[Today’s Iran war post launched thin and even the final, which we will complete by our 8:00 AM EDT normal limit, is likely to be sparse. Fortunately, this was a slower day than usual on the Iran front. We have been besieged by very hard scraping by AI bots. It makes the site so sluggish that it times out, as in is inaccessible to readers and site authors/admins. We apologize for readers repeatedly getting timeouts and then being subjected to captchas, but we are limited in what we can do and are very upset.
That makes it hard for me to get any work done, hence the state of the current post. It also means I had to awaken our tech maven Dave repeatedly to implement different Cloudflare rule sets. There are not good remedies. For instance, one that does shut down the bots also shuts down the RSS feed, frustrating some readers and killing the daily e-mail, which takes entries in the last 24 hours from the RSS feed. Another shuts down the bots and lets me think I can use the backstage (for instance, I can clear comments and open blank new post window) but it will not let me post or even make comments. It is now very hard to post; I have to go through all sorts of time-consuming hoops to save drafts and add images. So again, AI is literally killing this site. If you care at all about independent media, you need to stop using it electively. It’s tantamount to believing you take good care of your health because you exercise while alos smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.]
So when are Trump and Mohammed bin Salman going to chew off their legs to escape the traps they got themselves in? Odds favor MBS conceding to realities, as in Ansar Allah taking more and more control of Yemen and inflicting more damage on Saudi energy infrastructure. The new move today, as we will soon cover, was an Ansar Allah attack on the critical Yanbu port. This comes after the Saudis being set to be unable to restore shipments on its Hormuz-bypassing east-west pipeline for the month plus it will take to make repairs. Some argue the time required will wind up being many months.
MBS had backed off earlier when Ansar Allah attacks became more effective over many years. To make a long story short, in 2022, Ansar Allah attacks on energy infrastructure that increased Brent to $120 a barrel led to the two sides agreeing to a truce. So MBS has blinked before. But facts on the ground suggest that Ansar Allah will demand that the Saudis leave Yemen entirely. They will no doubt demand recognition as the official government, which the Saudis and the West would find very hard to swallow. If Ansar Allah (IMHO entirely reasonably) sticks to this demand, we could see Saudi oil sequestered for a very long time.
Mr. Market is not happy. From the Bloomberg landing page:
From Oil Rises on Halted Pipeline as Goldman Flags Escalation of War:
- Oil rose for a second day as traders weighed disruptions to Middle East supplies, with a critical Saudi Arabian pipeline still offline.
- The East-West pipeline was shut last week after attacks, with Saudi Aramco yet to say when it may restart, and the conduit will be out of service for several weeks, according to regional officials.
- Brent oil has rallied as the US-Iran war spread across the energy-rich Middle East, with shipping in the Hormuz waterway attacked and oil fields shut-in, boosting inflationary pressures.
Note that this story is, par for the course, skewed unduly to optimism in how fast the pipeline can be fixed and nowhere signals that Ansar Allah can easily bust it up again. Nor does it mention the attack on Yanbu. Instead, at the very end, we get:
Investors are also tracking events in Yemen. Iranian-backed Houthis on Monday fired missiles and drones at civilian targets in the Saudi cities of Khamis Mushait, Abha and Taif, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition posted on X.
On the latest Ansar Allah attacks:
Just another great call from US Treasury Secretary Bessent. He said in 2 years Gulf pipelines would make Strait of Hormuz “irrelevant”.
Ansarullah hit Yanbu oil loading port infrastructure and 6 more pumping stations on Saudi’s East-West Pipeline.
Hormuz will never be… https://t.co/i50V9XPaKg
— Kathleen Tyson (@Kathleen_Tyson_) September 15, 2026
🚨🇸🇦 Two intense fires reportedly detected at the Aramco refinery in Yanbu, with reports pointing to a Houthi strike
NASA’s fire satellites picked up both, each throwing roughly 40 megawatts of heat, against the 5 to 10 a routine flare produces.
Yanbu is where the East-West… pic.twitter.com/iwZSzXrV5L
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) September 15, 2026
Sirens sounded in several Saudi regions few hours ago, likely the biggest attack since the war re-ignited.
Abha, Jizan, Taif, Jeddah, Yanbu & AlUla. https://t.co/GKfR6qrVlg
— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) September 15, 2026
🚨BREAKING: An Enormous Yemeni Missile Attack On Saudi Arabia
Yanbu, Jeddah, Taif, Abha, Al-Ulaa & Khamis Mushait all targeted.
The ballistic missile & drone attack is ongoing.
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) September 15, 2026
Ansar Allah is also advancing on the ground:
💢🇾🇪 Ansarallah advances towards an encirclement of Taiz city while it defends recent gains near the Bab al Mandeb.
Fierce fighting is ongoing in the Jabal Habashi district directly southwest of Taiz city as Ansarallah attempts to simultaneously take Habashi mountain—which peaks at 2,300 meters in elevation—as well as progress down the adjacent corridor that connects Taiz city to Al Mokha. There are reports of repeated air strikes by the Saudi Air Force on Ansarallah positions around Jabal Habashi. Ansar forces are currently positioned only about 2 kilometers away from the last road out of Taiz city.
In the south near the Bab al Mandeb, Ansarallah shifts to defending recent gains along the coastal plain while disrupting efforts by the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government to stage a counterattack. In the last 24-hours, Ansarallah has secured more strategic mountains that overlook the Bab al Mandeb near the Al Wazi’yah district.
Taiz city is the interior gateway from Northern Yemen to Southern Yemen. It resides at the epicenter of a network of routes that link the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea. If the internationally recognized government were to lose control of Taiz city, either through battle or an Ansarallah-led mediation effort, they would be evicted from the southern Yemeni mountains and would have to retreat towards Aden.
In Marib, the last major city in Northern Yemen that’s controlled by the internationally recognized government, there’s an ongoing tribal mediation effort to peacefully handover the city to Ansarallah in conjunction with sporadic clashes as Ansar forces position themselves around the rugged highlands that surround the city to the south and the west.
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) September 14, 2026
And more on the extent of damage to the pipelines:
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia’s oil problem just multiplied.
What looked like a single Houthi hit on the East-West pipeline is now looking like a coordinated hammering of the whole system.
Fresh satellite imagery shows Pump Station 9 badly damaged, with Pump Station 8 possibly hit too, both…
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) September 15, 2026
Aljazeera tells us the Saudis are still attacking Ansar Allah by air. They need to confer with Robert Pape, whose research has found that air-only campaigns do not succeed. Yes, the Saudis theoretically have ground forces too but military experts have dismissed them as poorly led, not cohesive mercs. The fact that Ansar Allah took 2000 square kilometers of territory in a day or so and captured lots of weaponry too tells you all you need to know about the caliber of the Saudi hired guns.
And if you still harbor doubts, even the Wall Street Journal has been forced to concede Ansar Allah’s effectiveness. From The Lightning Offensive That Saw the Houthis Grab a Crucial Oil Corridor:
Last year, the Houthis survived an intense American bombing campaign with fierce tactics that exhausted the Navy on a long deployment that presaged the current difficulty suppressing Iran. This summer, they exploited divisions among their internal opponents and their Arab sponsors amid the distraction of the wider war to expand their domain. On Friday they took Perim Island, which sits in the middle of the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait, an 18-mile-wide chokepoint that is to the Red Sea what the Strait of Hormuz is to the Persian Gulf.
They had been preparing for the assault for months. In mid-August, they moved weapons and thousands of troops to positions around the port city of Mokha, threatening their opponents’ supply lines. They used their control of Yemeni telecoms systems to listen in on their enemies’ calls and to sow confusion and intimidate their rivals into giving up.
The world paid little attention to the group even after it captured the Yemeni capital, San’a, in 2014. Now, it holds one of the world’s most important energy corridors and has to be reckoned with….
Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert who runs the Basha Report risk advisory firm, said the anti-Houthi coalition, which includes fighters who want to see a separate nation in southern Yemen, as well as others aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and former government forces, is up against a tough, unified opponent.
“The Houthis have one leader, one ideology and a clear vision,” Basha said. “The anti-Houthi forces have eight armies and multiple commands.”
Yet this is what we learn from the Aljazeera landing page:
From its live feed, headlined Iran war live: 54 Saudi air strikes target Houthis as Yemen fighting rages: Note the landing page and this banner confirm Professor Mohammed Marandi’s regular complaint that Aljazeera has an anti-Resistance bias:
- Houthis say Saudi Arabia launched dozens of air attacks as the prime minister of Yemen’s internationally recognised government accuses the militia of killing and displacing civilians during its rapid advance.
- The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) says it has received a “time late report” that an unknown projectile struck a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday.
More in Yemen: Saudis escalate with ballistic missiles and the war turns serious by Patricia Martins:
The Saudis are escalating the war against the Houthis and showing they are prepared to defend their positions even if that means putting their oil infrastructure at risk.
A booster from a Chinese DF-15A ballistic missile, whose motor was reportedly optimized to stretch its range toward 900 km, has been located in a Yemeni city, in Marib. The Saudis are the only operators of DF missiles in the region, including through their missile program in partnership with China.
In parallel with these launches, the Saudi Air Force carried out a heavy campaign of more than 120 strikes in less than 48 hours, punishing key Houthi-controlled provinces such as Sanaa, Marib, Taiz and Hodeidah.
The Yemeni side of the escalation is just as severe. The Houthi rebels launched massive attacks with salvos of ballistic missiles and drones directly against King Khalid Air Base in Khamis Mushait and against Aramco refineries, leaving dozens wounded in Saudi Arabia. This is a regression. It takes us years backward.
The backdrop to this frantic escalation is the Houthi advance on the ground. They recently captured strategic port cities and islands along the Bab el-Mandeb shipping corridor. Saudi Arabia and Yemeni government forces are racing against time to contain that advance, which I am certain is inevitable. I will go further: if Houthi deals with some tribes go forward and open the way, they will keep retaking territory.
This can get much more serious if Houthi attacks start targeting the capital. That, it seems to me, is what Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree meant when he declared publicly that the group will answer the current Saudi bombing campaign with larger operations inside Saudi territory.
As to that vessel attack mentioned earlier, it was a VLCC. Iran said it was due to a mine. CENTCOM said it was due to an Iran missile strike. Mario Nawfal, in a new talk with Larry Johnson, took the position that “it was a strike” would spook insurers less than “it was a mine”. Larry begged to differ. IMHO the CENTCOM claim is to defend its manhood, that it had removed all the mines. Even if true (doubtful), Iran can simply set new ones.
More from the live feed:
Qatar warns against ‘catastrophic’ Bab al-Mandab closure
Qatar has warned of dire consequences if the vital Bab al-Mandab waterway were to close, after a months-long blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and recent Houthi gains on the Red Sea coast.
“The world is suffering enough with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, so we cannot also afford to add the Bab al-Mandab into that equation,” Qatar foreign ministry official Ibrahim Al Hashmi told reporters.
He said a closure of the southern entrance to the Red Sea would be “catastrophic for the entire world. And we are already seeing the consequences… so Qatar is pushing for diplomacy, dialogue.”
As much as most of the world is suffering from the economic collateral damage of this war, which looks destined to increase, I do not sympathize with Gulf state pearl-clutching. We said from the outset that one way out was for them to grit their teeth and come to an understanding with Iran. But one of the many important points Professor Marandi made in a new discussion with Daniel Davis is that these nominal countries lack sovereignity.
On the economic fallout, as I have said repeatedly, despite the hyperventilating headlines about the 10 year Treasury interest rate rising above 5%, bond markets remain orderly. However, higher interest rates (after a lag since stock investors are hopelessly optimistic) eventually will lower equity and (sooner) housing prices. So higher interest rates are a big deal even if a magic rate level is not.
And it goes without saying that inflation is the issue and the interest rate rises, a mere symptom. Trump’s refusal to back out of any of his price-stoking conflicts, including his trade wars, is a big driver. So too is the US running big fiscal deficits to fund mainly uneconomically unproductive activities, like feeding our bloated and ineffective arms manufacturers and throwing boatloads of money at ICE and DHS.
The energy crunch, predictably, is getting worse:
BRENT’s spot price has surged above $135 per barrel (Forties) in the physical market while the six-month calendar spread has soared to more than $20 per barrel on the futures side. Traders are anticipating an extreme shortage of crude following the halt of the East-West Petroline… pic.twitter.com/rQkRzzHBrL
— John Kemp (@JKempEnergy) September 15, 2026
Diesel price action is looking uncomfortably like a moonshot:
🇺🇸 U.S. diesel prices surge to $6.23 per gallon, a new all-time high https://t.co/TfRusbzP5U
— Hedgeye (@Hedgeye) September 14, 2026
Trump’s and Bessent’s manipulations are becoming less and less effective:
I just woke up and noticed that while Trump was busy screaming NY Harbour Diesel futures from 5.14 to 5$, the US national average diesel price at the pump rose to 6.23$
— JustDario (@DarioCpx) September 15, 2026
And when it rains, it pours. Diesel prices will come under even more pressure in the US due to a refinery fire. Admittedly, experts had been warning since July if not earlier that US refineries were running at 99% of capacity. That was not sustainable. Pushing them that hard with no maintenance downtime was destined to harm the operation. From The Hormuz Letter on Twitter:
BREAKING: ExxonMobil’s 275,000 barrel per day Joliet oil refinery in Illinois has suffered a “total power outage,” with heavy black smoke from emergency flaring visible for miles, as US diesel sits at a record $6.20 a gallon, per GasBuddy.
A total power outage at a refinery this size is highly unusual. It forces an emergency shutdown of every unit at once, with the crude and intermediates in the system flared off, which is the smoke. BP’s Whiting refinery in Indiana, the largest in the Midwest, is already partially down for maintenance, putting pressure on Great Lakes gasoline and diesel supply.
It may be too late for Trump to chew his leg off. Of course, God may smite him as He did to Lindsey Graham:
CBS NEW POLL – Generic Ballot
🟦 Democrats: 54%
🟥 Republicans: 46%
D+8 — Dems’ largest generic ballot lead this cycle by CBS (was D+5 in May)
——
🇺🇸 House Battleground Tracker
🟦 Democrats: 228
🟥 Republicans: 207
YouGov | 9/8-11 | 1,750 LV pic.twitter.com/GH3z6Pws9Z
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) September 13, 2026
📊 2026 Generic Congressional Ballot
🟦 Democrats: 46% (=)
🟥 Republicans: 42% (=)@MorningConsult | 9/7-13 | 30,013 RVhttps://t.co/roy45lhnT5 pic.twitter.com/r0N0Op2Pr3
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) September 14, 2026
There is considerable a considerable lag even if hostilities were to end tomorrow and shipping was no longer a risky business for energy and commodity supplies to go back to an approximation of the old normal. Early in the summer, Saudi Aramco had estimated the time needed as six to seven months, and it would get longer as the period of disruption dragged on.
Some additional tidbits. Hoisted from the Aljazeera live feed:
-
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says it has shot down a second MQ-1 drone in airspace east of the Strait of Hormuz, according to the semi-official Mehr News Agency. The incident brings to four the number of US-developed MQ-1s, mainly used for surveillance and reconnaissance, that Iranian forces say they have downed in recent days during operations in and around the strait.
-
The UN humanitarian agency says escalating hostilities in Yemen have displaced at least 125,000 people since the beginning of September, while civilian casualties continue to rise.
- The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday afternoon, US eastern time, to discuss the spiralling situation in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, reported the Reuters news agency. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have seized most of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including Mayyun Island, which lies in the strait.
⚡️🚨 Digest — 07:22–10:22 UTC
LEAD: IRGC says it destroyed additional MQ-1 drones over the Strait of Hormuz this morning (fifth/sixth in recent days) amid repeated airspace violations; a US F-18 was spotted at Bandar Abbas and a “Code 100” military dispersal alert was briefly…
— Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) September 15, 2026
🚨🇸🇾 IDLIB ERUPTS
Protesters take to the streets amid soaring fuel prices, rising food costs and growing anger over living conditions. Demonstrators are heard calling for the fall of Jolani with chants demanding the return of Assad.
From the birthplace of the uprising comes a message few expected to hear: “We want Assad back”😭
— Amjad M (@AmjadD_Undertkr) September 13, 2026
Done for today! See you tomorrow.
