, the principle of civilian security becomes weaker everywhere.

Yemeni Armed Forces are tightening the pressure around Taiz and Kahboub. Government forces have retaken positions west of Taiz and regained the Kahboub heights overlooking Bab al-Mandab, while repeated Houthi assaults have been repelled. The pattern is becoming harder to ignore: the Houthis are burning through men, weapons and stockpiles while attacking across multiple fronts with no clear political exit. They are fighting for time. And time is exactly what they are running out of.