Middle East Roundtable 9.25.2026: 3D Chess, But It's Houthi-Style

Hello, and welcome to the Middle East Roundtable here at Fronts.co. This is Evan Maloney. I am here with Wilfred Myler, Africa correspondent for War Fronts, Home Fronts, and everything in between.

And Kyle Moran, staff writer here at War Fronts. And once again, ladies and gentlemen, just a jam-packed week here at the Middle East Roundtable with all sorts of conflicts going on in the Mideast and beyond. So a quick recap of what we're looking at here.

We do have some indications that the Iranians and the Americans are once again talking. Admittedly, this is exclusively done via passing notes through the Qatari delegation along the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. But progress is progress, so we'll take that when we can.

We do have more data coming out of Hormuz that shows Iran might be struggling to maintain its total blockade or total quarantine of the strait with some 13 million barrels of non-Iranian oil passing through. We'll get into all of that.

But of course, there's also the situation going on in Yemen, where the city of Taiz has come under heavy fire, and the Houthis have been repeatedly trying to take the city.

But I know of no better person to give us a quick rundown of where that all stands than my correspondent, my colleague here, Evan. Yo, yo, yo. It's Houthi Evan here.

Here to weigh in. Yeah, no, it's been another tough week for the internationally-backed government of Yemen, Saudi-backed government of Yemen, as they tried to maintain control of this road link between the city of Taiz and the de facto capital of the country, Aden, which is control of the city of Taiz.

And they've been trying to maintain control of this road link between the city of Taiz and the de facto capital of the country, Aden, which is control of the city of Taiz.

And they've been trying to maintain control of this road link between the city of Taiz and the de facto capital of the country, Aden, which is control of the city of Taiz. by the Saudi-backed coalition.

At present, the Houthis are trying to break a link between the two cities that essentially runs through this mountain pass where Taiz is receiving the last supplies that it can get its hands on, basically. If this road is cut off, the city is totally encircled.

If that city falls, then essentially the Houthis have captured all of southwestern Yemen, which is a big problem, not just because that is the coastline leading into the Red Sea and the coastline of the Red Sea.

So the coastline that makes up the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, this critical trade route choke point that cannot be taken over for fear of global economic calamity. But also, secondary issue there, if you capture Taiz, you control the highlands that allow you this great overlook of the entire area of the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea.

So you can essentially see ships coming in and out. You can see naval traffic. You can see maritime traffic.

And from that vantage point, the Houthis would be able to actually gather the real time intelligence that they would need to impose fairly extensive and sophisticated blockades over the region. So that's the situation right now. The Houthis and the Yemenis are battling back and forth this road.

Most recently, the Houthis launched a series of attacks overnight last night at the time of recording this. So last night, as of Thursday, that were then pushed back by the Yemeni government. It is unclear how long this can hold, though.

Taiz is more and more isolated by the day. And unfortunately, this does seem to be a matter of when, not if, this city will ultimately fall. With Taiz falling into the hands of the Houthis, I can't help but eventually, it's a question of when, not if.

As Devan has said, I can't help but think about that idea of the highlands and something that Kyle had said earlier, that Iran had effectively lost control of shipping flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.

While on the other hand, its proxy force, well, you know, its most independent proxy force, appears very likely to be setting themselves up to fully control one of the most important waterways.

Kyle, could you walk us through the situation within the Strait of Hormuz, not to jump away from Yemen, the situation within the Strait of Hormuz, and why Iran has just absolutely lost as much control of the situation as it has?

Well, of course. So about a week ago, there was a report from Axios citing U.S.

Sources

saying that there were 40 4-0 tankers crossing the Strait in one day. And so consider the source slightly.

It's not the most objective reporting, especially when it's coming from U.S. intel. But this is backed up by some independent outlets as well.

And so, you know, there's a lot of talk about, you know, well, the biggest obstacle to figuring out exactly the number going through is that many of them, many of the ships, for extremely obvious reasons, are doing so in the blind.

So they'll turn off their transponders. Again, you don't want to be transmitting to the Iranians exactly what your location is as you try to sneak past them. That has made getting an exact figure a bit tricky.

But using some open intel, which does admittedly undercount actual traffic, we see that over the weekend, there were only five vessels on Saturday and none on Sunday versus 31 the previous weekend. So not a super encouraging trend. Yesterday, Wednesday recovered to 10, but that's still down to beneath the 10-day average of 17 ships per day.

Again, that is a very conservative estimate, though. Statistic method, the AIS is, again, certainly undercounting some of the traffic going through. So overall, Iran has lost some control because for a period of time, we were seeing like, we would get like a ship in a day or like four ships was considered like huge for a period of time.

So the fact that we're looking at like last weekend, 31 is pretty massive. And if this is able to continue, even just at current level where it's like 10, is that going to make a difference in terms of the international price of oil?

Not in a big way, no. But it will continue to send alarm bells off throughout the capital in Tehran, indicating that, you know, they can't keep this thing up forever.

They can certainly try and some of them are definitely willing to give it best they have. There's are clearly more willing to negotiate. And I think this does give some credence, credibility to that argument.

The Critical Threats Project is reporting that the increase in oil going through and Iran's diminished ability to exert control over the has likely motivated Iran's willingness to engage with the U.S. diplomatically.

Now, this, again, just gets us back to the very, very earliest of stages, because once you figure out, OK, you want to negotiate, you have to figure out what you actually want to negotiate on writ large. There is so much these guys still disagree on.

And the MOU that was agreed previously is only somewhat helpful because it doesn't actually take into consideration what to do with the Strait of Hormuz. That will that was like intentionally left vague or I have to imagine intentionally left vague during the first round. But that was ultimately what killed the thing.

And to begin with, because obviously the status of shipping through a waterway that important had to be clarified. And when it wasn't, everything just fell apart.

So for any future negotiations, I have to imagine they will be able they will have to be able to address this head on in terms of if Iran has control over Hormuz, to what extent, whether there will be tolling, to what extent and finally, whether they will be able to find some way to compromise on these issues.

So the idea that Iran is willing to go back to the table with the US, it's all a question of leverage. Iran feels like they've lost a significant amount of leverage to the point where they're willing to, even if it's passing notes through the Qatari delegations, speak with the US. I'm going to throw this back to you because I'm going back to Yemen.

But with the Houthis increasing their control over the Red Sea and the Bab el Mandeb and them trying to position themselves in such a manner that they will be able to acquire as much intelligence of the ships that will be passing through that strait, do you see it as Iran trying to get back its leverage?

And because the Houthis do have their own goals and when they're they make their proxy of Iran, but as I said, they are the most independent proxy that Iran has. Do you see this as the Houthis trying to get Iran back in a better negotiating position?

Or are they pursuing their own independent goals with this? And one other thing, the Houthis had communicated to the rest of the world that only Saudi ships wouldn't be allowed to pass through the Bab el Mandeb. Do you see them extending this to American ships and Israeli ships as a way to increase Iran's leverage?

Yeah, great questions. So you're very, very correct in saying the Houthis are not really a proxy of the Iranians in the same way that like Hezbollah or Hamas is, right? They're partners, they're geopolitical allies who often work toward the same goals.

But ultimately, the Houthis are going to choose to act in their own interests before and above their decisions to act in Iranian interests. So in this case, right, I think it's a bit of both.

So we have on the one hand, the Houthis, well aware that the more leverage they can exert over the Strait, the more leverage they can give to Iran and their negotiations.

At the same time, right, the Houthis also see this as a play for legitimacy, right? Their goal is to take over the Strait or to at least build the ability to take over the Strait, the Bab el Mandeb Strait. And basically to get the rest of the world to treat them as de facto equals, right?

Even if they're not recognized as the sole overlords of Yemen, right? They would like to be recognized as a de facto proto-state, if you will. A government that needs to be taken seriously, needs to be negotiated with.

Now, we talk about the idea of attacks against ships other than Saudi vessels. The Houthis right now don't need to pursue attacks against, as you said, American ships, Israeli ships, because right now the Americans are negotiating with them, right? The Americans brought the Houthis to Oman and had a conversation with them in the US embassy.

Just this past weekend, Trump was reportedly deciding whether or not to launch strikes against the Houthis at Saudi Arabia's request. He almost did it. And then at the last moment, he decided not to.

Reason being, there was some pushback from internal advisors. But at the same time, he had kind of expressed, like the Houthis have said, they don't want to attack us. They don't want to bomb us.

They just want to, you know, hold this, to use Trumpian terms, right, waterfront property that they have, and they want to make the government. All of that is to say, the Houthis are doing this, yes, to help Iran, but more to boost their position globally.

And as Iran sits at the negotiating table and works toward a peace over the Strait of Hormuz, that can only be good for the Houthis.

Because as we've mentioned over the past few months in this podcast, Iran has achieved a state of dominance over the Strait of Hormuz. Whether or not they can launch as much as they want into the Strait right now, they've fundamentally changed the security order there for a very long time.

The question of whether or not the Strait of Hormuz or the Bab al-Mandeb are blockaded ultimately is always going to be a question from now on of whether or not the Iranians or the Houthis have chosen to launch missiles into it at a given time.

They retain the ability to close down these waterways at any time, to leverage the threat to close down these waterways at any time, regardless of any deal that governs this situation.

And because Iran now has established that as a fundamental condition of negotiations moving forward, that's something that the Houthis also get to use, because they can establish the same control, the same threat, over a similarly important waterway.

So if Iran is successful in these negotiations, that's great for the Houthis, because now the Houthis can follow in their footsteps, carve out a similar deal that the rest of the world is comfortable with, but they've carved out that deal in a way that now gives the Houthis a legitimacy they've always craved.

If that doesn't happen, and Iran is left on its own and starts floundering, and this goes sideways for them, the Houthis get to say, "Well, Iran is what it is, but we'll negotiate with you as a good faith partner. We'll meet with the US. We'll meet with the Omanis.

We'll even hold off from attacking Israeli ships." Because remember, they did during '24, '25, during Operation Prosperity Guardian, they're not doing that anymore. They're not doing that because they have this opportunity to say, "We're very well-reasoned. We're very rational.

We know what we want. We're not trying to cause problems for anybody who's willing to do business with us. It's just the Saudis." And for them, there's really no way diplomatically to lose in this situation.

Overall, when it comes to US response to this, what do you think that the United States should be doing? Because on the one hand, the Houthis have been pretty laser-focused on Saudi shipping so far.

Intel coming out of critical threats that they do think the most likely course of action will be to extend their naval blockade against Saudi vessels to include vessels affiliated with the United States and other Saudi partners.

But this is still sort of future casting, if you will. So if the US does enter this on the side of the Saudis, the implication, ostensibly, will be that the Houthis expand immediately. So it seems almost like the course of action from the US might be if the Houthis do not escalate, then we do not directly get involved.

But I'm curious as to what your thoughts are for both Evan and Wilfred there. Yeah, I would be very surprised if the US were to take kinetic action. I understand why there are some folks future casting now about whether the US could come in kinetically at some future point.

And obviously, if the Houthis were to start attacking US vessels to expand their campaign otherwise, then yeah, the US probably would come in. As of right now, that would just be very uncharacteristic for the Houthis, considering what they can achieve right now by just not doing that, right?

If the Houthis hold the status quo in which they are launching missiles at Riyadh, then that's the same status quo in which the US is willing to negotiate with them on their terms.

That's very good for the Houthis. They don't need to mess that up. And they're pretty good generally about not getting too far over their skis.

Say what you will about them. You know, they have many, many, many issues. They do have this kind of like weird savvy to them that a lot of rebel groups and non-state actors really can't manage.

As for the broader question about how you create these control regimes over a place like the Bala Mandat, I think, straight of Hormuz, I personally come down on the side of like, it was obviously a very nice condition of the geopolitical order that Iran wasn't exerting leverage over a country that it directly borders and could have controlled, right?

That was a very nice thing about the world prior to 2026 is that Iran had not really crossed that boundary and neither had Oman, neither had, let's say, Yemen or Somalia or Djibouti in the Red Sea, right? These countries that do have access to and can control these straits, but don't do so.

That's also not a, that's not a base condition for strait governance around the world. If you look at the Strait of Malacca, right? Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, they all sit on that Strait.

And if you want to get through, you pay a toll. Same with the Panama Canal, same with the Suez Canal under Egypt. So yeah, I mean, if you want to really hold tight to the idea that we can get back to this post 20, pre-2026 order in which the Bala Mandat and the Strait of Hormuz were these completely untaxed, unbothered waterways, then good on you.

I, you know, if that's, if that's your fight and you want to fight it, by all means, I personally come down on the other side in that now that the idea of, of direct control over those waterways has been brought into international conversation, we should not expect to go away.

And we should expect these groups that are well armed, that have kind of this rogue state status already and know that they can gain leverage by, by placing pressure on those waterways. We should expect them to use that to their fullest possible extent.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's, I think that's a, I think that's a, I think that's a good point. And quite frankly, we should do business with them as such.

That's not to say that we, you know, hand leveraged to these, these countries are on state actors, every chance we get.

But at the same time, I think there needs to be a real conversation about how do you integrate these folks into a robust, stable international world order to govern these waterways that isn't just trying to go back to the state of denial about the ability to turn these waterways hostile if they so choose.

But Wilfred, I know, I know you want to weigh on this too.

So I'll go over to you. I'm going to start by saying something that I just texted the guys on the group chat. The world was so much nicer under the 27th of February before all of this, they ran war on the Wooties.

All of this went down. Now, I'm not obviously saying that bad stuff didn't happen. We are war funds.

We specialize in bad stuff happening anywhere in the world. But there was a naivety that comes with thinking that waterways like the Strait of Guam rules like the Babel Mandem would forever be open without much interference. There was a naivety that came with thinking that the Middle East, even if it was a bit of a shit show, there were pockets of peace.

There were times when you'd be able to engage with the Middle East peacefully where events like Formula One could happen in Abu Dhabi and they would happen peacefully.

Right now, those events are looking to be canceled because this situation is so volatile that you can't really risk going there as a tourist and organizations obviously wouldn't risk taking their top talent there. So again, just the world was so much nicer before the 27th of February.

Now, back to the main question that caught us here. Will the U.S. intervene in the joint sea? And it's most likely why.

There's such a wide range of things going on in the United States right now. There's such a lack of appetite for confrontation from Trump after what he witnessed in Iran, in the sense that he believed he would do a Venezuela, pull a rabbit out of a hatchet, just get it over quick.

But Iran, staying this fall in the war, staying all the way up to today's the 24th of September, just to give you guys a temporal signpost of where we are at when we're recording this, the fact that Iran has survived this long and the fact that if the U.S. opens up a second front against the Houthis, when the U.S. Navy is dealing with so many different

Challenges, we have a video covering that on all fronts in case you guys are interested, the U.S. Navy will be way too overstretched and it wouldn't really be able to do what it is supposed to do.

Because right now, there's no ships in the Indo-Pacific. That is an absolute failure. But again, it's it all goes back to how this goal was envisioned, how it was planned, and right now, how the U.S. is looking to get out of this.

Opening up a new front won't do that. Opening up a new line of contact to the Houthis will create such an untenable situation that I don't think Trump has the stomach for it.

And you'll find a lot of this lands at whatever he said, that we need to accept this new reality where groups like the Houthis, which, again, is a lamb state actor that is trying to become something of a proto-state, groups like the Houthis, like the FTC, and all the others that might choose to exert their influence over waterways around them, are groups

That we have to negotiate with and groups that we have to integrate into the global economic order.

I did a video for a little while ago about just how Trump has reshaped a recent diplomacy.

One thing I failed to include in that video that I really wish I did is this idea, right, that he's created a situation where we now have to negotiate over bodies of water that were previously covered under the U.N. law of the sea that talked about freedom of navigation and are now permanently changed irrevocably.

And yes, we are not willingly handing over our leverage to these groups, but we have to live in a realistic world, right?

The naivety has ended. We have to live in a world where these groups can influence, can exert their will over the international waterways, and the global economy will suffer as a result.

Right now, Trent Trude is at 99.7 per barrel, which is just a hair's width away from a hundred dollars just to show you how much influence these troops can exert on the global economy.

Yeah, so in terms of the bubblemend of itself, when it comes to the Houthis, they have, and this honestly shows that they are more independent of the Iranians than some may suggest, because overall the Iranians have done very little to help themselves on the international scene, whereas the Houthis have largely been playing it much smarter.

Rather than totally shutting things down, it has been relatively focused on exclusively focused on just Saudi shipping thus far this time around.

So critical threats, prognostications notwithstanding, I would be a bit surprised, to be honest, if they do ramp things up and escalate it even further, because they would be following in their Iranian counterparts' footsteps.

And I don't think anybody really looks at the situation Iran is in right now and says, "Yes, I want to be like them." So overall, though, it does seem like this leaves Saudi Arabia in just the worst possible position, because nobody is really willing or able to do much. And I mean, again, I don't think it's necessarily even what the US wants on this.

It's what the US is realistically capable of doing.

I don't really think at this point the US can do some massive blockade on Iran, like Wilfred was saying, while also carrying out a massive operation against the Houthis. And for what it's worth, we've seen the previous operations in '23, '24, and '25 just not pan out very much at all. But Evan, I think you want to weigh in here.

Yeah, as strange as this might be to say about a group like the Houthis, it would be very characteristic at this moment for them to escalate further again, just because this all operates on this idea of deterrence and threat perception.

We talk about deterrence a lot with nuclear dynamics, where you have these countries with nuclear arsenals and they deter anybody from attacking them. That also works through conventional means.

If a country, or in this case the Houthis, can create such a credible threat, where the world knows that they can if they want to, start conducting attacks against, in this case, shipping in the Baba Land of the Red Sea, then that doesn't really matter whether or not they do it.

The threat is what matters, and the believability of that threat is what matters. And right now, that threat is immensely believable, both because of the Houthis' past action via Operation Prosperity Guardian, and now more recently in this blockade against the Saudis, and also because it's just happened in Iran.

So really, the Houthis are in a position where they've kind of demonstrated enough. They don't really need to demonstrate more in order to get the results that they want, especially while Iran is still more of this loose cannon. It's not clear where the Iran situation is going to pan out.

Iran's having a much harder time getting most of the international community to sit down and have a conversation with them, whereas the Houthis have the U.S. leading the way, right? If the U.S. is willing to engage with the Houthis, then who won't be? So in that regard, I doubt we see very much escalation from them anytime soon.

And looking at the Saudis, it's going to be very, very difficult for Riyadh to find anybody who wants to step in here, partially because, and we've talked about this on Warfronts, the Saudis were very clear that they wanted Yemen to be their perfume. The international community was more than capable of stepping up in Yemen if it needed to.

It didn't want to, right?

The world has more than enough things going on. They have more than enough other crises to manage. But at the same time, if the Saudis were sending signals, years ago, they were beleaguered in Yemen, they needed more support, more help, whatever, the rest of the world could have found the spare capacity to start really getting involved here.

Instead, they did the exact opposite.

The Yemeni portfolio has been Saudi Arabia's territory over the last half decade and more, especially as the split between them and the United Arab Emirates led the Emirates to back the separatist group in Yemen that was seen as operating across purposes with the Saudi-backed, but also internationally recognized government.

So Saudi Arabia really put itself in the position to be responsible for what happens in Yemen and it's been boxed so terribly that now it's very difficult for Saudi Arabia to look at the rest of the world and for anybody to come in and help pick up the mess.

The Saudis got themselves here, and so if the Saudis are the only ones impacted and the Houthis are willing to be nice and cordial with everybody else, why would the rest of the world get involved?

You think about this from the perspective, not necessarily of the US or the EU or whoever else as, you know, longtime treaty partners of Saudi Arabia, but you think about it in, and again, kind of the more Trumpian, Trump-adjacent way of these groups, you know, this country made a promise, it didn't fulfill its promise, it's going to live with the

Consequences.

It's a stark departure from the way that international diplomacy has worked over the last few decades, but it's where we are now and the Saudis are learning that firsthand.

So something that I keep going back and forth with is the Houthis, for a lot of the war, had the situation relatively under control. That really changed in 2023 and 2024.

After October 7th and Israel's response in Gaza, the Houthis really went all out in support of their Palestinian counterparts and attacked shipping going through Bab al-Mandeb and ultimately did it.

Once Israel reached a ceasefire that has been not very successful, shall we say, they have let up on that front at least.

But overall, I mean, on the first part, it seems as though this must have just been an absolute disaster of a calculation from Saudi Arabia, which seems to have thought that despite having lost control of the situation in 2024, that this simply would not happen again, even without building up its military capabilities further, which I have to admit, I don't

Fully understand the logic there.

I'm not sure that there really is logic.

Sometimes when we're analyzing these situations, you almost have to wonder, is there something I'm missing here or did, are they just like, did they just not see it? But writ large, given just how much the Houthis have been willing to involve themselves more broadly, I don't think it's going to change that.

It may make sense now for them to stay restrained, but long-term, what's stopping them from escalating further?

I'd like to think that. Long-term, what's stopping them from escalating further is just the idea that if they do, the rest of the world comes after them, right? As we've discussed on this podcast in subtitles, even on today's episode, the one thing that the Houthis want more than anything else is legitimacy, right?

And they will be risking that legitimacy if they escalated this conflict even further. Why make a play that will quite obviously backfire and will incur the repercussion of the wider world, when you can be satisfied with what you do have and what they have is a lot.

About 5% of the world's total, you know, oil and gas passes through the Bab el-Mandeb and, you know, that might sound like a small number, but that's hundreds of millions of barrels of oil every single year.

If they can work out a deal to get a, even if it's a small share of that as a street fee, what I've taken to calling the fees that Yvan was suggesting on the Strait of Hormuz, then they'd be set for life. They have no real need to escalate beyond that point. But that is an escalation in and of itself though.

And so what I think, I think what Evan and I were saying, Evan, correct me if I'm wrong here, is we see the Houthis right now is almost sitting pretty. They don't necessarily have much going for them if they do escalate, given that the strategy of transferring Saudi Arabia is currently working.

Saudi Arabia is not looking as though they have the situation under control at all.

But once this evolves pass to the point where, okay, maybe they do get concessions out of Riyadh. Okay. Maybe Saudi Arabia does loosen up some of the blockade that it has imposed on Yemen for over a decade at this point.

So what, what then what's holding them back? So, I mean, I hear your point that others will deprive them of legitimacy, but I almost think that the whole situation there is more important than legitimacy.

If they can get to the point where they have operational control of Bab al-Mandeb even to the, a partial extent, that buys itself legitimacy, regardless of what the international community wants.

As we can see with Hormuz, the fact that nobody really wants Iranian tolls other than Iran doesn't mean much. It's really just, it's, it's come down to can the US blockade really stop the Iranians from implementing that? And that's still sort of, sort of an open question going on seven months later.

So Evan, I see you want to jump in there. Yeah. Just to kind of give a plus to that's kind of been the Houthis intent for a long time is to just really kind of wiggle their way into legitimacy without being liked necessarily.

They've never really been, they've never really had any false assumption that the world is going to welcome them with open arms. They've known that wasn't on the table for them. They've always kind of pursued this idea of like, we're going to make ourselves so much of a problem really that the rest of the world can't afford not to bring us to the table.

It's, it's tough because what we are kind of discussing, justifying here is a protection racket, right? What we're describing is a, an open blatant protection protection racket for Red Sea shipping enforced so that the Houthis won't, well, you know, we'll protect shipping from the attacks that they're going to launch.

At the same time we are much more broadly around the world, moving back into a point of kind of less you know, less, less sensitive, less caring international diplomacy than the last 30 to 40 years has kind of tried to portray itself to be.

And as we're going back to that kind of more rough and tumble geopolitics, we're headed back into a time where, yeah, if you want to establish a protection racket and make the world react to it and respond to it, that's something that you can do.

That's something that will get you through. pretty far because ultimately the rest of the world needs to consider, does it want to fight and die for the idea that you don't get to have a protection racket or does it not want to have its ships bombed as they're trying to bring packages to and from various customers in voting Westernized countries, probably

They're going to choose the latter.

And if you can stack the costs of intervention high enough, they will choose to simply make peace and accepting a protection racket.

And right now that's what the course to do, but it might be a good time to pivot as well and go back to Iran because internally as Iran kind of tries to figure out its, its way through this whole situation the situation for ordinary Iranians is not looking great right now.

So I would love if we could talk a little bit more about that, what people on the ground in Iran are experiencing right now and how much of a threat this is, if at all, to the regime's position versus just something that ordinary Iran sit through. So this is something I have covered.

Essentially, specifically when we're talking about the Iranian economy, the Iranian currency, whose name just slipped out of my mind in my medicated-induced haze, is doing terribly. It's trading at about $2.2 million or $2.4 million, somewhere in between there, to the dollar. Basically, if you have a single dollar right now, you'd be a millionaire in Iran.

That is not a sustainable currency. That is not a sustainable way for a currency to be operating. And what makes matters even longer is the fact that it keeps pushing prices farther and farther out of people's reach.

The government did try to intervene and give people salary raises, but the raises have not continued. The government has kept up with the actual inflation. Inflation has outpaced salary raises by such a large margin that it feels like the Iranian spending power has actually decreased instead of increasing, which would be an ideal economic situation.

And then to the question of whether it's a real threat to the regime. Unfortunately, it's not. We've already seen once what happens.

When the Iranian people, tired of this kind of economic pressure, go out into the streets. This happened in late December, early January. They were massacred en masse.

In his speech at the UN General Assembly, President Trump said 72,000 Iranians were killed. Now, that is a figure that is heavily contested. What we do know is that thousands of Iranians were killed in those protests.

And more are still being killed, even in the months since. As recently as August, there were executions of people who were involved in those protests. I don't know if there have been executions in September.

I haven't checked. If either of you would like to check as I finish this up. But the situation is so dire that it has convinced the Iranian people that there is no point in going out protesting.

Because it's just them risking their lives. I say this as someone who lives in Kenya. Someone who witnessed police brutality firsthand.

And what the Kenyan people witnessed. And trust me, any Kenyan or any Kosovo's in the state of Kenya during the 2024-2025 protests will tell you. We witnessed a lot of insane shit.

Including a police officer shooting an unarmed vendor. Someone who was just selling masks. Someone who was just selling masks.

He was shot at point-blank range with a long gun. We witnessed that. And it instilled a sense of fear in us.

And the death toll in Kenya was exceptionally low when compared to the death toll in Iran. We didn't even compare the two. So the Iranian people, the amount of fear that the government has instilled in them.

And the amount of money that the government has invested in technology to track anyone who goes out to protest. Right? They're talking cameras.

They're talking drones. They're talking integrated information systems within the police infrastructure. All of that exists now to instill fear in the Iranian people.

And I don't think we'll ever see the kind of protests that we saw in January ever again in Iran. Kyle, I see you want to interject? Yeah, the situation just continuing to get even more bleak.

So earlier this year, late last year. Iranian rial was at about a million to the dollar, which was already just terrible. It was catastrophically terrible.

Down significantly from years prior. So that made headlines for crashing a month or so ago down to two million rials to the dollar. And as of today, it's now at record lows at 2.36 million rials to the dollar.

Right? I mean, this is in just absolute freefall at this point. And they're really you can you can see this starting to take place with some of the regime officials.

So interestingly, this includes some of the hardliners who were very opposed to negotiations previously. And I want to be very clear here when we're talking about the hardliners and negotiations, they are not exactly chomping at the bit for a new deal.

But the fact that somebody like Mohamed Mohsen Rezaei is involved at all in negotiations does tell me that they are concerned about this and they are thinking, OK, if we have some form of an off ramp, there's just almost no downside to taking it.

Now, again, what they think of as a good off ramp and what is actually realistically plausible, two very different things. But this is still a shift. This is a shift from a few months ago when they were just absolutely hell no opposed to any deal, including one that would give them 300 billion dollars.

I can think of many things that Iran could do with that type of money right now. But yes, as well as executions, they executed another alleged Mossad spy on September 19th. This is just a term and accusation that gets thrown around and realistically like.

Does Mossad have some operatives in the country? I would hardly be surprised. It may involve a former Iranian president himself, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Shout out to him on that front. That's a that's a conversation for another day. Wild side story there.

But regardless, the Iranian people do get accused of this for basically anything critical of the state. And once you're accused of being a Mossad spy, it's one of those situations where it's something you can. Never really wash off.

You know, I mean, you once accused of that, you've sort of just always it's like this stink that you can't get off of you and usually ends in executions. Unfortunately for the people accused of such crimes, the situation is just incredibly bleak. I do think the Iranian regime is highly motivated to prevent any further mass protests like we saw in January.

I think we've discussed that on the pod here before. Whereas like the rational thing for the regime's perspective would be to make sure that the international community not have another chance to think, OK, sure, the Islamic Republic is on its deathbed here.

But ultimately, I'm not entirely convinced that if this economic free fall continues, that they can just forever prevent that from happening.

But that's something that only time is going to be able to tell. I do want to make clear that I'm not saying that's going to prevent the protest from happening indefinitely. It will get to a point where and you know, this might happen sooner rather than later is, you know, the economic pain that the US has managed to impose on Iran through the sanctions.

If that continues piling, it will get to a point where the Iranian people have had enough. And even with all the risks that come with it. And even with all the risks that come with going out to the streets to protest, they might just say, you know what, all these risks are worth it.

We're going to make our voices heard and we're going to try and topple this. And speaking of toppling the regime, Iran's future and the future of this conflict has been a bone of contention for all parties at the biggest geopolitical event happening this week, the UN General Assembly, which happened in New York City over the last couple of days.

So we've seen a lot of.

Lockouts, a lot of consternation from all sides. We've seen various powers from across the globe weigh in on this war and what should happen next. Gentlemen, as you've been keeping up with coverage of the UN, what are your biggest takeaways right now?

What are you seeing as items that we should watch moving forward? Well, we can't talk about the UN without talking about the threats that Trump made to completely annihilate Iran, right? It's the big three coming out of the entire meeting.

It's the big story just generally, because I don't think we've ever seen a situation where a sitting U.S. president uses one of the highest diplomatic soapboxes to threaten another country.

Even if, you know, the two nations are in the middle of the war, I am a little too young to remember how George Bush was like during, you know, his wars, but I doubt he went to the UN General Assembly and, you know, started leveling threats against every every country he was fighting.

It's such an anathema to me as someone who admires diplomacy to see this, because Trump wasn't just calling for the annihilation of the Islamic Republic.

He was also calling for Iran's continued economic isolation. And at the same time, he was still talking about U.S. diplomacy. American representatives had held just three hours of talks with the Arab officials.

Eric Leiter said he thought a settlement would be reached. All of this, there's so much whiplash whenever Trump is concerned.

And it's just, it changes how the world views diplomacy because if this is the leader of the free world saying this is the person who occupies the highest office in the land in the US saying all of this, then what about guys like Putin, right?

What about guys like Xi Jinping? What do they see? What do they look at this and say?

For me, just that whiplash induced by Trump has to be the biggest takeaway and just the most frustrating part of the UNGA this year. So, despite a lot of attention going to the US president, which he certainly invited on himself with some of those lines, one of the takeaways that I saw was that of King Abdullah of Jordan.

Jordan has long been a pragmatic country on the Israel situation.

They were one of the first Arab states to recognize Israel and have, in general, been a pretty consistent proponent of a peaceful outcome there. So, to see them criticizing Israel is not entirely new, but the extent to which King Abdullah went at it was certainly a bit more than usual.

I want to share a few quotes here, because I think it really addresses some hearts of the underlying issue here.

So, at the UN General Assembly, he was saying to the Israeli government, the obstacle has not been the absence of a partner for peace, but the absence of an Israeli government willing to accept it.

That's talking about how Israel has long argued that there is no partner for peace with the Palestinians, pointing to Hamas, which certainly is not a partner for peace, but there are, especially in the West Bank, partners who have been willing to achieve peace that have not exactly been given a fair shake at the negotiations table.

And he went on to say, it has also tried to cast this conflict as a war of religions, with Islam on one side and Judaism and Christianity on the other.

It is not. This is about whether Palestinians, Muslims, and Christians alike, are entitled to the same rights as everyone else, which I think does just sort of undercut some of the class of civilizational struggle rhetoric that you'll see from some on this issue.

And despite this, he actually did not get that much international coverage for this, but I still think that was quite a speech at the UN General Assembly, where a lot of politicians like to give pretty over-the-top addresses at times, but overall, certainly one for the record books in terms of level-headedness, I would say.

I'd like to agree with King Abdullah of Jordan that Israel has actually been the best partner for peace in the past few years, or honestly for a while now. So there is a story in Reuters out today, oh, this was yesterday, rather, forgive me. I'll read the headline and then quote a bit of the story itself.

Israeli bulldozers smashed Palestinian olive trees ahead of the annual harvest. Palestinian villagers wailed over the mongol remains of their olive trees on Wednesday after Israel's military uprooted them with bulldozers. These ahead of the annual olive harvest, normally a source of joy for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Abd al-Fattah al-Tamini, who was an olive grove on Adelaide land near Ramallah City, watched as a military bulldozer smashed the tops of one of his trees and then tore its roots from the ground. They left us with nothing, he said. Israel's ministry said it was checking voices' request for comment, but had not responded by a Wednesday evening.

In the past, the ministry has cited the need to tear land of olive trees to prevent security threats or ambushes on troops. Now, I absolutely understand Israel's security position in the middle of the need to keep the Israeli people safe. I am a very strong advocate for the need, to keep anyone's people safe.

But this feels like such... I don't even have the right word for it. It's such a heartbreaking action, because all these are the backbone of Palestinian agriculture.

It accounts for around 8% of the GDP and more than 60,000 jobs, according to the Palestinian Authority. And the fact that Israel is doing this just days before the harvest is absolutely heartbreaking. Unless the IDF can show intelligence to prove that there was an imminent threat that necessitated them destroying these trees at this point in time.

It just feels heartless, and it goes back to the point that the king was making about Israel not being a really good partner for Israel. Especially in context of the Israeli elections coming up.

Right now, it's tough not to see any discourse around Israel, any actions by Israel, as not trying to set the table for this major, major election, which will decide probably permanently, I have to guess, given Netanyahu's age, will probably determine the future of his political coalition and his personal political future.

That election now is just weeks away, and we've seen... I mean, Netanyahu is going to come out at the UN General Assembly, according to some sources speaking to Reuters that I had read today. So this may have happened by the time that you're hearing this episode, but he's purportedly coming out and making most of his speech, about Zoran Mamdani, right?

The mayor of New York City is kind of this way to score political points after Mamdani had attempted to bring in the International Court of Justice to arrest Netanyahu. Everything that's happening at the UN right now, right, obviously is in context of the ongoing conflict.

It's also very, very much about trying to pull the Israeli public one way or the other to set up what each country and each force geopolitically considers to be an advantageous outcome in this election.

So I'm really, really curious. Do you anticipate this election day as it approaches being an accelerant for conflict in some way? Do you see it being a reason for the region to destabilize further, or maybe do we have this backwards?

Could we see it another way that kind of would suggest the election might be a time of somewhat greater stability for the region? I think that pre-election, in the lead-up to it, the region is almost in this, like, holding pattern where Israel is simply not withdrawing from Lebanon, but they're also not massively ramping up anything new.

They're not really looking to broaden out any new conflicts here.

So right now, I still, I would imagine the next month, the election will be on October 27th, so a little over a month at time of recording here. We will see a continued holding pattern on what's been going on over the last two months. But after that, I mean, obviously, we'll come down to who ultimately wins this thing.

Right now, it's badly deadlocked between different parties, given how many little parties there are. So there was a poll that came out yesterday from Channel 13. So Eisenkot, Agadi Eisenkot's Yashar party is placing first with 22 seats.

Keep in mind the Knesset has 120 just for context. How many parties get seats in this thing? So you need 60 to get a majority.

Netanyahu's Likud party with 18. Bennett and Lapid's Together party at 11. The Democrats at 11.

And down the list we go in terms of tiny parties. But writ large, the situation there, is always difficult to predict any, the outcome of any Israeli elections.

A general rule of thumb is if anybody is super confident as to what's going to happen on when it comes to the, any Israeli election, just don't listen to them because they're either wrong or lying to you.

So we'll have to see where it goes from there. So overall, I can't imagine there being too much of a shift with the Israeli opposition changing any of this. There would be a PR, reset for sure.

A lot of the insane headlines that come out of specifically their national security minister's mouse Ben-Gavir, he would find himself without a ministerial portfolio, I can assure you of that. And they would also tone down some of the more extreme stuff.

So the settler violence situation would almost certainly be addressed more resolutely just because it's giving them such a black eye in the international stage.

But I don't think there's going to be any massive realignment here. Kyle, one thing I do want to ask you about is something I saw in the news a little while ago about Israel's election panel voting overwhelmingly to bar the Ra'am party from elections and this idea that the opposition won't be able to get enough of a majority without Ra'am.

I am not a close observer of Israeli internal politics.

Do you think this is true? How much of an impact will Ra'am play in, you know, any upcoming coalition government? And will that temper the worst excesses of, you know, any incoming government?

Yeah, so that's always, they play such an interesting role here. So the other day I believe yesterday, the Central Elections Committee voted 18 to 5 to disqualify Ra'am and one or two other very tiny parties Ra'am being the largest, the larger of the Arab parties from the October 27th election. Now, this is not final though.

It will have to go to the Supreme Court. And I am almost certain that Ra'am will make it onto the ballot. I would be shocked if the Supreme Court upheld this decision because it's based off of seeing, of a ruling that interprets Ra'am as being some incredibly extreme party when it really is not.

So I don't think that we'll be in a situation where they're not represented on the ballot. But more writ large, entering into coalition with Ra'am has only been done, to the best of my knowledge, once, which was the 2021 Bennett and Lapid government, where the opposition essentially agreed on nothing other than that Netanyahu was terrible.

So, you could get these guys, and again, the fact that it's Naftali Bennett in coalition with the Arab party, Ra'am, I mean, it just, it's, it says, that says all it needs to, right there.

Naftali Bennett, of course, being pretty hardline on just about every issue, and you didn't really have too many wins for Ra'am out of that one.

And it's also controversial in the Israeli right because you're entering into agreements with a party that would ostensibly want to see more of a two-state solution, which is not widely supported anymore with any of the big parties there. So, overall, I don't see that being any major turning point.

The ability that they have to influence the Israeli government is something, but not major. This may have been some effort to prevent any influence there by just banning them entirely, but again, I think they will make it to the ballot, which will give them some seats. Perhaps they'll have some minor influence, but I don't think it's going to be massive.

And one final item before we finish up today going over to Iraq. So, the Iraqi government was trying to impose this deadline on all of its internal armed groups for them to disarm. That would have been at the end of this month.

Iran, perhaps rather unsurprisingly sorry, Iraq rather unsurprisingly has moved away from that date. That date has now been pushed to June 2027 at the earliest.

This is a fairly major concession from the Iraqi government as this was hopefully going to really reduce the influence of Iranian-backed militias in the country, which in turn have been active in the Middle East conflict.

They've been responsible for some of the missile launches toward Saudi Arabia. They've been responsible for some of the attacks toward U.S. bases and U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf area. So, what do you make of the extension of the deadline?

How big of an issue is this, or how much of it is just kind of par for the course? So, the deadline itself was originally imposed because Iran wanted to tie it to the deadline given to the U.S. coalition forces to complete the withdrawal from Iraq. And I've just realized I've said Iraq multiple times in that line, so just request anything I said.

Iran with Iraq. Just do it. It's all about you.

So, Iraq wanted to tie these two dates together, right? The date where the disarmament was supposed to happen, and the deadline given to U.S.-led coalition forces to complete their withdrawal. Obviously, that was never going to happen.

The groups themselves, with the same Iraq, are vehemently opposed to this idea of disarmament because they feel like it will leave them at the mercy of a government that they can't really trust. And there's also, of course, the influence that Iran plays in all of this, right?

A lot of these groups are backed by Iran, and Iran doesn't want to give up or to see another of these proxies weakened to the point where they're practically useless, like Hamas right now.

So, this deadline was always going to run into a lot, a lot of issues.

And this admission by the government that the deadline will be extended is as good as saying, "Yeah, we're not really ever going to impose this deadline at all." It's just an admission that this issue might be a little too hard for al-Zaidi, who again, I have to insist here, is a political novice.

It's a little too hard for him to solve it in his first three months in office.

Yeah, Zaidi really hit the ground running after taking office there, so there was a lot of progress he did. He had a massive anti-corruption crackdown that arrested multiple members of parliament which certainly, he deployed the counter-terrorism Iraqi forces inside the Green Zone, which is the government's sort of enclave inside Baghdad there.

And is certainly not shy about any of this.

I was disappointed to see this extension, but I do think it was sort of inevitable. The idea that they were ever going to just entirely disarm seemed pretty fanciful in my opinion.

I do think that the September 30th deadline originally, which was set before this war kicked off did serve a useful role, which was to force each and every one of the paramilitary organizations, of which there are a large number to formally declare on the record.

When it comes to the security agreements with the state, because they, these groups do not operate as just some free-for-all. They operate as ostensibly under control of the state, which is very loosely defined through the popular mobilization forces.

So it was essentially designed to force them into saying, "Do you agree to comply with the state when push comes to shove or not?" Some have.

Others have not. And just to be clear, though, this deadline was never set to fully disarm. It was never going to be some situation where October 1st came around and every paramilitary group was suddenly a bunch of peaceniks.

No, that was not going to happen. There have been signs of trouble brewing on this, though, because back in July they raided a group called Harakat al-Nujabah's base in Baghdad. And basically what happened was the Iraqi forces got surrounded by al-Nujabah's guys who forced them to turn around.

And when you have these paramilitary forces just flexing so much power over the state like that, it just leads to a crisis of confidence within the government itself in terms of its actual ability to implement and enforce laws on them.

So, given the outsized role that Iraqi Iranian-backed groups in Iraq have played in the wider Middle East war, I certainly understand why Baghdad wants to get these guys under control ASAP.

You simply cannot have a country where you have such large numbers of paramilitary organizations that have again, ostensibly declared, "Sure, we're willing to work with the state, but then just go around causing a ruckus, creating all sorts of stuff." Remember, the East-West pipeline in Saudi Arabia that was shut down another week, that was a result of an

Iranian-backed group in Iraq.

Because Iran can essentially treat the country as a launching pad where they can say, "Oh, look, that's not us doing that. That's Iraqi groups doing that. You have to blame them." even though it's ostensibly coming from Tehran.

I certainly hope that Iraq will be able to get this situation more under control, but I'm not holding my breath, and the deadline extension here is unfortunately a reflection of the ever-growing role that these groups play in Iran's foreign policy.

Well, that might be the answer on what you're watching this week, Kyle, but I would love to give you the chance at least to correct the record if you're going to have your eye on some other things. So, to both of you gentlemen, what do you want to keep your eye on, and what should we all be watching in the weeks to come?

Well, certainly traffic in Hormuz is going to be a top priority for me. I am continuously fascinated by this sort of slow loss of control. And again, I want to be cautious with my terminology here.

This is not some, like, situation where the street is simply open. But it's also not closed. It's not even mostly closed.

There are, if we're talking double-digit numbers of tankers getting through, even on a low basis every day, that's still going to be an alarm bell for Tehran. And again, they're taking an absolute beating economically to keep such a maximum leverage over Hormuz.

So if they're getting all of that with very little to show, where you're still getting ships going through, I'm perhaps a bit more hopeful.

Call me naive, perhaps. Call me naive. But a bit more hopeful that we could see a deal come about.

For me, I am watching internal Iranian politics because some very interesting things are happening. So a little while ago this was before? Yeah, that's today.

Ali Kazarian, a member of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said that lawmakers had registered an impeachment request against Foreign Minister Abbas Al-Dachi over his contacts with the US Office in New York. They're accusing him of holding talks with American officials without authorization.

Quoting him here, members of Parliament have registered an impeachment about Dachi and Abbas Suriat, adding that the Foreign Minister would be required to explain himself before Parliament after returning from New York, and that Dachi must explain on what basis this conversation with the American side took place.

So Iran's Parliament isn't necessarily the strongest institution in the world, but this is such a vote of no confidence in their lead negotiator, and it leaves open the question of if Dachi is taken out, if they impeach him, who will be speaking for Iran?

Dachi has had that role for the past few months, and he's developed relationships with all the other parties that he's been negotiating. So if he is taken out, can they replace him with?

Who will come in and form these relationships in such little time, and still manage to strike a meaningful deal for both sides? It's a very interesting question, and one that I will be monitoring for the next week. And lastly on my end, as usual, as I'm sure listeners can predict, I'll be watching the movies.

The fate of ties right now is really going to tell us a lot about where this country is going to go. Again, as said earlier, this is kind of a when-not-if situation for the Fallen City, unfortunately.

I'd love to be wrong about that, of course, as we all would love to be wrong about so many things that we've said here on the podcast and elsewhere in our work, but you know, as always, we are at risk of being correct, and I think we are here as well.

If the Houthis are able to gain control over the city, that will enable pushes toward Aden on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, as well as pushes further inward toward the eastern Yemeni heartland, where a lot of these oil resources are tied up.

Where the territory is pretty open and flat, it becomes a lot easier for an offensive force to start taking territory very quickly. I'm clear that the Houthis would even be interested in a breakaway to capture the entire country.

We've kind of seen how that goes recently with the Emirati-backed separatists and what they tried to do in Yemen in December of 2025. So not clear that the Houthis would try that or if they've kind of learned from that lesson that maybe you don't do that for now.

But either way, a victory in ties for them would be able to clear the way for a number of quick land grabs for them if they're interested in doing that.

So keep an eye on the Houthis in addition to everything else. On that note, that is just about all the time that we have here at the Middle East Roundtable this week. This has been Evan Maloney here with Kyle Moran and Wilfred Mina.

As always, as we say at the end of every podcast, if you have got this far with us, you are almost certainly part of our premiums subscriber service. At fronts.co, you're an insider, as we call you.

And you are supporting us and enabling the work that we do here on fronts, and on more fronts, and on home fronts, and on the newly launched channel, Defense Fronts, which listeners here kind of had an inkling was coming before anybody else did, so there you go.

Thank you for your support. Thank you for all that you help and allow us to do. We couldn't start new projects like Defense Fronts most recently without your support.

We couldn't continue to grow our roster of subject matter experts and geopolitical analysts and war correspondents and everybody else who are filling out the ranks here at fronts more and more recently without your support. Thank you very much. You help keep us independent.

You help us do what we do. For the three of us here on the Middle East Roundtable, you help us live the dream. We get to watch this and learn about it and talk about it all the time, and that's just a real privilege.

It does not go unnoticed. Thank you very much. If you're not a subscriber, please, consider doing so, and we will see you next week here on the Middle East Roundtable.

Thank you very much.