Middle East Roundtable: Weekend at Mojtaba's.

Hello and welcome to the Middle East Roundtable here at Fronts.co. I am Evan Maloney. I am here with

Wilfred Miner, Africa correspondent for Fronts.co, Warfronts, Homefronts, basically everything Fronts related. And Kyle Moran, staff writer here at Warfronts, as well as all other Fronts universes.

Now, as we start out today's episode, we need to point to a little commonality between most of our episodes thus far, which is to say that we have been predominantly focused on Iran and the Iran conflict with the U.S. and Israel.

That remains true. However, this is the Middle East Roundtable, and we have very, very much Middle East news to cover today, outside the bounds of the Iran conflict. Specifically, we're talking about the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

So we're going to start off today's podcast here because, among other reasons for us to find this very important, the... Reopening of a Houthi ground offensive has pushed the price of Brent crude up above $100 a barrel this morning. So a mazel tov to everybody who is really looking forward to that again.

So long of the short of it here is essentially the Houthi rebels in Yemen have controlled the more populous western half of the country for many years now, except for a couple of pockets of land that government-aligned forces still controlled up until now. So the most important of those... The most important of those is the city of Taiz.

Now, this is in the southwestern corner of Yemen, and if you're familiar with Yemeni geography, because, of course, so are we all. What else do we have to do in our day but to study Yemeni geography? Then you know that the curve of the Yemeni coastline goes from the Gulf of Aden through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait to the Red Sea.

So this is the southern entry and exit of the Red Sea. Roughly 10% of global trade volume annually moves through that little choke point each year.

And because the city of Taiz is on this... kind of southwestern corner where you can overlook the entire approach to the pass and the pass itself and the area north of the pass in the southern Red Sea, that is very, very important strategic territory for the Houthis that want to use their leverage, essentially, as a part of the Yemeni coastline to be able to

Hit shipping traffic, to be able to dictate the flow of vessels in and out of the Red Sea, kind of do what Iran has done in the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, over the last week or so, the Houthi rebels have decided that now is the time to launch a shock effect. The Houthi rebels have decided that now is the time to launch a shock effect.

We're going to have more about this in an episode that will count today, as we're saying, this is a Wednesday, the 9th of September, so probably yesterday by the time you're seeing this, so go and check it out if you want to learn more.

But the short version of this is that the Houthis basically put all their ships into a full frontal assault against Taiz, which is the city that is the outskirts are kind of divided in this no man's land and the bulk of the city itself is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Lots of people have been killed.

Lots of lots of people who have kind of been living on the periphery of the Houthis, but have not been taken over during the course of the Yemen civil war and the resulting freeze of the conflict.

Now, there's been some discussion among the Yemeni internationally recognized government and Saudi Arabia, its main backer, for a few months now, that there was a possibility of an offensive on their side against the Houthis. That appears to have been, at least in the works, unclear whether this was coordinated to kind of spring into action.

When the Houthis launched an offensive like this, or whether it was just kind of they had all the pieces in the right spot ready to go, and the Houthis surprised them, it's unclear, but the meat of what we need to understand here is that the Houthi offensive has been met with a kind of an overlapping multi directional counter offensive by the Saudi back

Forces.

So these are the Yemeni internationally recognized government, which is not particularly strong, but you know, has some military capacity to its name as well as a number of tribal militias. And then the Saudi government providing air support and logistics and intelligence and so on and so forth. After about a week, the situation has devolved pretty rapidly.

So the Houthi main thrust is kind of overexposed right now, attacked from the sides, from the periphery. At the same time, the Saudi aligned forces have taken land in kind of new fronts in the north and in the kind of the southeastern edge of Houthi territory.

So they're trying to open up as many new offenses as they can to try and keep the Houthis looking in different directions.

The Houthis have responded by opening up their own new multidimensional offenses, basically wherever they have like 50 extra guys and a few extra pickups, they've kind of like started sending those guys out to try and threaten new territory. Basically, both sides are trying to create tons and tons of problems for each other to bog each other down.

And then the Saudis have come in with air support and have been hit with massive retaliation by the Houthis, I believe it was Monday night.

If my memory serves, the Houthis were able to launch a combined wave of dozens of drones and missiles across the Saudi border, which hit, I believe, four cities in four different regions. It also hit the Jizan oil refinery, took it out of commission. Seventy three people were wounded in those strikes on the Saudi side.

Nobody was killed as far as I'm aware, as far as the death toll that I've seen or the casualty count that I've seen. Yesterday, based on an AFP tally that is almost certainly an undercount, is that at least 500 or so fighters have been killed on either side of the reopened Yemeni conflict thus far. That number is expected to rise.

It seems as if this is going to continue. So that is the brief rundown. Again, there's an episode out today if you would like to learn more.

But gentlemen, that is the situation in Yemen. What do you make of it? Well, I have to say that this is going to be just a further test for the.

The new alliance with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, because most alliances or at least many alliances are born out of post-war realignment, if you will. Certainly NATO was. But in the in this case, this alliance is being born out of crisis.

So it had been in the process of being formed for a while. But the Iran war really escalated things and was sort of its. Birth birth birth moment, if you will.

But moving forward past this, Saudi Arabia is under attack by not just Iran, but now the Houthis as well. So, I mean, this is a dual front. And I know Pakistan has deployed some forces a little while ago to Saudi.

But writ large, it does sort of raise question marks as to what they're going to ultimately do about this. If the whole attack on one is an attack on all approaches to mean anything here. So there's an.

Interesting report that came out in light of the Houthis attack on Saudi Arabia. Pakistan's defense minister, Hawaja Asif, said that any attack on Saudi Arabia could activate the mega defense alliance, just to the point that Kylo's making. And this is his exact words, quoting him here.

We are bound by the terms and conditions of this pact, and God willing, we'll honor this pact if there's aggression. There should be no ambiguity about this. This.

Was in an interview with Geo News, and he also said that the Houthis should recognize that their actions could make this argument operational.

So one of the things we've spoken about at length concerning this argument is that the signatories, the members of this pact, the members of the alliance will need to prove to the rest of the world that they take their allegiance to each other, their security guarantees, their commitment seriously. And the fact that, you know.

It's so far been limited to the Pakistani defense minister making a statement on TV. The statements don't really do much. They're just statements at the end of the day.

It's not like the Houthis will see it and immediately stop attacking Saudi Arabia. I'm reminded of a meme that's been all over my Twitter of LeBron James fake cowering in fear. So statements aren't really meaningful.

We need to see whether your Pakistan and other members. Of this alliance actually take that word seriously and will actually come. Yeah, that's been on my mind as well.

I think this is worth noting as a kind of perfect spot for Pakistan and Turkey to weigh in. Now, this is obviously all centered on the Houthis in Yemen, other than Iran, right? Which obviously keeps up fairly close relations with the group.

Nobody on Earth is really thrilled about the Houthi presence in this part of the world. This is about as close to low hanging fruit as you could possibly get. For Pakistan for Turkey to intervene in some way that is probably still limited, but whether it's airstrikes, whether it's kind of overt visible maritime support, whatever it may be, right?

This is one of those situations where you would expect Turkey and Pakistan to use this as an example to really weigh in and show the value of this alliance. Partly because if they don't write, what does that say that against a threat that was this kind of not easy per se, right?

Pakistan and Turkey were certainly at Liberty to help contain in partnership with their treaty partner who's been attacked, right?

What does it say when that doesn't happen? So personally, I would expect to see some degree of involvement from them in the near future here. I think yes, as you've rightly said, Evan, the Houthis are a much easier target for Pakistan and Turkey if they wanted to step in.

So what happens when the threat is a lot more credible again? It's just something to watch. Especially in light of how alliances in other parts of the world are acting, NATO failing to activate at the bare minimum Article 4 in response to Russia's drone airspace incursion.

So again, it's just something interesting to watch. Absolutely. And I think it's also worth talking about the salience of the threat to the Bab al-Mendab Strait specifically.

So when you see oil prices rising like they have today, right? We're again Brent. Spike just above $100 barrel.

That is not necessarily a reaction to real time oil market shifts, right? So if you go to your local gas station, right? And you kind of calculate out the prices, the prices will not reflect that the market value of the gas that they're selling is $100 a barrel, right?

The pricing on the exchanges kind of takes some time to filter down into what you get a pump. All of that is to say that pricing is not contingent on supply so much as it is risk assessment. And what we're seeing in this rapid pricing spike would suggest that at least the oil majors of the world are taking this very seriously.

So what do you make of the threat to the Bab al-Mandeb and its ability to kind of coalesce into a much larger global shipping disruption if the war continues? Well, I think this is just going to be something that only time is really going to be able to tell in terms of how various countries are going to respond. But I do have to just back up a bit here.

In terms of Pakistani implications and involvement in this conflict, I am reminded of a podcast that I was listening to with Al-Monitor. They had a former Pakistani foreign minister, Khushid Khasuri, on. And he was very, very vocal that Pakistan, if specifically Israel, was to attack Saudi Arabia, Pakistan would not hesitate to jump into the fray.

And then when he was asked, about how Pakistan would respond to the Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia, you could hear the man physically deflate on the other side of the of the podcast. He went very quiet very quickly.

And so I do think that this gets to sort of a bigger problem that they have in terms of, okay, they can put out these very nice sounding statements where they're all on the same side.

But when it comes to actually backing it up, I'm not really sure they fully thought through how to actually make that matter.

But back to Bab al-Mandeb, I do think that the implications for a global shipping here on top of everything going on in Hormuz, this is the reason why we've here at Warfronts and Fronts have been covering it so extensively for months at this point. This has been such a low-hanging fruit case where the Houthis can just sort of imitate Iran.

IRGC has had officials in Sana'a there to set up the various blockade or toll system, depending on what the Houthis decide is the flavor of the moment there. So ultimately, I think we're going to have to see where this goes, but it's certainly something I'm keeping my eye on.

Yeah, we've talked about how this Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey alignment isn't necessarily about Iran per se, right?

It's certainly being made public in reaction to Iran, but it's about Israel, it's about the Emirates, it's about kind of this emerging Ethiopia as well, kind of this emerging other side of a new Middle East alignment.

And I think it is worth kind of pointing out, the discussions on putting this together started and really, really began to ramp up in 2025 after Israel struck Qatar, right? The strike was on Hamas leadership, political leadership in Qatar where they had been known to be present and operate safely for a decade or so.

And Israel just kind of out of nowhere launched a missile strike against them. That was kind of the prompt to get all these nations thinking more seriously about alignment. So when you look at what this pact is focused on, kind of in intention, it always has been Israel.

So I think it is interesting to see that point made. Now, on your second point in regard to the Houthis, right? The Houthis have seen this conflict and have seen the idea of kind of setting up a tolling regime in the Bab el Mendem as a pathway to legitimacy for a while.

Right. So the Houthis are kind of in this weird spot that a few other places around the world are where they certainly hold territory. Right.

They absolutely have the capacity to govern, but they really, really struggle to gain any kind of formalized recognition from anyone on Earth. And there's kind of a nice way to get that recognition. And then there's a not so nice way, right?

The nice way would be you petition the UN and you hold referendums and you do all this and whatever. Right. The other way is to make yourself into such a substantial, substantial threat that you must be negotiated with on your own terms in order to take away a threat that you were posing.

And it's kind of been a surprise, at least to me and I know to some other folks on the team as well, that the Houthis hadn't really made this play sooner. But now it does seem like they are fully committed to kind of trying to make this into a make or break moment for their own state legitimacy.

The question of Houthi legitimacy as a full state actor is so very interesting for me because one thing that separates the Houthis from something like, let's say, Hezbollah or Hamas in Gaza, some of the other militia groups in somewhere like Iraq is the fact that they tend to have a lot more independence in their ability to act independent.

Forgive me for being redundant in that, independent of Iran. So if this does give them that level of legitimacy that they seek, my question is, are they going to move farther away from Iran? Gentlemen, what do you think?

Are they, you know, going to cleave even more to Iran because their success both on the battlefield and, you know, any eventual legitimacy that arises from that will have been driven in large parts by Iran's knowledge, Iran's weapon systems, just that connection with the Islamic Republic?

Yeah, I think that they're going to try to safeguard their independence because they don't want to absolutely become a Hezbollah or Hamas situation, or they're dependent on Iran. But I do see this only further deepening the already close ties.

So despite them being relatively willing to go at their own way when they see it fit, the fact that it's Iran who's continuously supporting them, including throughout this war, including through sort of giving them tutorials on how to shut down and how to toll a major international waterway. I think that this is going to drive them closer.

And I think that given just the lack of ability to get a coherent response, I know Saudi Arabia has led this international pact for at least a month now.

I think we're going on a month and a half where it's supposed to be dealing with this Houthi threat. They're still there. I mean, we're not seeing much of anything on the ground in terms of actual countermeasures.

So at least in terms of the waterway that is. So ultimately, I don't see this going away and I think that Iran would be smart to play their cards well here by keeping the Houthis on good terms. Yeah, it's a weird situation for the Houthis, right?

Because on the one hand, they are so dependent on Iranian support still, right? The Houthis could probably like function on their own, but they wouldn't be able to get nearly as far as they have at the same time. They are aware that Iran is very much the, you know, uncool kid at school, right?

The Houthis would love to be seen as more independent, as kind of untied, unfettered to Iran. And there is some value to Iran, right? If the Houthis were to gain legitimacy and to be seen kind of more distant, right?

As their own thing that maybe, you know, maybe some countries consider respectable, some countries will do business with, right? It is advantageous to Iran to still have that partnership and connection, but to allow the Houthis to kind of make their own space because essentially, right?

That would mean Iran had kind of cultivated and raised up and then released an ally into the world to kind of do its own diplomacy and become kind of a diplomatic bridge to Iran for countries that are maybe willing to work with the Houthis and not so much with Iran.

At the same time, I do think we should expect to see kind of this continued shadow dependence on Iran that the Houthis are really going to struggle to shake. So my question to you gentlemen in that case would be what do you, I suppose, think the rest of the world can or should be doing at this point? Because Saudi Arabia is obviously engaged.

We've talked about Turkey and Pakistan possibly getting involved. Is there a role for the for the rest of the world here, especially in a place where we've seen anti-Houthi operations so recently? Oh, yes, absolutely.

I mean, I would love to see some action here in terms of any country with a substantial naval force being able to assist in opening global maritime shipping. I sort of understand the reluctance on the Iran stuff because especially in case of like Europe, they didn't want in on the Iran war from the get-go and they weren't particularly consulted.

They just stipulated on the Bab al-Mandeb.

This is simply another conflict entirely. Now, it's part, it's in large part because the result of the Iran war, but it's still, it provides sufficient plausible deniability, if you will, for the host countries to be able to say, look, we're not getting involved in Iran.

We can go down there and just maintain free shipping or help open shipping again, which is clearly needed.

The U.S. is stretched quite thin. Over Hormuz and any additional assistance in Bab al-Mandeb is appreciated. I think, yes, the international community does have a role to play in any, any restoration of your free, free shipping in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

Yes, it's still a conflict partially to do with Iran and, you know, spiraled out of control mainly because of the Iran war.

But the world has such a vested interest in making sure that there's free shipping, that oil tankers can transit through the Bab al-Mandeb and even through the Strait of Hormuz without all of these additional risks, all of these additional fines being imposed on them.

I'm reminded of a quote by Paul Bradshaw, who's the, he's an executive at the Emirates National Oil Company.

He told Reuters that shipping has, the cost of shipping has increased by anywhere between 10 to 20 million dollars. So that's just within the Strait of Hormuz that they haven't calculated within the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. But if the figures are low, it's only slightly.

So as long as the Houthis and Iran continue to impose costs on global shipping, I think the world does need to get more involved in this. And I do think it's important to raise the question as well, right? Because we've seen an attempt at anti-Houthi policing in the past, right?

So Operation Prosperity Guardian was this kind of multinational coalition effort to try and stop the Houthis after the Houthis got active during the Israel war in Gaza, right? So the Houthis kind of launched a solidarity strikes with Hamas going after shipping, using outdated targeting data as well.

So like they were hitting all kinds of ships that they said that they weren't going to try to hit.

One, that targeting data does appear to have improved a little bit, not too much, but it does seem like it's better than it was. So the Operation Prosperity Guardian, for what it was pretty roundly considered a failure. I mean, it clearly has not deterred the Houthis from being able to launch any further strikes in the Red Sea.

In fact, the Houthis, I would say, are utterly unbothered by the fact that, you know, you could get kind of a repeat of that situation. So how do you think the rest of the world could react to the situation, kind of step up its own game against the Houthis if they're going to be reined in this way? Because what we've seen in the past just did not work.

Well, I think that's sort of the million dollar question there. You are absolutely right. The campaign in 2023 through 2024 really was not particularly successful.

And I think that's going to be the biggest problem in terms of getting this under control. But at the same time, a lot of the, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a significant part of that had to do with airstrikes and whatnot.

Whereas when you look at more successful operations to ensure free shipping, that does include, like if with the case of Somali pirates, that was a big step back after 2010-ish.

A lot of this had to, came down to actually setting up corridors for ships to transit through that had more direct protection. And especially as the international community now adopts more robust anti-drone techniques, I think we might be able to actually see some better results here than we did in the 2023-2024 campaign.

The one question I do have is, what is the national community plan to overcome one of the Houthis' most important assets, geography?

The Houthis occupy a region of Yemen that is very heavily mountain, that basically favors them when it comes to executing their war plans. It's like in Star Wars when Obi-Wan Kenobi told Darth Vader that he had the high ground and he should just give up. So that is my question.

As we try to figure out how the international community can come in, given the failures of Operation Prosperity Guardian. So I don't have an answer to that. It's something that I've been thinking about more and more, especially as we've discussed potential ground invasion of Iran and all the challenges that will come with that.

I see the same, well, not the exact same, but very similar issues when it comes to a potential global response to the Houthis.

I think one of the biggest problems here is going to be almost if we don't act, because already we're now talking about the downstream effect of the blockade in Hormuz, because initially the implication or the concern was that, OK, if we allow Hormuz to fall essentially permanently and just like withdraw or something, then this will encourage further such

Actions across the world.

And we're already at that point.

We're without trying to beat a dead horse here. If we now just say, OK, we might not be able to have any great strategies in terms of Bab al-Mandeb. I mean, this is going to open up even further possibilities in terms of what other random group throughout the world who happens to sit on a geographically significant body of water could do.

Absolutely. And the Houthis, by the way, are not like, you know, some pushover force. They're not great at offensive operations.

And we're kind of being reminded of that now as they try to take the city of Taiz. But they are very, very good when it comes to kind of an asymmetric defense.

Like there are stories from the 2010s war against Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, their coalition of like individual Houthi fighters who would get these like really elaborate fallback points where they'd have like, you know, a dozen rifles and sniper rifles, whatever laid back in this like pattern where they, you know, would get this advancing, forcing force

Coming up like a ridge line or whatever it was and just like retreat from position to position and always be firing and they were like so difficult to deal with in that way.

That's kind of the issue that the US and other countries are going to run into if they try and, you know, one, stick to airstrikes and naval campaigns or two, worse yet, try and go in on the ground is that the Houthis in their element are really a force to be reckoned with just in terms of like their inability to like fathom not doing this kind of asymmetric

Defense.

So we look at the idea of kind of this Saudi backed offensive to cut up the coast, which was initially the idea before the Houthis launched this was, you know, you could kind of carve out a buffer zone along the coastline, place some air defense systems there, basically try and create a fence around the Houthis, right?

There may be some argument there, but then you get into the issue of depleted air defenses, right?

You're not going to put Patriot systems in there, you're not going to put any of these other systems that are built to deal with ballistic missiles, but that are running critically well on stockpiles. So I suppose you can get some Ukrainian advisors, right, to put together some anti-drone defenses in a kind of a narrow belt of land.

But other than that, the options beyond maritime patrol and airstrikes, which haven't worked against the Houthis, the options beyond that are quite limited.

But I do want to pivot as long as we're talking about strikes against ships to Iran, because the latest news as of this morning, so Wednesday morning, local time U.S., and then I believe about 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening, so 17:00, 18:00 over in Iran, is that Iran has now attacked what it claims were about 10 ships near the Strait of Hormuz after the U.S.

Sank five Iranian oil tankers.

Now, this is a tactical shift from the U.S. now to be striking Iranian state-owned, state-operated oil tankers, which had previously been spared for all this. The U.S. is now sinking those again, sank five of them in the last day.

Iran is claiming to have retaliated against both a pair of U.S. military vessels and a total of eight oil tankers. There is at least one fuel tanker burning at this time. Unclear whether there were successful hits on any others, but that is the situation in the Strait of Hormuz right now.

And then Iran also fired a bunch of ballistic missiles at a U.S. air base in Jordan over the last 24 hours, which they've done several times now. So what do you make of this latest escalation and where the Strait of Hormuz conflict is at now?

So this latest escalation is coming only a few short weeks, at most days mainly, after the Trump administration announced to the entire world that it was going to be pursuing a strategy of economic warfare meant to basically cripple the Iranian economy and drive it into the ground.

As I have been warning for a while now, Iran responded to that, not by backing down, not by coming to the negotiating table, willing to make more concessions that would make Washington and obviously Jerusalem happy, but by climbing up the escalation ladder and again trying to impose a cost on America's global allies, the allies within the Middle East whose

Economy is most vulnerable to an Iranian attack, and to American interests in general.

So I see all of these attacks as just further proof that America has very limited options when dealing with Iran that will not lead to an escalation. When America strikes Iranian infrastructure or any targets within Iran more generally, Iran will retaliate with all of these strikes that we're witnessing.

And when America tries to impose an economic cost on Iran, we've already seen the kind of escalation that comes across. So right now we are trapped in that escalatory death spiral where any action by one side leads to a similar or even greater response by the other.

The U.S. has its ship-for-ship, what is it called, strategy right now, where every time Iran strikes a ship, they strike an Iranian ship.

And obviously this is horrible.

It's horrible for Iran because they need these ships not just to transport their oil, but also as storage locations because as we've discussed in multiple videos on warfronts, Iran can't really afford to shut down its oil wells completely because that creates the risk that water will come in and the oil wells themselves will not be able to produce as much

Oil as they once did.

So Iran needs this ship.

So in response, the IRGC has threatened a 24/1 response against ships and announced plans to extend its maritime exclusion zone further into Gulf waters. It's just a very deep, deep escalatory cycle that we are in right now. And I think it's something that the U.S. should seriously consider, whether it has the capabilities to withstand Iranian strikes.

And I'm saying this because of something you've mentioned, Patriot missiles, the Patriot missile interceptor, rather. So we've talked about this ad nauseum, but the U.S. is running low on interceptor stockpiles.

That's why they've been very unwilling to give some to Ukraine, even though we're heading into winter where Russia promises to wreak havoc on Ukraine's energy systems.

So yesterday there were, the attack by Iran targeting Jordan. Jordan launched its own waves of Patriot interceptor. And so far it's launched about a hundred since the war began.

And the interceptor stockpiles that Jordan had are running critically low. I've seen reports that at some point within the next few weeks at most, that it will have run out of interceptors completely. So that is a very real concern.

Concern for the U.S. And there's also the broader concern of what happens after this war, right? You have all of these bases that have been damaged, all of these facilities that are basically non-functional, not just in Jordan, but in places like Korea, there's a CIA facility that was destroyed by the IRGC drones.

So all of this, there's just a question of, will the U.S. spend money rebuilding all of these destroyed bases when, you know, there's still an option of negotiation, to try and get both sides to agree to some sort of deal.

So again, it's just an escalation trap for me. Kyle, what do you think? Yeah, so I think you touched on an interesting dynamic there.

So I almost think that the loss of shipping containers for Iran is like on par with the flat or the shortage of interceptors for the United States, where if the Iranians are launching things that the U.S. is still, for some reason, dependent on PAC-3 and whatnot interceptors to shoot down, then that is a loss for the United States long term.

But that's not really what we're seeing too much here of. What we're seeing a lot of here is tit-for-tat hits on shipping, which is not the United States' shortcoming here.

The naval ships are well defended. And in terms of being able to long term sustain this, I think that any loss of shipping containers themselves, which is why this is an escalation from the United States, I think this might prove to be something that the Iranians feel much more intensely than the United States would long term.

I agree that Iran will definitely feel the loss of its, you know, shipping containers, shipping infrastructure rather more broadly than the U.S. will feel any loss that Iran can inflict on its long term, especially.

But what about America's allies in the Middle East? Because one thing that Iran has shown it's very capable of doing is, what's it called, is passing the cost on to its people and not really caring about what happens next. The Iranian people are the ones who are going to have to handle the mess that is the Iranian economy at the end of all this.

And as long as the IRGC remains in power, I don't think they really care. And in contrast, you know, look at a country like Jordan, look at a country like Saudi Arabia, where oil refineries have been taken out of commission for a few days because of all of this war.

There's only so much of a cost they can bear because of, you know, because of a war that they never really wanted in the first place.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's just the big implication of this continued saga, though. I mean, writ large, the fact that Hormuz continues to be, now that we're, what, six months and nine days, but who's counting, into this dilemma. And we're still at a point where the amount of oil, by the way, we actually are getting some oil through Hormuz.

I think I saw a number. Actually, I'm not going to repeat it because I don't know how verifiable it is. We can edit that out.

Let me take that bit again. We are getting some oil through Hormuz, but it is disputed as to just how much it is. So I'm not going to give any exact figures here, but there is certainly a steady trickle.

It's not nearly as much as it should be. But regardless, moving forward, I do have to imagine that regardless of if the US was, hitting these Iranian targets or not, that the long-term implications of Hormuz being shut down would still be here. So it really is just a question of how do you want to deal with it?

Unless that, like, if the United States was not doing this, Hormuz would still be shut down at this point. So in terms of the cost for our allies in the region, they're all at this point just completely impatient. They want to get this thing open and move on and never have to think about this damn body of water ever again.

So I want to talk about the numbers of ships transiting through Hormuz recently, because there's been a lot of conflicting reports on the ship numbers, because on one hand, US through the Central Command, US CENTCOM has been claiming that a lot more ships have been passing through the strait, meaning that Iran for all intents and purposes has at least to a

Degree lost full control of the strait.

And a lot of these ships are passing through the Omani route because of the actions of the courageous, absolutely intensely heroic actions of SEAL Team 6 to remove mines from the Omani side of the strait.

But on the other hand, Iranian interlocutors, people who are speaking on behalf of Iran, and also some maritime tracking companies like Kepler are saying that shipping is still at such a low point.

So this is a report from Reuters on the 8th of September, which is a day before we recorded the podcast. It shows that seven vessels transited through Hormuz on Monday and eight transited a day earlier, which is, again, an all-time low, basically. These are not the numbers we were used to seeing when the strait was actually open.

We'd see dozens of ships transiting through the strait on a daily basis. And, you know, they were doing it for free without really having to worry about mines or, you know, anything from the IRGC.

Now ships that are transiting through the strait are doing so at very significant risk, both in terms of having to pay a high risk premium, a high insurance, and at the same time just risking attacks from Iran, which, again, is something to consider.

And we're seeing it reflected in the price. Brent crude, as we mentioned, crossed $100. I knew it's just bad.

No contest there. I think the only discussion on my part here being targeted at the, "Okay, well, what do you do about it then?" So in terms of if the U.S. is to pursue this blockade approach, then part of it has to do with the ultimate countdown to zero day when they run out of storage for all of this oil.

And because of the MOU, which just let them start selling oil again, like reset that clock.

And if the U.S. does target storage facilities and whatnot, then that could escalate and expedite that timeline, is my point there. Yeah, there's kind of a weird dichotomy in the Iranian side of things now, where it's not clear that there's any limit to the amount of pain that Iran is willing to allow its own people to absorb, right?

There's really no, I think, remorse on the, Iranian regime side of just kind of passing the cost of war as much as possible onto their own people.

At the same time, there is a technical question, right? Which is some of these, this ability to pass on the costs, do come with like these technical capacity limitations, where if these terminals or, sorry, if these storage tanks are ultimately filled and they're not able to continue to expand their capacity, right? There will be a limit to what Iran can do.

I suppose my question to you then, and this is an area that I'm less familiar with, so I would love to know if you have any insight on this, how much spare or otherwise repurposable storage facility, storage space can they leverage? Because we've seen in other conflicts, Venezuela, for example, was a good example of this.

We've seen kind of these regimes scrambling around for literally anywhere to put their excess oil, right?

Including things that are not necessarily meant to hold oil in their kind of original form. Do you assess that Iran has some of that spare capacity floating around, or are they really kind of pushing at the limits now with what they can afford to put aside? Yeah, they're pushing their limits here.

They started this process back shortly after the war kicked off. So what they started to do was similar to what you were outlining. They basically found whatever thing could hold black liquid is sort of their approach to it.

So they would take these just like rusting, hunks of junk and float them again. And as long as they could hold water, then they would start to use them as facilities for oil storage. And by and large, it did work.

They were able to get some storage facilities expanded. And that has continued. But at a certain point, I think that they're quite limited in terms of what they're actually able to do now.

I do know. Back in late August, they said that they were trying to repair and upgrade storage tanks at Karg Island. So I think that there's still some elements here that can be expanded, but I think they're sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I have some specific numbers to share with you, gentlemen, and with our dear audience as well. So this is coming from the wonderful folks at Kepler, specifically from Omayoun Falakshahi, who is his lead when it comes to crude oil analysis. He focuses on global market dynamics, just to give our audience an idea of who we're getting our information from.

So according to a report he published on the 10th of June, so a little while back, Iran increased its onshore crude inventories by about 13 million barrels of oil since the US blockade was implemented in mid-April, reaching about 74 million barrels.

And this is a lot of spare capacity, just the fact that they were able to increase it by 13 million barrels isn't something to laugh at. It's definitely something to take seriously.

But the fact, I believe this number without a full reading into it, this does include the tankers that the US has managed to sink. So that number is going to decrease significantly. And the US has shown, has shown an ability to target onshore storage facilities.

So that number can decrease significantly. And you can only do so much when you're producing as much oil as they are. But what Iran can do instead of storing oil is cycling which of its oil wells it's shutting off, which ones it's allowing to produce oil.

Basically, this is something that Iran is really, really good at. And of course, I'm not using the right terminologies here because again, I am a writer and an analyst. I am not an oil industry guy.

But Iran and the Iranian people who work in the oil industry have a lot of experience when it comes to cycling through which oil wells are in production and which ones are not.

And trying to maintain enough of a balance where between the ones that are producing and the ones that are not to try and mitigate as much of the damage to their oil wells as possible, even with storage decreasing. So I think that's the main thing we should look at.

Just how is Iran cycling through its oil wells? Yeah, I think that at this point, one of the bigger long-term things is going to be construction of new facilities rather than repurposing old ones. Because I personally, just from the data I've seen, they sort of ran out of the ability to further repurpose much of anything else a little while ago.

They do have some projects underway to expand this. So there's something at Bandar Imam Khomeini, which is going to expand storage by roughly half a million barrels. So that's, I mean, it's significant.

I do think that they are trying to ramp up production of new places to put this. But I'm sort of long-term skeptical if this blockade is able to stay in place as to just like, on some level, like you're going to just eventually run out of storage, even if you have all the, as much storage as you can possibly imagine. You know what I mean?

I do. I do. And one thing I want to talk about, just as an addition to all of this, is how much oil Iran was exporting via rail.

So this is, this was around May. So I don't have much new information on this, but Iran had the ability to transport oil via rail to countries in Asia, like China, the traditional buyers of Iranian oil. And a typical shipment of oil by rail was between 60,000 and 70,000 barrels.

So that, if Iran still maintains the ability to transport oil by rail, that is something that can reduce the amount of pressure on Iran's remaining storage capacity. That's an interesting one too, because they do maintain the ability to do some of that. But the problem being is it's just such a tiny percentage of their overall output.

So even if they do railway max, shall we say, then they're still going to be running net surpluses on a pretty massive scale. So they may try to further up their game there, but I'm honestly just not so sure if that's going to work.

And I think, like, the reason that shipping is so popular for moving this stuff is because rail is not a very efficient way of doing it.

The tankers that actually move this thing is just absolutely massive. And so when you have to put it in these narrow railway lines, unless you have this cartoonishly long railway or series of cars, then it's ultimately not the most efficient. But Evan, I'll pass this over to you.

Yeah, gentlemen, much to my surprise, I actually have to take us back to Yemen for a moment because there has been a complication. So buckle up for this one.

So if you remember back to December and January when actually there was a different crisis plan in Yemen, there was this group called the Southern Transitional Council that kind of held parts of Yemen at that time, Emirati-backed.

They basically kind of tried this shock offensive to take over Yemeni-controlled, government-controlled, so non-Houthi-controlled territory across Yemen. They were beaten back, kind of this very embarrassing thing for them, the Emirates. They're now back.

So about a couple hours ago, the defense minister of the Yemeni internationally recognized government was traveling through a city called Dalai.

And in Dalai, he was being escorted by forces loyal to the Presidential Leadership Council, so the internationally recognized government, in a convoy where it appears that his convoy was blockaded, trapped, besieged, by forces loyal to this remnant Southern Transitional Council, so this other kind of breakaway splinter faction in Yemen that was supposed to

Be beaten down.

The defense minister's car, I'm watching a video right now, is fully engulfed in flames.

The reports from the area suggest that he has been sent with his forces to kind of be besieged in this military camp. So major complication for the Saudi-backed forces trying to deal with the Houthis right now, because this third faction in Yemen has, literally hours ago, just come into play.

I have a feeling we're going to have a new War Fronts episode on Yemen dropping very shortly then.

In addition to the one that is about to drop, we might have a... It might be Yemen Week here at War Fronts. Yeah, it's certainly going to

It's one of these just sort of perennial conflicts at this point. I mean, this Civil War kicked off in 2015, I believe. Yeah, so, I mean, it's this sort of never-ending series where the Houthis have established themselves as just being

Despite being relatively mediocre at land campaigns, they are... They have sufficient control over enough area and have way more advanced weaponry than one might expect, largely thanks to their friends in Tehran. So, to be honest, I don't really see them going anywhere.

And the fact that they re-entered the fray earlier this year was just sort of a doomsday sign to me that Yemen is sort of like, sort of falling apart once again.

Yeah, the Houthis are not necessarily a very strong force at all, but it doesn't really matter if you're the fifth-worst military in the world if you're fighting the third-worst military in the world.

You know, you're still the best military in that conflict, and that does kind of seem to be where the Houthis are primed to be right now, which is not to say that, you know, they couldn't stand up to a direct confrontation with the Saudis or with the Emiratis or with the Omanis or so on, but nor are the Saudis or the Emiratis or so on trying to do that.

Everybody's trying to deal with this issue in Yemen and trying to deal with the Houthis without putting their own boots on the ground. And right now, especially if this third faction is starting to kind of play spoiler, that may not be a possibility.

And something else that I often think about is the fact that the agreement that they reached to stop just in mass attacking international shipping, because right now the attacks have been largely for their blockade on Saudi Arabia, one of their conditions was, is the continued, basically how they perceive Israeli behavior to be in the region.

And they openly threatened if Israel gets too far, in their opinion, out of control, then they would be willing to jump back into the fray on the scale of 2023, 2024, which I think brings us to a very natural pivot here for the conflict going on between Israel. Its own settlers in the West Bank versus Palestinians.

Unless any of you gentlemen have anything else you want to add?

No, let's make a pivot. And Kyle, if you could catch us up, I know you're kind of our West Bank guy. So by all means, let us know what we need to know.

Sure. So there's been ongoing, and this is not entirely new. I do want to preface with that.

So there has been an issue with settlers in the West Bank. So these are Israelis who live in the West Bank in the Israeli settlements there, who basically go around and basically carry out acts of terrorism on the population in the West Bank. So this started as a relatively fringe phenomena years ago.

But the Israeli side of the equation never really cracked down on it too hard. Because at the outset, it was quite small. So they figured, you know, we can sort of turn a blind eye to it, whatever you think of that aside.

That was their approach. At this point, it has just spiraled so far out of control that this really escalated to a point where the international community has sort of had enough with this, in particular because of the current government in Israel.

The two most noteworthy figures here being Itamar Ben-Gavir, national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, who has large control over Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank as finance minister.

The 12-country group, including the UK, France, Poland, and several others, announced trade restrictions on Israeli settlements the other day in the West Bank. And the UK went significantly further than that. They announced this new sanctions regime aimed at basically the underlying machinery of settlement expansion.

So any firms involved in construction, infrastructure, and financing of real estate can now be sanctioned, which has certainly set off quite a chain of response, especially here in the United States. I say this as an American here myself.

So there have been many who are criticizing the United Kingdom and outright accusing it of anti-Semitism for having sanctioned the— or being able to sanction these firms.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders in particular was saying that sanctioning the world's only Jewish state is itself anti-Semitic. So it has raised all sorts of questions as to what's going to go on here. And I have been amazed by some of the responses to this.

But I'm curious as to your gentlemen's thoughts. So this is something that I follow very closely. Well, not as closely as you, Kyle, but again, just closely enough that I am deeply familiar with it.

So the backlash has been extremely interesting to watch. Specifically, I'll cover the UK side of the backlash.

A lot of the negativity I'm seeing all stems due to the fact that, again, Israel is facing sanctions from countries it traditionally considers its allies, its partners, especially in the West, countries that would nominally be more in line with Israeli foreign policy than they would have any allegiance to Palestinians in the West Bank.

So the fact that the UK led this push with UK Prime Minister Andy Bunham and UK Foreign Secretary Ed Milburn, there's so much to talk about.

But specifically onto the backlash, there's been so much conflating of the sanctions against the companies who are providing help to the settlers with a sort of an attack on British Jews and Jews outside of Israel more broadly.

I fear that your discontinued conflation between the actions of the Israeli government and the actions of settlers and the global Jewish movement, the global Jewish population, will lead to more anti-Semitic attacks.

That is one of my biggest fears. Yeah, I also think, I mean, some of the responses have been just difficult for me to sort of wrap my head around. So, I mean, it's well and good to oppose the... the sanctions if you are a staunch supporter of Israel, I understand that.

But I think it's sort of a tough sell that Israel simply cannot be sanctioned, or else you are an anti-Semite. I think that does discredit the term because this is a huge issue. There is, I mean, undisputably a rise of anti-Semitism by, on the right and left alike in different ways, but in certainly very present regardless.

Regardless of how they manifest. And I think that the sort of cheapening of that term does not serve anyone well for the long term.

And I think in particular, like, again, if the case of the governor of Arkansas is that she opposes the boycott itself, sure, understood, but in terms of like actually the underlying implications of this was announced by... the foreign minister, Ed Miliband, who is himself Jewish, and he was quite clear in his speech to the commons that he very much... this

Was not something he was, like, shying away from or anything like that.

He was resolutely making the case that as somebody who is very much proud to be Jewish, who spent time in Israel and very passionately believes in a two-state solution, believes this as a necessary course in order to stand up for what he believes is right.

So again, it's if... and there are various anti-BDS laws in several states in the U.S., which is another thing entirely. But ultimately, I just

I struggle to wrap my head around the argument that Israel has essentially impunity to avoid sanctions or else you are an anti-Semite.

So there's a very prominent rabbi within the U.K. called Rabbi Jeremy Gordon, who wrote a column on his Substack, which I will hopefully get a chance to link in the description of this podcast, specifically describing his personal experience with settler violence.

So in 2024, during a visit to the West Bank, a group of rabbis, including himself, was stoned and repeatedly threatened with being rammed by a pickup truck in the ruins of a Palestinian village called Zanuta.

He has a picture of it. And all of this was done by settlers.

So he speaks very passionately about the idea that settlers can act out in extremely violent ways and still enjoy the protection of the Israeli government and with it the protection of some of Israel's most powerful friends, including the U.S. The fact that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who at one point had the ear of President Trump as his press secretary, and is

Now one of the most powerful governors in the U.S., someone who is positioning herself for a presidential run somewhere down the line, there's just so much impunity.

There's just so much lack of accountability. And, you know, even some of the most prominent Jewish voices, Ed Miliband, for example, and now Rabbi Jeremy Gordon as another, are speaking up about it. And again, conflating all of this with anti-Semitism, just cheapens the veracity of that accusation.

Evan, what do you think? Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think there is

I understand where the gut instinct, especially in the global West, comes from to defend Israel at all costs. It's not necessarily culturally a surprise as to how the Western world kind of political, established architecture has gotten there.

At the same time, right, the distinction between kind of what a nation is and its platonic ideal and the actions that it takes is a line that is really, really critically important to draw much more often anywhere in international politics.

The world used to have architectures that were fairly well established, fairly robust, that had ways to not necessarily enforce every norm and standard and so on, but to at least create a mechanism to hold nations to account.

The repeated failures to implement those measures when they were available certainly got us to situations like we're seeing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, got us to lots and lots of situations all around the world that we now, I think in the rise of kind of the Trump era especially, that Pandora's box has been opened and is going to be really hard to

Close.

We're kind of moving into a world where these norms and governing capabilities, such as they ever really existed, which, you know, is an argument in itself, to the extent that they existed at all, they certainly don't exist now.

And the kind of double standard here, right, Israel gets carte blanche to avoid sanctions, to avoid repercussions for the actions of its settlers because it is the world's sole Jewish state, right? That doesn't hold water, right?

Kyle, you mentioned something about, you know, I can see how if you're very staunchly pro-Israeli, then, you know, you might oppose this.

That, quite frankly, is something that at least, and maybe this is unfair, I don't know, but at least for me, just as a, you know, as an analyst, but also as a private citizen, right, if you're carte blanche in favor of the actions of a country, right, any country, doesn't matter what it is, whether it's, you know, the US, China, Russia, the EU, whatever,

Right, whatever it may be, if you're staunchly in favor of the actions of that country, regardless of the actions taken by that country, that to me is just an incomprehensible level of tuned out of the ways that just really any, you know, pick a group of your choice, right, pick a leader of your choice, will work to act within kind of the gray spaces

Available to them.

And right now we're seeing a settler population in Israel that has been given carte blanche to work in these legal and diplomatic gray spaces without repercussions. So whatever we're seeing happen now to try and rein that in is the consequence of having neglected that for so long.

Yeah, I think a very interesting shift here has been, so for like the last few years, or especially last year or two, the European approach in particular has been to move towards recognizing the Palestinian, a Palestinian state. They've done that by recognizing the Palestinian Authority as the representative of the Palestinian people.

Many countries have done this in the last few years, especially in Europe, but also outside as well.

But that caused its own issues because ultimately, I think that recognition was less of any genuine support for the Palestinian Authority and more as a way to sort of punish Israel. So they did that as a way to like almost bash Israel's head with the Palestinians. But the problem being that Israel is ultimately the one who has broad jurisdiction.

Again, rightly or wrongly, this is not a moral claim here. They have broad control over both Gaza and the West Bank at this point. That just is the reality on the ground.

So it can be that the entirety of the EU recognizes Palestine and doesn't change a single thing on the ground because ultimately, what does that actually get people?

And I think that they sort of realized this and said, "Okay, well, that didn't work." If anything, I think that almost sort of emboldened the Israeli more intense nationalist side of the equation by seeing the international community move in a direction that they thought that wouldn't happen without the Israeli government's blessing of it.

And long term, I have to think that is ultimately what brought us here.

Where Miliband in particular seems to have woken up and realized, okay, well, we can't just simply say, "Yes, there should be a Palestine here." So Israel is not going to go along with this. So if they're not playing ball, then we don't have to play ball with them economically either in terms of the companies involved in settlements.

And I think that's a pretty big shift.

But I also think there are cases of laws on the books here in the United States. In multiple states where they're called anti-BDS laws, anti-boycott, divest, and sanction laws, where basically it's illegal and barred to do business with companies who are currently engaged in a boycott of Israel. And that in and of itself could cause implications.

And both Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as well as a few others, Randy Fine from Florida, I believe, as well, have weighed in saying that these moves jeopardize trade with the United Kingdom, because on the books, this could genuinely jeopardize trade with British institutions, companies, et cetera, by way of sanctioning Israel.

Those laws were mostly passed, though, in an era gone by where back in the day, if you were boycotting Israel in the '50s and the '60s, you were doing so less out of their approach to the West Bank, which at that point was in very different shape than it is today. You were doing it because you didn't want an Israeli state.

You didn't want a Jewish state. So the argument then that sanctioning Israel was an act of anti-Semitism carried much more water in my mind than it does today. Whereas, I mean, if anybody seriously, genuinely thinks that Ed Miliband is an anti-Semite for sanctioning Israel over its settlement policy, I mean, I just don't know what to tell them.

And I think that these laws no longer reflect the reality on the ground. But I think that, nevertheless, the fact that they are on the books is going to have some serious implications moving forward. The existence of those laws, which are being reliably informed by the Jerusalem Post in about 38 states, again, 38 out of 50 states, that's such a large number.

Again, it is a relic of a previous time, but it's also a cudgel that the pro-Israeli wing, you know, the American government, both the Democrats and the Republicans have, a pro-Israeli wing, have used to beat other parties into submission. And I wonder just how much of an impact they will have on Britain's decision-making.

Well, when Randy Fine was talking about this, he mentioned that Britain does a lot of trade with Florida, and, you know, it puts millions of dollars' worth of trades and hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk, both within Florida and within the UK.

So how much, how far is Florida willing to go to punish its own population in order to protect Israel? And how much pain is Britain willing to take on because of its, you know, decision regarding Israel? I think the most surprising thing for me isn't that, you know, people like Randy Fine and Sarah Huckabee Sanders are speaking out in support of Israel.

Sarah's father, I believe, Mike Sanders, is America's ambassador to Jerusalem, and he is one of the most staunchly pro-Israel people I've seen. The most surprising thing for me is a report by Axios, by Barak Ravid of Axios, that the Trump administration didn't really oppose the UK sanctions.

So, apparently, Prime Minister Barnum called Trump to inform him of the sanctions, and according to two people with knowledge of that call, Trump didn't push back on Barnum or even ask him to change course.

So, yes, there is a level of, what's the right word? There is a level of resistance within some elements of the American government, but at the highest level? I'm not seeing any pushback.

Yeah, and I think, so Florida is the third largest state population-wise in the U.S. at this point. So, I mean, that's a massive hit if something like the anti-BDS laws kicks into effect there. So, each state has its own little, it's not like one uniform approach to anti-BDS stuff.

So, we'll have to see exactly the specifications and to what extent various things would kick in there. I do want to just say that, like, the Miliband effort was to enable them to actually sanction companies. I don't think they've actually sanctioned them, although I think they're aiming to do so within the first, like, nine months or so.

So, we'll have to see where ultimately that goes. But I, just for audience knowledge here, I don't think that this is going to be something that, like, kicks into effect tomorrow. But long term, I think the framing there, Wilfred, is certainly going to be part of why Israel has lost support in the United States to some degree.

Americans do not appreciate being told what they can and cannot say and what they can and cannot do very much. I don't think anybody anywhere really does, but I think that we as a sort of national characteristic really do not appreciate that.

And I think that the idea of, oh, no, no, you cannot do business with the X company because they're currently boycotting or sanctioning Israel, I think that's going to play quite poorly.

I don't think that Israel has the support at this point necessary to maintain such a status. And I think that would even erode it further, both on the right and the left, albeit for slightly different reasons. The left likely to much sympathize with the Palestinian cause outright.

But even the majority of, I believe, a majority of Republicans under 30 now have a more favorable view of Palestine than of Israel, which is a shocking statistic. So, I mean, I have to imagine that if these anti-BDS laws kick into effect, that's going to go over a boat as well as a lead balloon. Yeah, it's kind of a weird thing about the U.S. in particular.

And Kyle, you can confirm or deny this, but there almost is kind of this like boycott price to pay if you are calling a boycott. No matter what it is, because you are saying to Americans, hey, you can't do this thing, you know, like there is kind of that immediate gut instinct backlash, which I don't know how much that carries through to other countries.

I know it is very, very, very strong here.

And on kind of both sides of the political aisle. I do want to bring in one more. Kyle says confirmed in our chat.

I do want to bring in one other item before we close up for the day because we are running out of time. But I wanted to just take a moment before we wrap up. Just take a moment before we log off and wish a happy birthday to one of the people who is so central to this conflict.

That being Moshe Taba Khomeini. Yesterday, the 8th of September was his birthday. So happy birthday to him.

That being said, there has been no confirmation that he is alive or actually participating in this conflict in any meaningful way, that he is not deep in a coma someplace, that he is able to speak, able to move, so on and so forth. So on this day of days for Mr. Khomeini, for Mr. Khomeini the younger, what do you make of his continued absence at this time?

Dude, I mean, at this point, like, what the heck is going on here?

I mean, I know technically they can keep this charade up. But like on some level, I have to imagine. I mean, the Iranians have lived with the regime propaganda all their lives.

And what always happens with these countries that have just 24/7 state BS being said to them, they know when something's up. I have to imagine the vast majority of Iranians know something is up. They know something is up with this guy.

We don't know what exactly is going on either. So I mean, we don't have confirmation that he's no longer with us, shall we say. But I mean, it's been, we're on month seven here.

And we have nothing in terms of proof of life. The closest thing that came of proof of life was when I think some state media started posting video of him. That turned out to be video that the Iranian state TV had already ran back in March.

Which turned out to be an event that happened before he became Supreme Leader anyway. So I mean, honestly, I mean, I think that says enough right there. So every time I think about Moshtaba and his increased absence while, you know, making occasional statements through whatever proxy is making the statements on that particular day.

I think of the really old 1980s movie, Weekend at Barney's. Now this movie came out long before I was born, which tells you just how young I am. I am clinging on to my youth with everything I have.

But in this movie, if you're one of the very few people, like one of three people who's not watched it, a guy called Barney dies and his friends drag his corpse around everywhere. So I feel like that's what the IRGC is doing with Moshtaba. I'm not saying that he's dead.

You know, as the longer we go without any public appearance by this guy, it lends itself to the idea that he died early on in the war. And the IRGC is just using him as a prop to just give the leadership of Iran some level of legitimacy. So there's a feeling within Iran that he should appear at some point soon.

So a 47 year old shopkeeper in Isfahan called Taghi. Told Reuters quoting him here, understand that from a security standpoint, he should not appear in public. But the country is going through a very difficult time.

There is a need for the Supreme Leader to be seen, even if he has been injured. People need to see that there is a leader and that he is running the country. So the fact that the Iran people are publicly making that statement, it tells me that, yeah, they do know that something is up.

They might not outrightly call it Weekend at Barney's or Weekend at Moshtaba's as we are calling it. But yeah, they know something is up and they want to see whether the guy is actually alive or dead. Yeah, I think that this is just, I mean, like the Supreme Leader is not a role that you can just opt out of.

So essentially the way that Iran has been running this, to the best of what I've seen, is that Ahmed Vahidi, who has, the way that they're describing it is he has unfettered access to the Supreme Leader, which I think sort of tips a hand. As to who's actually writing some of these statements.

I think that he essentially is, to some extent, acting as Supreme Leader, unless Moshtaba is actually doing well behind the scenes.

But long term, I think they're going to have to just come to face with the fact that they can't hide this forever, is the long and the short of that one. My final take on this. This reminds me of Cameroonian President Paul Beer.

He had just been elected for another consecutive term. He's 93 years old and he disappeared for more than 70 days. And there were a lot of concerns that he had died.

And, you know, those around him were using his name just to prop themselves up and boost their own power. But even he's reappeared. We know that.

Paul Beer at 93 is alive. So what's stopping Moshtaba from making some sort of public facing announcements? We just make a video, talk to the Iranian people and the rest of the world.

We want to see Moshtaba. And of course, happy birthday to the lad. Happy birthday to him.

You know who does make a video? Makes a pretty good video. Our team here at Fronts, Warfronts and Homefronts and so on and other projects that are going to be launching soon.

So hint, hint, wink, wink. Thank you very much for your support. Everybody who is listening to this for getting to this point in the podcast with us.

If you have, you're almost certainly a member here, a premium subscriber to Fronts.co. So thank you for that. You help us do what we do and help us maintain our independence.

If you are not yet a subscriber, please consider subscribing. And if you don't want to, that's okay. Keep on hanging out.

We'll keep on having you around. We'll keep on showing up here each week to kind of lament the state of the world. And speaking of the state of the world, just before we log off for the week, I would love to hear from each of you guys.

Let's go to Kyle and then let's go to Wilfred on what exactly you were watching in the next few days and what we should all be aware of in the coming week.

Out of my own curiosity, I'm going to be very closely following the fallout of the Israeli situation with the UK, the US and within Israel itself, because the Israeli opposition has had sort of various different approaches to this. Perhaps that's a conversation for next week.

That's a conversation for next week's episode. But overall, I think that's going to be a very interesting outcome of this. And more broadly, as always, the situation in Hormuz.

Personally, I'll be watching the situation on the global oil markets. As we are speaking, Oman crude is now $21 above Brent. So that means Oman crude is trading at $129.

Brent is trading at about $108. That disparity is because China has begun importing a lot more oil than previously during the war. And if you're a listener to our podcast and you watch some of our content, you know that I seriously believe China played a role in protecting the world from the worst of an energy shock by reducing its oil imports.

So the fact that it's back on the international markets as an importer, means that, yeah, oil prices are going to spike.

Karl Marx, who's an investment specialist at Bellingen, which is a really big investment firm which specializes in oil, among other things, believes that if China does not cut its imports, Brent will close the gap with Oman crude within a matter of days, which basically means they're looking at Brent at $129, which would be absolutely insane.

Because I don't think it's risen that high at any point in the war.

And all of this is coming as Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to meet American President Donald Trump within about two weeks. So we're going to see how that plays out, because Iran is definitely going to be a topic of discussion, among some other things which we covered in this week's Briefing Room. So please give that, you know, check that out.

Wilfred, I have to go back. Did you just quote an oil industry expert named Karl Marx? I did, I did.

Well, his name is not spelled the same as the German philosopher you're thinking about. It's K-A-R-E-L-M-E-R-C-X. But it's so close, I couldn't help but think about it.

That's incredible. Yeah, that's something special. All right.

I'm glad we both noticed that one. Yeah, no, I perked up real fast in that one. Yeah.

That, I think, is a good note to leave it this week. If it's not obvious from our Houthi discussion, I have been watching the Houthis and I will be watching the Houthis. And if you are watching us on Warfronts, you will also be watching the Houthis this week.

So more on that very soon, probably, if this whole third faction continues to bubble up. But yeah, again, just to everybody listening thus far, thank you for being with us. Thank you for supporting all that we do.

This has been Evan Maloney here with Kyle Moran and Wilfred Mina here at Fronts.co. Warfronts. Homefronts.

All the fronts. Any fronts you got. Send them our way.

We'll make a video out of them. Thank you very much and we'll see you next week.