Opinions

More than 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed during the genocide in Gaza. Israel has detained hundreds more without charges. Doctors, nurses and paramedics who stayed to treat the wounded have themselves become casualties of this war.

When medical staff are killed, imprisoned or disappeared, it is not only they who pay the price. Patients lose the people they rely on to keep them alive.

This is something delegates who gather in Rotterdam this week for the General Assembly of the World Medical Association (WMA) must remember. The fate of their Palestinian colleagues should be put on the table, not as a debating point, but as a test of whether the world’s governing body of medical ethics still means what it says.

The WMA already recognised the seriousness of these issues last year by adopting a resolution on the protection of healthcare in conflict. That was an important step and a welcome reaffirmation of the principles of medical neutrality. The challenge now is to ensure this is followed by the commitment of every medical association to explicitly support it and to use its influence to pressure governments to act.

If the WMA Assembly needs a single face for this file, it could be the one of Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the paediatrician who was the head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza until Israeli forces stormed it in December 2024.

He’s been held now for more than 22 months without charge under Israel’s Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, which permits indefinite detentions. He reportedly continues to endure prolonged solitary confinement, beatings, severe weight loss and untreated pre-existing conditions. An international petition for his release has drawn the signatures of more than 970 medical professionals from 41 countries.

Alongside him stands Dr Mazen al-Rantisi, the 71-year-old family physician from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, known as the “doctor of the poor”. He was arrested in June in a predawn raid on his home.

In addition, our longtime Doctors Without Borders (MSF) colleague, Dr Mohammed Hassan Ali Obeid, a respected 43-year-old Palestinian orthopaedic surgeon and father of three children, has been detained under the Unlawful Combatants Law in Israel for more than 600 days without charge.

Although detained health workers have been released, more than 80 remain in Israeli custody alongside at least a dozen arrested from the West Bank.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded 1,000 attacks on healthcare, which have resulted in more than 1,000 deaths and 1,700 injuries in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Roughly 90 percent of Gaza’s health infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged. In August 2025, United Nations experts stated that the systematic destruction of the health system amounts to “medicide”.

In the West Bank, where no wartime emergency provides cover, the WHO also documented more than 1,000 attacks on healthcare since October 7, 2023, with 42 deaths and at least 218 injuries.

Ambulances are stopped at checkpoints and their crews taken. Medics trying to reach people injured in settler attacks have themselves been obstructed. Dialysis and oncologic patients stay home because the checkpoints make the journey to treatment impossible. Healthcare workers have been shot, detained and killed during Israeli military raids.

All of this represents Israel’s deliberate and systematic endeavour to dismantle Palestinians’ capacity to provide care. This is consistent with its clear and blatant disregard for Palestinian life.

The WMA Assembly should speak plainly about what is happening. It should call publicly for the release of detained Palestinian doctors, including Abu Safia, al-Rantisi and Obeid. It should press for independent access to those still being held. And it should back independent investigations into attacks on healthcare in Gaza and the West Bank with the findings made public regardless of where they lead.

This is an opportunity to collectively pressure fellow medical associations, political authorities and any relevant bodies to take action.

What lies before the Rotterdam assembly is a duty. One that reaffirms loudly, structurally, universally the founding proposition of the WMA: that membership carries an ethical responsibility, which does not flex with geography or alliances.

Healthcare workers are not targets. Either a white coat is worth protecting everywhere, or it is protected nowhere. The test is not simply whether we affirm these principles, but whether we uphold them when it matters most.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

As Israel prepares to mark three years since the October 7 attacks and with less than a month to go to parliamentary elections, one topic is dominating the electoral agenda.

Media reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned by the United Arab Emirates before the attacks have put his alleged responsibility back in the spotlight.

“Did he know?” is the question on everyone’s lips.

Listening to the accusatory choir, one might think that Israeli society finally is acknowledging the real meaning of October 7. Yet the opposite is true.

Instead of giving a platform to a reckoning, the elections function to scapegoat Netanyahu for his alleged role in facilitating Hamas’s attack while absolving Israeli society and the Zionist movement of its collective responsibility for the preceding violence and ensuing genocidal aggression.

For example, it does not insist on investigating whether the “Hannibal Directive” was deployed as part of the Israeli military response on October 7 and whether it killed Israeli citizens and how many.

It does not scrutinise subsequent Israeli military operations or whether they put the Israeli hostages in danger or how many were killed by Israeli bombs.

There is no questioning of why key Palestinian negotiators were attacked during ceasefire and hostage negotiations, including Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s chief negotiator, in July 2024 in Tehran and Hamas’s negotiating delegation in September 2025 in Doha.

There is no debate about why the Israeli government repeatedly rejected ceasefire proposals that could have brought the hostages back much earlier.

There is little attention paid to the fact that Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant face arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

None of these made the cut. Why?

The answer lies in the psychological state of Israeli society. For many Israelis, October 7 became a psychological rupture, making it difficult to reconcile their sense of humanity with their complicity in the criminal reality that followed.

The problem, then, is not that Israelis are in denial or misinformed. It is that a large portion of the society is complicit in criminality and actively avoids reckoning with it.

The absence of Gaza and Palestinians more broadly from Israeli political discourse is because of their complete dehumanisation by Israeli society.

How else could one explain the absence from the election rhetoric of questions about, and subsequent accountability for, actions against the Palestinian people?

Why has the Israeli military killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians? Why has it carried out mass and arbitrary detentions, torture and enforced disappearances of Palestinians?

Why has it targeted journalists, medical workers and academics? Destroyed and occupied hospitals? Wiped out ancient landmarks and irreplaceable cultural heritage sites?

Why has the sadistic and often sexually deviant celebration of destruction, subjugation, ethnic cleansing and death by Israeli soldiers been allowed?

What’s more, there is also little interrogation of the consequences of bombing and invading Lebanon, killing nearly 9,000 people since October 2023. Or bombing Syria and Yemen.

These are not isolated abuses. They are symptoms of a system of theft and domination driven by greed and sustained through psychological conditioning, segregation, fear and rewards for aggression. In line with the “Wired to Steal” model, dehumanisation helps produce consent for aggression while escalation following acts of resistance leads to normalisation of further expansion and robbery.

Thus, this election is not about a reckoning with October 7 or its horrifying aftermath. It is a lens onto a fascistic settler society engaged in denial and dehumanisation of an Indigenous “other” as a means of evading and normalising its own ongoing genocidal actions. Although Netanyahu may become the scapegoat, replacing him does not address the underlying machinery of domination and may instead serve to entrench it further.

That machinery remains firmly in place. The continuity between the violence unleashed since October 7 and the longer history of Zionist colonial expansionism is striking, with no lessons learned other than how to improve and grease the machinations of genocide. Fear, victimhood and the construction of a permanently besieged “us” against a dehumanised “them” continue to produce consent for further aggression and expansion.

October 7, therefore, has become not an occasion for genuine reckoning but another means of avoiding one. Netanyahu seeks to focus responsibility for the attacks on questions of what he knew and when while leaving the much broader record of what Israel has done since largely outside the electoral debate. His opponents, meanwhile, have their own complicity and ambitions to answer for. Thus, there is little political interest in a genuine reckoning with October 7. The fixation on Netanyahu allows the wider political establishment and Israeli society to avoid confronting the system of domination in which they remain invested.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

It is increasingly difficult to regard what is happening in the West Bank as merely a series of measures that the Israeli government justifies on security grounds or as part of counterterrorism operations. Taken together, the cumulative pattern and expanding scope of these measures point to a broader political and territorial trajectory: one aimed at reshaping the West Bank, imposing new facts on the ground, entrenching Israeli control and advancing the de facto annexation of large parts of the territory while simultaneously subjecting Palestinians to mounting pressure that, directly or indirectly, pushes them from their land.

Israeli, journalistic and research reports have documented the intensification of this trajectory through settlement expansion, land confiscation, restrictions on Palestinian movement, control over water resources and grazing areas as well as military operations and repeated internal displacement in several parts of the West Bank.

Considered individually, each of these measures may appear to be a separate issue. Viewed together, however, they reveal a more consequential development: an effort to re-engineer the geography and demography of the West Bank in ways that undermine the prospect of establishing a contiguous and viable Palestinian state.

The question, therefore, is no longer simply what is happening in the West Bank.

The more urgent question is how can Jordan, the Palestinians, the Arab world and the international community prevent this trajectory from becoming a permanent reality.

Jordan Valley at the heart of the equation

The Jordan Valley assumes exceptional importance in this context, not only because of its geographical and security significance but also because of its agricultural and economic importance and its water resources for the Palestinian people.

Reports concerning the construction of a new Israeli barrier, referred to as the “Crimson Thread”, extending roughly 480km (300 miles) from the Golan Heights to the Red Sea, warrant serious Jordanian, Arab and international scrutiny, particularly if such a project is intended to isolate the Jordan Valley and place as much as 83 percent of its total area under Israeli control.

Such a development could in effect sever the West Bank from Jordan and deprive Palestinians of one of their most important agricultural and water resources.

Borders, walls, roads and settlements cease to be merely physical infrastructure when they are combined with control over land and water. They become instruments for reshaping political and demographic geography and weakening the ability of Palestinians to remain on their land.

This is precisely where the Palestinian issue intersects directly with Jordan’s national security.

Jordan faces a different phase

Jordan cannot treat developments in the West Bank as an exclusively Palestinian matter. At its core, this is an issue of Jordanian national security, regional stability and the future of the Palestinian cause.

Any fundamental change to the geographical or demographic reality of the West Bank will inevitably carry direct consequences for Jordan because of geography, history and proximity. And if the eventual outcome is forced displacement, then, as King Abdullah II has repeatedly made clear, such a scenario would amount to a declaration of war on Jordan.

The policy required of Jordan at this stage, therefore, must be proactive: one that anticipates possible scenarios and prepares for them politically, diplomatically, economically and in security terms.

First: Protect Jordanian national unity

Jordan’s first line of defence is its national unity.

At this stage, it is essential to strengthen the concepts of citizenship and the state, consolidate full equality among Jordanians, and reject any discourse or practice that creates divisions on the basis of origin, region or roots.

The Palestinian cause must remain a national, Arab and humanitarian cause. It must not be allowed to become a source of division within Jordanian society.

Responsibility falls on both the state and society to confront hate speech and incitement, apply the law equally and fairly, and protect the national fabric from attempts to exploit regional turmoil to sow division among Jordanians.

One of the gravest outcomes Jordan must prevent is the transfer of the conflict into its own domestic sphere. Relations among Jordanians of different origins, including those of Jordanian and Palestinian heritage, must never become a vulnerable fault line through which those seeking discord, whether from within the country or from abroad, can operate.

National unity, therefore, is not merely a social value. It is an integral component of Jordan’s national security architecture.

Second: Move from diplomacy of protest to diplomacy of pressure and proportionate action

Jordan has accumulated considerable international credibility and diplomatic capital. The present phase, however, requires Jordan to expand the tools at its disposal.

It is no longer sufficient simply to condemn settlement activity, reject annexation or warn against displacement. What is needed is an Arab, Islamic and international diplomatic front capable of translating political positions into practical measures.

In coordination with Palestine and Arab and Islamic states, Jordan should work to:

• Mobilise countries that reject annexation and settlement expansion.
• Support international legal action.
• Push for concrete measures and sanctions not only against settlements but also against state policies that enable and encourage them.
• Systematically document violations.
• Use Arab political and economic relations with influential states more strategically, expanding economic cooperation with countries that adopt firm positions against the Israeli occupation while recalibrating engagement with those that remain reluctant to take clear positions towards Israeli policies.
• Build an international coalition capable of preventing the imposition of irreversible facts by force.

A comparison with Russia’s war in Ukraine is instructive. When Russia occupied large areas of Ukrainian territory, sanctions were not confined to the territories under occupation; they were imposed on Russia itself. The question, therefore, is why a different standard should apply elsewhere.

The international community does not lack resolutions or statements. What it lacks is the conversion of political will into a tangible cost for those who violate international law.

Third: Establish an Arab and Islamic fund for Palestinian resilience

If the objective is to prevent displacement and enable Palestinians to remain on their land, financial support must become a sustained strategic policy rather than seasonal assistance tied to moments of crisis.

One option would be to establish an Arab, Islamic and international fund dedicated to strengthening Palestinian resilience with a mandate to finance specific projects in the West Bank and Gaza, including:

• Protecting land threatened with confiscation.
• Supporting farmers.
• Developing water resources and irrigation networks.
• Assisting affected families.
• Financing housing projects in vulnerable areas.
• Supporting education and health services.
• Assisting municipalities and local councils.
• Providing alternative sources of income to families who have lost employment as a result of Israeli measures.

Resilience is not merely a political slogan. It is a material reality.

Every Palestinian family who remains on its land, every farmer who continues to cultivate his fields and every village that retains access to its water resources represents part of the effort to prevent displacement.

Fourth: Treat the Jordan Valley as a Jordanian national security issue

Jordan should address developments in the Jordan Valley as a permanent strategic file.

A specialised Jordanian mechanism should be established to monitor:

• Settlement expansion.
• Land confiscation.
• The construction of roads, barriers and walls.
• Demographic changes.
• Control over water resources.
• Population movements and displacement.
• Any measures that could permanently alter the status quo.

These developments should be documented through maps, satellite imagery, statistics and official records so Jordan maintains a comprehensive dossier that can be used politically and legally before the international community.

Struggles over land are not determined by force alone. They are also shaped by documentation, maps, law and the ability to present an authoritative, evidence-based account of what is happening.

Fifth: Strengthen Jordan’s national defence architecture

Strengthening Jordan’s ability to protect its security, borders and national interests is not optional.

Jordan is a country with limited resources, but it possesses significant human and institutional expertise. It can further develop an advanced national defence, civil protection and crisis-management architecture.

This could include strengthening national service and training programmes, enhancing civil defence preparedness, protecting critical infrastructure, reinforcing cybersecurity and border security, and improving disaster and emergency management.

Jordan could also draw on the extensive experience of retired military personnel through structured national programmes under the supervision of appropriate state institutions, thereby strengthening the country’s overall defensive readiness.

The strength Jordan requires is the strength of deterrence, protection and preparedness, not an impulse towards an ill-considered confrontation.

Sixth: Prevent Jordan from becoming an “alternative homeland”

This issue must remain at the centre of Jordanian strategic calculations.

Any project that directly or indirectly leads to the depopulation of the West Bank or pushes large numbers of Palestinians towards Jordan is not merely a humanitarian question. It would carry profound political, security and demographic consequences for the kingdom.

Jordan’s position, therefore, must remain unequivocal: Resolving the Palestinian question cannot come at Jordan’s expense; displacement is not a political solution; and Jordan is not an alternative homeland for the Palestinian people.

At the same time, Jordan must preserve the humanitarian and legal dimensions of its response to any forced developments, so that opposition to displacement does not translate into further suffering for civilians.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The school year started in occupied East Jerusalem with the news that 45,000 Palestinian children are now studying a curriculum put together by the Israeli authorities. That is more than a third of the Palestinian students in the occupied territory and almost double the number from the previous year.

Meanwhile, Christian schools started the school year with a strike, as many of their teachers who live in the occupied West Bank were not granted permits to enter the city.

For the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem, this is yet another form of encroachment on their national rights by the occupation authorities. For Israel, this is a justified intervention because Palestinian textbooks produced by the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Palestinian teachers trained in Palestinian Authority (PA) institutions “teach hate”.

According to international humanitarian law, an occupying power must facilitate the normal operation of educational institutions and avoid interference in their affairs. Recently updated commentary by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the institution tasked with overseeing the application of the Geneva Convention, says an occupying power must not replace the existing education system with its own structures or impose new curricula.

Yet Israeli interference in Palestinian education is extensive and reaches well beyond occupied East Jerusalem – into the occupied West Bank and, more recently, the Gaza Strip. For years, successive Israeli governments have demanded that the United States and European governments pressure the PA to revise its textbooks by conditioning aid. Meanwhile, the devastation of Gaza’s education system has allowed NGOs funded by Western donors to introduce curriculums approved by Israel.

The Israeli argument that all this is necessary to prevent Palestinian children from learning “to hate” in school does not stand up to scrutiny.

Academic research, including a study funded by the US Department of State and prepared by both Palestinian and Israeli scholars, found that Palestinian textbooks do not promote hate and dehumanisation of Israelis.

So what is Israel actually looking to revise in Palestinian textbooks?

Studies comparing Palestinian textbooks with the Israeli-edited versions used in occupied East Jerusalem have documented the removal or alteration of references to Palestinian national symbols, such as the national flag and anthem, Palestinian sovereignty and history.

A 2025 study of primary-school textbooks found that Israeli modifications included replacing “Palestine” with “Israel” in some contexts and removing passages about the realities of occupation.

Israel wants references to the occupation, Palestinian history and self-determination erased from Palestinian textbooks not because they “teach hate”, but because they teach Palestinian children national consciousness – something Israel has fought against since its own creation, claiming “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people”.

This is why Palestinian resistance to curriculum changes in East Jerusalem should not be understood only as resistance to an Israeli textbook. For many parents, teachers and schools, the fear is that accepting the Israeli curriculum also means accepting the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem and its erasure of Palestinian identity inside it.

Removing concepts such as the occupation, the Nakba, refugees, the right of return, Palestinian sovereignty and national symbols from education materials can gradually detach Palestinian political identity from the historical narrative that gives those claims meaning.

While Israel gets to censor and shape Palestinian curriculums, there is little scrutiny by its Western allies of what Israeli curriculums teach Israeli children.

For her book Palestine in Israeli School Books, Israeli philologist Nurit Peled-Elhanan studied Israeli history and geography textbooks published in the post-Oslo years and discovered the extensive use of racist tropes and erasure of Palestinians. In the conclusion, she expressed concern that Israeli students graduate from Israeli schools and enter mandatory military service having “been taught to resent and fear” Palestinians and having no knowledge of their “life-world”.

Another more recent study of 123 textbooks used in Jewish Israeli schools by Israeli scholar Yael Teff-Seker found strong ethnocentric framing, a persistent sense of Jewish victimhood and relatively little space for Palestinian narratives. The author notes that while the concept of peace with Arab nations is described positively, the occupation is “described impartially, without judgement”, while the occupied Palestinian territory is sometimes referred to with Israeli names, for example, Judea and Samaria instead of the occupied West Bank.

A research paper coauthored by another Israeli academic, Roy Weintraub, explores how Israeli state curricula cover the Nakba, one of the central events that shapes Palestinian identity and political realities. The term is “partially present” in Israeli textbooks and teaching materials and “most teaching materials justify the actions taken by Israeli forces during the 1948 War”. The paper concludes: “Inclusion of difficult histories in the curriculum does not necessarily encourage a critical understanding of the suffering and injustices experienced.”

The issue with the curricula in Israel-Palestine is larger than education. It is about power. When one side controls land, movement, permits, budgets and institutions, and can also influence the language through which the other side describes that reality to its children, the classroom becomes another arena of the conflict itself.

The struggle over Palestinian textbooks is not only about what children should learn. It is also about who has the authority to decide what counts as legitimate history in the first place.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

US president’s comments came after he was asked why North Korea can have nuclear weapons when Iran cannot.

United States President Donald Trump has described North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “a friend” and played down concerns about Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal, saying, “as long as I’m around, he’s going to be fine”.

Trump made the remarks in Washington, DC, on Tuesday after a reporter asked him why North Korea could have nuclear weapons but Iran could not.

“That’s interesting. You know why? Because you had a different president, and they could have stopped him,” he said, referring to previous US administrations.

“He happens to be a friend of mine, Kim Jong Un, he’s a friend of mine. He likes Trump, doesn’t like a lot of other people. I’m about the only person in the entire world that he likes, and I like him,” he said.

He said North Korea’s nuclear capacity was “pretty large” but “not like us”.

“You know what, as long as I’m around, he’s going to be fine,” he added. “You know why? Because he respects me and he likes me.”

South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said last week that its northern neighbour possessed between 80 and 120 nuclear warheads. The figure is significantly higher than Trump’s recent assertion that Pyongyang has 57 nuclear weapons.

Trump is seeking to re-engage with Kim and secure a win on the international stage as the US and Israel’s war on Iran enters its eighth month.

The US president launched the war along with Israel on February 28, saying Iran could not have a nuclear weapon. Iran has denied seeking a weapon, noting it had signed an agreement with world powers in 2015 that curbed its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. But Trump abandoned the agreement during his first term in 2018.

The US-Israel war on Iran has disrupted global energy supplies, raised fuel costs and hurt Trump’s popularity ahead of the November midterm elections.

Trump held summits with North Korea’s Kim in 2018 and 2019, but diplomacy broke down over US demands that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons. Since then, Kim has expanded his arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles and strengthened his diplomatic footprint by aligning with Russia over its war in Ukraine and tightening relations with China.

Trump had earlier said he planned to hold in-person talks with Kim before the end of the year.

But North Korea has not formally committed to such a meeting.

The Strait of Hormuz remains the most perilous choke point on the global map as Iran continues to disrupt traffic by attacking vessels. A recent proposal by the Islamic Republic to open the waterway within seven days raised hopes that the situation could go back to normal. United States President Donald Trump, however, rejected the offer.

To understand the strategic calculus behind his high-stakes decision, one must look beyond the immediate tactical noise and peer into the deeper logic of deterrence.

On its surface, the rejection of a temporary truce in the world’s most vital energy corridor appears to be a reckless gamble – a provocation inviting the very conflagration the West seeks to avoid. But viewed through the lens of cold realism, the rejection was not only a calculated necessity; it was the right decision.

The Iranian regime’s proposal was a classic exercise in asymmetric diplomacy. It offered a brief window of stability, a transactional pause, in exchange for what would have amounted to a de facto relaxation of American pressure. To accept such terms would have meant embracing the delusional belief that a terrorist power can be bribed into good behaviour by accepting its terms of engagement.

Had Washington accepted, it would have validated Iran’s self-assumed right to turn the spigot of global commerce on and off at will. By flatly rejecting the offer, Trump signalled that freedom of navigation is not a chip to be bartered in a week-long bazaar, but an absolute, non-negotiable prerequisite of international order.

The timing of this gambit – on the eve of the critical midterm elections – has naturally drawn the ire of the domestic political class. Critics argue that risking an energy crisis and a subsequent spike in oil prices weeks before Americans head to the ballot box is an act of political self-immolation. This view, while superficially plausible, misunderstands both the nature of the electorate and the psychology of our adversaries.

The Iranians chose this moment to put forward their proposal precisely because of the midterm elections. They are sophisticated observers of American domestic politics. They calculated that an administration facing an electoral test would be paralysed by the fear of rising fuel prices and would eagerly grasp at any diplomatic lifeline, however flimsy, to keep the peace until November.

Had Trump capitulated to save Republicans a few points at the polls, he would have handed Iran a profound psychological victory. He would have demonstrated that American foreign policy is subservient to the domestic election calendar – a vulnerability that every autocracy from Moscow to Beijing would immediately exploit.

By taking the gamble before the midterm elections, Trump has turned the tables. He has demonstrated that his administration is willing to absorb short-term political pain in pursuit of long-term strategic clarity. This is the essence of credible deterrence.

Deterrence is not merely a function of military hardware; it is a function of perceived will. When an adversary believes you are too weak, too compromised, or too worried about the next election cycle to defend your core interests, deterrence fails. By rejecting the seven-day proposal, the Trump administration proved it could not be blackmailed by the electoral calendar.

Trump’s decision reflects a sophisticated understanding of the regime in Tehran. The Islamic Republic is currently facing an acute internal economic crisis, a direct consequence of the sustained American maximum-pressure campaign.

The seven-day proposal was not a gesture of Iranian confidence; it was a sign of desperation disguised as a diplomatic overture. It was an attempt to buy breathing room, fragment the expanding international coalition against Tehran and project an image of being in control to its own restive population.

To grant Iran that reprieve would have been to throw a lifeline to an antagonist regime on the ropes. Clearly, this offer was only made because US strategy is working and Iran’s economy is cratering.

History teaches us that truces with terrorist regimes are rarely precursors to permanent peace; they are merely opportunities for the aggressor to rearm, recalibrate and choose the next moment of confrontation on more favourable terms. A short-term guarantee of open shipping lanes implied that any day, the threat could return, magnified by the legitimacy Washington would have afforded to Iran’s leverage.

The critics who cry havoc at this decision are the heirs of the foreign policy establishment that spent decades managing decline through endless, inconclusive and failed negotiations. They prefer the comfortable fiction of a temporary deal to the hard reality of a sustained geopolitical contest.

President Trump’s gamble is risky, yes. The potential for miscalculation in the narrow waters of the Gulf is always present. But the risk of inaction, or of a pliant accommodation, is far greater.

By holding the line, the administration has reaffirmed a foundational principle of US global stewardship: the US will not permit rogue states to hold the global economy hostage.

The rejection of the Iranian proposal is the correct path because it chooses clarity of American resolve over partisan political convenience. It signals to the regime in Iran that its leverage is artificial and its economic isolation is permanent unless its behaviour changes.

This November, American voters will decide the composition of the US Congress based on a multitude of domestic and foreign policy factors. But on the global stage, Trump remains steadfast by demonstrating that principle trumps political expediency.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Amid the worsening global energy crisis triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran, European countries, desperate for alternative energy supplies, trade routes and partnerships, have looked across the Mediterranean for solutions.

As a result, governments across North Africa have started to reassess their strategic value. Algeria is in an especially strong position as an established gas supplier, while Egypt can offer infrastructure, refining capacity and access through the Suez Canal.

Libya has also seen its strategic value increase. It has around 48 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest in Africa, and produces 1.5 million barrels of oil per day. It also has substantial natural gas reserves.

Its oil reaches international markets through the Mediterranean, while the Greenstream gas pipeline connects its Mellitah complex directly to Europe.

Libya cannot replace the Gulf in terms of oil and gas exports, but it can become a major player in diversification efforts not just in Europe but elsewhere in the world. The challenge the country faces is how to take full advantage amid structural constraints and insecurity.

Energy insecurity at home

Libya is simultaneously a major energy exporter and an energy-insecure state. Although the country possesses vast oil and gas resources, Libyans experience regular electricity blackouts due to an inefficient domestic energy system.

More than 70 percent of Libyan gas production is consumed domestically, mostly for electricity generation. Production has struggled to meet both domestic needs and export commitments. Gas exports consequently fell year on year from around 200 billion cubic feet in 2019 to 35 billion in 2025, the lowest export levels in 22 years.

At the same time, the country is flaring at least 200 billion cubic feet of gas annually due to underdeveloped infrastructure. Gas that could generate electricity, support industry or increase exports is instead being wasted.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated Libya’s total energy subsidy burden at around $17bn, equivalent to roughly 35 percent of GDP – one of the largest in the world.

Much of these funds go into subsidising imported refined fuels, as domestic refining capacity is largely underdeveloped and cannot meet demand.

The domestic energy situation is compounded by political fragmentation, institutional disputes and periodic disruptions to production due to conflict.

Increasing exports without addressing these problems risks improving energy security abroad while neglecting it at home, and that is a recipe for more instability in an already fragile nation.

Opportunity or trap?

The global energy crisis triggered by the Iran war is surely a major opportunity for Libya to increase its revenues from hydrocarbons. But it also carries a risk.

As I pointed out during the 5th meeting of the Mediterranean Energy Experts Circle earlier this month, greater demand for Libyan oil and gas could reinforce the economic model the country has struggled to escape from for decades: producing hydrocarbons, exporting them, distributing the revenues and postponing structural reform.

This model does not allow Libya to capture the full economic potential of its resource wealth. It keeps the Libyan state stuck in the all too familiar “resource curse”, which promotes economic stagnation and inefficiency.

That is why when taking advantage of heightened demand for energy, it is crucial that Libya uses the proceeds to transform its energy system.

That means capturing flared gas, modernising electricity generation and transmission, expanding domestic refining where economically viable, reforming subsidies, investing seriously in renewable energy and participating in sustainable regional energy cooperation.

Libya’s National Sustainable Energy Strategy aims to have 22 percent of electricity generation from renewable sources by 2035, an ambitious target that requires major positive shifts in security and governance conditions. Increased revenue flows can help jump-start the process.

Another important consideration is how the country should approach heightened foreign interest. Libya’s first major oil and gas licensing round since 2007 was concluded in February, with the US’s Chevron, Italy’s Eni, QatarEnergy, Spain’s Repsol, Hungary’s MOL, Nigeria’s Aiteo, and Türkiye’s TPAO securing new licences.

Commercial and geopolitical interests are rarely completely separate in energy. For Libya, this creates bargaining power—if managed coherently by the Libyans. Rather than becoming an arena in which external actors compete for individual assets and relationships, Libya could use diversified partnerships to attract investment and technology while reducing dependence on any single partner.

From energy exporter to Mediterranean energy hub

The transformation Libya seeks should not be confined to its borders. Its strategic objective should be to become an integral player in a Mediterranean energy hub by expanding cooperation with neighbouring states and leveraging existing production capacities and infrastructure.

To Libya’s east, Egypt has a large electricity system and significant refining and processing capacity. To its west, Tunisia provides access towards the wider Maghreb and increasingly towards European markets. Libya sits between them with enormous hydrocarbon resources, considerable solar potential and existing energy connections with both neighbours.

Important steps have already been taken to deepen regional energy integration. In January, Egypt and Libya signed an energy cooperation agreement covering exploration and the development of crude-oil refining. The two countries are also discussing the construction of an 800km pipeline connecting Tobruk to Alexandria. The project is worth $1bn and would carry Libyan crude directly to Egyptian refineries.

Libya and Tunisia are also expanding cooperation. Earlier this month, the Libyan-Tunisian company Joint Oil opened an international licensing round covering around 3,000 square kilometres of shared offshore acreage and development of the cross-border Zarat oil and gas discovery. Formal awards are expected by the end of April 2027.

The risk here is that expanded cooperation could develop into dependence. How to avoid that is the lesson Libya can learn from the Strait of Hormuz crisis. The country still needs sufficient domestic electricity, refining and production capacity to protect itself. Regional integration should add alternatives rather than create new vulnerabilities: more markets, more electricity connections, more processing options and more export routes.

The objective should therefore be specialisation, connectivity and redundancy all achieved in the right sequence depending on needs and conditions.

A moment for strategic redesign

The Iran war has given Libya something potentially more valuable than temporarily higher hydrocarbon prices: renewed strategic relevance. But greater strategic relevance does not automatically make the country a more reliable energy partner.

Converting the former into the latter requires a radically different approach not just to the domestic oil and gas industry, but also to overall economic development and regional geopolitics.

Libya must use this moment to pursue strategic redesign: to increase production while recovering wasted gas, improve electricity infrastructure, develop refining and renewables, strengthen regional connections and cooperation, and use competition among international partners to attract investment.

Libya already has the resources and the geography to become an even bigger player in the energy market. The question is whether it can build the rest.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Tehran, Iran – Hours after US President Donald Trump rejected a diplomatic solution put forward by Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, explosions were heard in the waterway, according to Iranian media.

Reports of blasts near southern Iran’s Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz suggested that multiple antiship missiles and drones were fired at vessels transiting the waterway against Tehran’s wishes.

While Iranian authorities did not confirm any attacks in the Strait of Hormuz that day, shipping continues to be attacked in the waters, including an Indian cargo ship last week, which killed a sailor.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) maintains that the strait is closed to any ship that does not coordinate with Iranian authorities. On Sunday afternoon, it released video of what it said was a second US underwater drone seized this month.

Tehran has issued instructions to shipping companies transiting the Strait of Hormuz to use a temporary route approved by Iranian authorities and pay relevant fees. But it has also said the strait will not fully reopen until the US blockade on Iranian ports ends.

Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority announced on Saturday that it would blacklist any shipping charterer company which orders crews to use routes it considers to be unauthorised.

It also published what it described as an apology from an unnamed shipowner blaming commercial pressure from its charterer for trying to pass through the strait.

Washington still insists that its warships are successfully guiding oil tankers out of the strait via a different route. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox News on Sunday that the “running average” of crude oil in transit was nearly 13 million barrels per day.

A September 19 operational update by US Central Command claimed that its forces had helped move more than one billion barrels of crude out of the Gulf over roughly two months.

The US military also says its forces have redirected 122 commercial vessels to enforce the naval blockade of Iran’s ports, halting all Iranian crude exports.

Tehran has claimed that the US is providing false information regarding Strait of Hormuz traffic to project control over the key waterway. Shipping has been severely disrupted since the US and Israel started their war on Iran on February 28.

Andreas Krieg, associate professor at King’s College London, said Iran’s strategy of launching maritime attacks has spread the economic costs of the conflict beyond its borders.

While Iran has suffered economically from war damages, the US naval blockade and sanctions, it would be a mistake “to assume that reaching that threshold produces submission”.

“The next Iranian move is therefore likely to be an attempt to increase the pain experienced by the Gulf rather than simply absorb further American pressure,” Krieg said.

“That could mean more aggressive vessel interdictions in Hormuz, attacks on energy infrastructure, greater Houthi pressure around Bab al-Mandeb and pressure from Iranian-aligned groups against alternative Saudi export routes. We are already seeing how pressure on Hormuz, the Red Sea and Saudi infrastructure can interact.”

More escalation on the way

At the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Iran projected a message of defiance while also proposing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within a week if its seven conditions were met.

They included lifting the blockade on Iran, the release of frozen Iranian funds and an end to attacks on all fronts, including Israel’s assault on Lebanon. The demands mostly amounted to a return to the June memorandum of understanding between the US and Israel.

Tehran has added that reopening the strait must be undertaken through a bilateral arrangement already finalised with Oman, the only other country with territorial waters in Hormuz.

US President Donald Trump told reporters he rejected the offer, but Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday they were adamant about the conditions and would await an official response through mediators, such as Pakistan, Qatar and Oman.

Abolfazl Shekarchi, chief spokesman of the Iranian armed forces, warned that if the US further intervenes in the Strait of Hormuz, “it will get slapped”.

“The Americans have no way out other than withdrawing from the West Asia region. The sooner they leave, the fewer losses they will incur and the region will certainly become safe after that,” he said.

Iranian army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia  said conditions were deteriorating so badly for the US that it might launch another “military aggression” on Iran.

Krieg said that as the US moves to isolate Iran via sanctions, Tehran, unable to respond with mutual financial measures against Washington, will be forced to rely on continued coercion in the Strait of Hormuz.

“The most likely level remains controlled attrition rather than an immediate return to the massive air campaign of the opening months,” Krieg said.

“Over the coming weeks, I would expect further attacks or attempted attacks on tankers, US-enabled shipping and regional infrastructure, followed by limited US strikes against IRGC maritime assets, coastal missile positions, drones or vessels involved in those operations. That tit-for-tat cycle has already re-emerged around Hormuz.”

Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez took to the stage yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City to deliver a rather bland speech, in which she thanked United States President Donald Trump for resuming “diplomatic relations and cooperation” with Venezuela.

This was a different vibe, to be sure, than the one she opted for at the same venue in September 2019, when, as vice president under Nicolas Maduro, she accused the US of perpetrating “economic terrorism” that did not require the use of bombs “but rather through banks and insurance companies”.

Denouncing the global superpower’s militarisation of international relations and punishment of millions of innocent people “in order to apply regime change doctrines and steal other nations’ resources”, the Rodriguez of 2019 went on to cite Venezuelan economic losses to the tune of $130bn between 2015 and 2018 alone on account of US sanctions.

She additionally offered her opinion that the domination of the US political system by “plutocratic minorities” made the country unqualified to impose its model on other countries.

Seven years later, US plutocracy is going strong with Trump at the helm – the same Trump alongside whom a grinning Rodriguez appeared in a photograph taken in New York on Tuesday, less than nine months after he oversaw regime change in Venezuela by kidnapping Maduro.

The kidnapped president is now also in New York, albeit in jail, and is scheduled to stand trial in June 2027. This despite his attempts to remind everyone that, as a sitting head of state, his prosecution in a foreign court contravenes international law.

Then again, abducting other countries’ presidents is also pretty glaringly illegal. But Trump has made it clear that he alone is in charge of deciding what is and is not permissible on any given day.

The abduction took place on January 3, when the US military launched air attacks on Venezuela, killing some 100 people and whisking Maduro and his wife away.

He is accused of an array of misdeeds, including being the leader of the “Cartel of the Suns” – which, mind you, does not actually exist – and engaging in “conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices”.

This is quite the accusation coming from the country that just used all manner of destructive devices to bomb Venezuela and kill a bunch of people.

Anyway, bald-faced hypocrisy is nothing new in the land of the “plutocratic minorities”.

Now, the waning corporate media interest in Maduro’s fate amounts to another coup for US impunity, as folks go about more or less forgetting that there is a foreign head of state sitting in a Brooklyn prison.

But Maduro’s disappearance works out well for Rodriguez, as she goes about enabling the very theft of resources she once decried.

Rodriguez took the stage at the UN the day after Trump, who used the platform to pat himself on the back for the trampling of Venezuelan sovereignty that conveniently culminated in last month’s announcement from the White House of the “biggest oil deal in world history”, securing US majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves.

Speaking to his international audience, Trump boasted: “To the victor belong the spoils. You’ve all heard that.”

Never mind that you’re not technically supposed to admit that you attacked a country just to get its oil. (You’re also not, in polite company, supposed to threaten to annihilate Iran – another of Trump’s UN talking points.)

Since January, the US has lifted many coercive economic measures against Venezuela (including against Rodriguez herself), easing the brutal sanctions regime that as of 2020 was estimated to have already killed 100,000 Venezuelans, according to former UN independent expert Alfred-Maurice de Zayas.

But trading sanctions for de facto colonialism isn’t a great deal, either.

Meanwhile, Trump’s continued manic bombing of vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, which a recent UN report warned may constitute crimes against humanity, suggests the US is nowhere near to kicking its old habit of terrorism – and is all the more reason that Rodriguez might have refrained from thanking the US leader for his “cooperation”.

As Gregory Wilpert, founder of the Venezuelanalysis website and author of Changing Venezuela by Taking Power, diplomatically put it to me: “One cannot help but wonder whether Delcy Rodriguez is over-complying with Trump in some aspects of her negotiations with him.”

Noting that Rodriguez is “in a highly vulnerable position”, Wilpert ran through a few of the options she faces, such as “the possibility that the Trump administration could treat her as it treated Maduro – by attempting to kidnap her – or as it treated Iran, by targeting the country’s highest levels of government”.

Or, Wilpert said, there is always the Cuba approach, which would entail “the kind of economic siege” that is undertaken “with the aim of starving an entire country”.

In her UN address, Rodriguez promised that Venezuela would hold elections at some unspecified point in time – not that the US, for its part, really cares about democracy as long as the right people are in power.

And although it’s still too early to tell, Rodriguez might just be one of those people.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Excluding Ra’am and the Joint List leaves Palestinian citizens in Israel without major Knesset representation options.

Israel’s Central Elections Committee has voted to bar both main Arab electoral lists from next month’s election, putting the political representation of Palestinian citizens of Israel before the Supreme Court weeks before voters go to the polls.

The committee voted on Wednesday to disqualify the United Arab List, or Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, and the Joint List, an alliance of the Arab-led Hadash, Ta’al and Balad parties. It also voted separately to bar Hadash legislator Ofer Cassif and Balad leader Sami Abu Shehadeh. The election is scheduled for October 27.

The bans are not final. Decisions against individual candidates require Supreme Court approval, while lists can appeal their exclusion. Adalah, the legal centre representing the parties and candidates, says it will challenge the votes when the court hears the cases next week.

Ra’am called its exclusion “political and unacceptable”, saying the decision was intended to prevent it from influencing the balance of power and changing the government.

The Joint List said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir were trying to discourage Arab citizens from voting “because they fear our ability to bring down the government of genocide and racism”. Its leader, Yousef Jabareen, questioned how the committee could bar parties representing more than 1.25 million voters.

Abu Shehadeh told Al Jazeera that his exclusion was an attempt to silence criticism of government policy and said the decisions would be challenged in court and through public protest. Rejecting the allegation that he supports violence, he told The Times of Israel: “I have never called for violence or terrorism. I oppose armed struggle.”

The petitions invoke Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset, which allows a list or candidate to be excluded for denying Israel’s existence as a “Jewish and democratic state”, inciting racism or supporting armed struggle against Israel by an enemy state or an organisation designated as terrorist.

Netanyahu’s Likud party sought to disqualify the Joint List and Cassif, and was among the groups that filed against Ra’am. Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party also sought to bar Abu Shehadeh. Adalah disputes the allegations. It says the case against Ra’am presents no evidence that the party supports armed struggle, while the Joint List petition relies heavily on old material, including bills proposed in previous Knessets.

Abu Shehadeh’s case has drawn a different response. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara found no legal basis to exclude the other targeted parties and candidates but said an article he published on October 8, 2023, which she said may constitute support for armed struggle, warranted serious examination. The committee voted 31-4 to bar him. Adalah says the article contains no such call.

The push to bar Abu Shehadeh drew support from parties outside Netanyahu’s coalition. According to The Times of Israel, opposition parties voted to disqualify him, as did Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, who chairs the elections committee. The vote broke with decades of precedent in which committee chairs abstained from disqualification votes. Abu Shehadeh’s exclusion still requires approval from the full Supreme Court.

Why the Arab vote matters

Ra’am joined the coalition government formed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in 2021, helping end Netanyahu’s 12 consecutive years in office in 2021, although Abbas had previously discussed cooperation with Netanyahu as well. Now Likud itself has filed petitions against Arab representation, while Ben-Gvir’s party has pursued separate exclusions.

A Channel 12 poll published on Tuesday projected seven seats for the Joint List and five for Ra’am, against 50 for Netanyahu’s current coalition bloc. The 12 projected Arab seats would not automatically back Netanyahu’s opponents, as mainstream opposition parties remain divided over whether to govern with Arab support. But removing both lists would change the possible routes to the 61-seat majority needed to form a government.

The Supreme Court has overturned previous committee bans on Arab lists and candidates, including Balad’s exclusion in 2022. It must now decide whether the evidence meets the legal threshold for barring the two principal lists seeking to represent Palestinian citizens of Israel. The ruling will determine who can appear on the October ballot.

The annual general debate of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) starts on Tuesday morning in New York amid dire circumstances. Besides traffic gridlock and overpriced hotel rates, cavalcades of motorcades and successive dignitaries delivering calibrated speeches, this session will hear Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s last speech on the state of the UN.

Guterres headed the UN for 10 years, and during that time, he repeatedly failed to defend it when it came under attack. He passes on his post at the top of a world organisation on the verge of financial collapse and more marginalised than ever before.

Paradoxically, Guterres has the United States, the host government of the UN, and its mercurial president, Donald Trump, to thank for this dismal state of affairs.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration withdrew from dozens of UN agencies and organs and, in an extraordinary move, ceased all payments of its dues to the regular and peacekeeping budgets of the UN. But these drastic policy decisions did not spring out of nowhere. Trump’s unhappiness with the UN is multifaceted, and his decision to stop fulfilling Washington’s legally binding financial obligation may well be the logical culmination of decades-long US policy.

In the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration accused the UN of being a third-world, anti-US forum. To compel the organisation to better serve its interests and under the guise of the ubiquitous need for reform, which all secretaries-general fell for, the US started to withhold a share of its assessed contribution, which accounted for a quarter of the regular budget and a third of the peacekeeping budget back then.

By 1987, the US relaxed its payment withholding policy, but the precedent was set. Washington continued to use the threat of withholding payment to maintain its grip on an organisation it viewed and continues to view as a vehicle serving its national interests rather than a multilateral agent serving the whole of humanity.

Ever since the Reagan years, the US has kept the UN on a short financial leash, and to this day, has been deliberately accruing arrears. It currently owes an estimated $4.2bn – that is equivalent to 120 percent of the regular UN budget for 2026.

Trump has readily embraced this policy of financial blackmail. His administration has slow-walked mandatory payments, although earlier this month it paid $827m towards its outstanding dues so it could preserve its voting rights in the UNGA.

The president’s ambivalent view of the UN may be rooted in a lesser-known detail. In 2001, Trump, then a real estate developer, lobbied then Secretary-General Kofi Annan to be awarded the billion-dollar renovation project of the UN headquarters, but he did not get his way. That was probably not forgotten.

But just like during the Reagan years, there is another major factor driving Trump’s assault on the UN: US congressional politics. As Israel faced growing backlash at the UN for its genocide in Gaza, pressure from the Israeli lobby in Washington mounted. The Iron Dome diplomatic cover the US provided to Israel in the UN Security Council (UNSC) was no longer sufficient.

By 2025, two years into the genocidal campaign, Guterres’s tepid and overdue criticisms of Israeli policies, critical UNGA resolutions and scathing reports by special rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council – including Francesca Albanese, whom Washington placed under sanctions in violation of its host country obligations – became too much for Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US Congress.

In the 1980s, Washington deemed the UN a third-world anti-US forum; today, it is deemed anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. The US’s blind and unconditional support for Israel has brought it growing isolation at the UN, as has its decision to launch a war of aggression against Iran.

Against the backdrop of these developments, the selection of the next secretary-general is dominating the behind-the-scenes agenda. Guterres’s lacklustre tenure at the helm of an organisation on the verge of financial bankruptcy and political demise will soon be forgotten. But what should be remembered is that his appeasement policy vis-a-vis Washington since the first Trump administration has evidently failed.

The new secretary-general will inherit the modus vivendi under which all secretaries-general since Javier Perez de Cuellar have had to operate — chronic cash flow problems due to US arrears.

That should motivate the new UN leadership to consider an overhaul of how the UN budget is put together and how member states’ contributions are allocated. Leaving the power of the purse in Washington’s hands is a self-inflicted perpetual wound that could prove lethal for the organisation.

Another fundamental question is whether the UN would be better off had its headquarters not been in the US. For too long, Washington has seen the UN either as a vector of its national interests or in adversarial terms. It has even used its position as a host to exclude world leaders it has viewed as hostile or undesirable, such as PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and today Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Evidently, those are decisions only the UNGA can take. But a secretary-general with foresight and political backbone ought to provide views and leadership on those seminal questions to save the organisation from further marginalisation and possible demise.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

This year, AGRA, the donor-funded agricultural development initiative formerly known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

AGRA’s slogan is “sustainably growing Africa’s food systems”, but for years, researchers and farmers have warned that the policies it promotes are having a negative impact on African agriculture.

Our new research provides more evidence to that effect. We have documented how AGRA’s Green Revolution, with its well-funded promotion of commercial seeds, fertilisers and other inputs, has failed to spur the “productivity revolution” promised by its founders.

Worse still, its promotion of monocultures, such as maize, has led to the massive expansion of land dedicated to them. At the same time, more resilient and nutritious local crops, such as millet, are losing ground.

Funding the loss of traditional crops

Hunger continues to increase in Africa, driven by climate change, desertification, conflict and disruptions to international supply lines from international conflicts like the Ukraine war. The Green Revolution promoted by AGRA does not seem to have made much of a difference.

In countries where AGRA has had significant presence, the number of undernourished people has increased by about 60 percent – roughly the same rate as the rest of the continent.

The United Nations is calling for greater attention to “affordable healthy diets”. For Africa’s small-scale farmers, who grow what their families and communities eat, that means more, not less, crop diversity, which is the opposite of what the Green Revolution has produced.

In countries that have participated in AGRA projects, crops such as maize are promoted and funded with billions of dollars in subsidies and investment. Despite that, yields for maize have grown only modestly, just 40 percent over 18 years, well below the 100 percent improvement promised by AGRA.

Some countries, like Malawi and Ethiopia, have seen stronger yield growth for maize, but some, such as Kenya – where AGRA’s headquarters are located – have seen yields decline.

Maize production has soared across participant countries, driven mainly by the massive expansion of plantings as subsidies drive farmers to plant maize on new land.

In contrast, our research shows that traditional African staples such as sorghum, cassava, and groundnuts have lost land and investment. Since AGRA was launched in 2006, 13 countries that have participated have seen a decline in productivity of 21 percent for cassava and 10 percent for groundnuts in total.

But millet – a climate-resilient, nutritious grain – is the crop that has suffered the most. Before 2006, millet was as prevalent as maize in these countries. Since 2006, millet production has fallen 27 percent, while maize production has more than doubled. Millet yields have fallen 17 percent with the lack of investment. And as land allocated to maize production increased 71 percent, land for millet fell 12 percent.

Millet is not some backward crop waiting to be replaced by maize. For generations, it has fed communities across some of Africa’s driest regions. It can withstand heat and drought, grow with relatively few external inputs, and provide nutritious food where other crops struggle.

In 2023, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) celebrated the “Year of Millets”, highlighting the multiple benefits of the crop to the environment and social welfare.

The same is true of many of Africa’s traditional crops – sorghum, fonio, cowpeas, cassava, indigenous vegetables and many others. They are part of the biological diversity of African farming, but also of our cuisines, knowledge and cultures.

At a time of climate change, pushing such crops aside makes particularly little sense. Farmers need more options in their fields, not fewer. A diverse farm spreads risk: when one crop suffers from drought, pests or disease, another may survive. Rotation and diversity of crops help keep soils more fertile.

Valuing diversity

Rhetorically, AGRA now professes to value the very crops that its Green Revolution helped push to the margins. It speaks of diverse, nutritious and climate-adapted crops, and its seed programmes include millet, sorghum, cowpea, groundnut and others.

We welcome serious investment in these crops. It is overdue. But there is no indication that AGRA and other Green Revolution proponents will abandon their chosen monocrops, such as maize. AGRA’s current seed strategy still emphasises improved varieties, certified seeds, faster variety turnover, commercialisation and market-oriented seed systems.

Investment needs to support farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange and develop their seeds, protect crop diversity and indigenous knowledge, and ensure that farmers and communities – not seed markets alone – determine which varieties survive and spread.

African farmers do not need saving, but their crops – millet, sorghum, cowpea, fonio, and other traditional crops need to be rescued from Green Revolution crop-breeders.

When a traditional crop disappears from farmers’ fields, we can lose locally adapted seed varieties, knowledge about how to grow and prepare them and foods that are central to local diets and identities.

This is why the decline of millet should concern us far beyond the millet field. Africa is already dangerously exposed to climate shocks and volatile international food and fertiliser markets. Diversity is one of our greatest protections against those risks. Yet we are subsidising its disappearance.

It is not enough for the UN to call for greater access for all to nutritious diets. For the majority of Africa’s rural populations, who are also among its least food-secure, crop diversity is key to diet diversity. It is time for AGRA, the African Development Bank, foreign donors and African governments to stop subsidising and promoting the crops that are driving the loss of such diversity.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Russia’s parliamentary elections offer an excellent opportunity for a new round in the information war between the West and Russia. Western politicians, experts and journalists have been given yet another convenient occasion to tell their target audiences that democracy has long ceased to exist in Russia; that the federal parliament, like any other representative body, in practice determines nothing in Russian life; and that all genuinely important decisions for the country are made not even by the government but exclusively in the Kremlin, by an extremely narrow circle of individuals accountable to no one.

Therefore, in the view of many critics of the Russian authorities, elections in Russia need not have been held at all: their outcome was predetermined by Kremlin political strategists and, in any event, will have no significant impact on the country’s future.

And yet even the most biased outside observer could hardly fail to notice the obvious: the Russian authorities made consistent and persistent efforts to ensure that these elections attracted the highest possible participation and were conducted successfully under current electoral law. For at least the past several months, the country had experienced heightened political activity.

Leading politicians and state officials constantly reminded the electorate of the importance of the coming elections. Governors of politically “problematic” regions were urgently allocated additional subsidies. Payments to certain categories of public-sector employees and pensioners were hastily indexed. And inevitable but unpopular or painful decisions for the public – for example, the forthcoming significant nationwide increase in housing and utility tariffs – were postponed until after the elections.

Even possible shifts in Russia’s position on the conflict with Ukraine and future relations with the West were often linked in public and political discussions to the results of the September elections, which were supposedly meant to “untie the hands” of the Russian leadership, although there were very different, sometimes diametrically opposed, views about how exactly the leadership would use these “untied hands”. In any case, it must be acknowledged that the Kremlin did not take the easy path of its opponents in Kyiv, who simply postponed the 2024 Ukrainian presidential election until better, “postwar” times, despite clear discontent and muted grumbling from part of Ukraine’s political class.

What is going on here? Why should the Kremlin invest so much energy and so many resources in what is often interpreted outside Russia as little more than an unconvincing simulation of genuine political competition? Why launch a new full electoral cycle while a large-scale military conflict has yet to end, when the normal boundaries of peacetime political democracy tend, one way or another, to narrow?

It is difficult to suppose that holding elections in Russia is driven solely by Kremlin strategists’ obsessive desire to impress, at all costs, either their external opponents or their partners abroad. As for the former, they would not change their views about the nature of the Russian political system, even in the hypothetical event that the elections ended in a complete triumph for the radical opposition and a crushing defeat for all pro-Kremlin candidates. Such a scenario would most likely lead to endless speculation about yet another “cunning Putin plan”, intended to mislead a credulous Western public and conceal the consistently authoritarian nature of Russia’s political regime.

As for the latter, it is hard to imagine that the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Belarus or China are seriously concerned about the state or future of Russian democracy. The political systems of their countries, like those of many other foreign friends and partners of Russia, to put it mildly, do not entirely conform to the classical standards of Western liberal democracies. It is doubtful that Kim Jong Un, Alexander Lukashenko or, say, Mohammed bin Salman, or even Donald Trump, would suddenly decide to offer Vladimir Putin wise advice on how to organise polling stations properly and count votes.

It is hardly likely that the Kremlin felt an urgent need to erect elaborate and expensive but not especially durable scenery on the Russian political stage when the reaction of the potential audience to the forthcoming theatrical production was known in advance. It seems more logical to assume that the Russian authorities need elections not as cosmetic decoration for the façade of their political system, designed to attract the indifferent gaze of an outside observer, but as a quite effective and, above all, much-needed mechanism for maintaining dialogue between the authorities and society in the difficult geopolitical and socio-economic conditions of autumn 2026.

First and foremost, the Russian authorities are fighting hard for a high turnout, creating the most comfortable possible conditions for their voters to cast their ballots. This is no accident. A high turnout is convincing evidence of the population’s continued political activity and of the fact that Russian society has not descended into political apathy and wholesale cynicism. The idea of active civic participation is far from an empty phrase for the country’s leadership. In this sense, even a vote against the main “party of power”, United Russia, is clearly preferable to the alternative of a significant part of the electorate conspicuously choosing not to participate in the elections.

No less important, the authorities need the election results as a barometer of current public preferences, something even the most accurate opinion polls or in-depth sociological research cannot replace. Contemporary Russia undoubtedly has its own, albeit relatively narrow, political spectrum of “systemic opposition” parties reflecting the differing interests and expectations of various social, economic, age and regional groups. The constantly changing balance of power between these parties must, one way or another, be taken into account by the authorities when determining the future priorities of their strategy.

For example, relative success for the Communist Party, A Just Russia and candidates from other left-wing parties would be a signal that the authorities should pay more attention to social programmes, the fight against economic inequality and social polarisation, and to countering the many remnants of “wild capitalism” left over from the 1990s. Conversely, a large number of votes cast for the New People party and other right-wing candidates would provide grounds for accelerating structural economic reforms and creating additional opportunities for the private sector, including small and medium-sized businesses. Strong electoral results for the Liberal Democratic Party would indicate growing nationalist tendencies in Russian society. The authorities may respond to such political signals in different ways, but they cannot ignore them and must therefore read shifts in public sentiment correctly.

Moreover, it can be assumed with a considerable degree of confidence that the State Duma elections will, one way or another, lead to substantial changes in the composition of not only the lower house of the Russian parliament but also Russia’s federal government. Following the elections, significant personnel changes are likely to take place in the executive branch – both at the federal level and at other levels. Such personnel changes, in turn, will make room for fresh ideas, innovative programmes, unconventional projects and proposals. There is a clear demand for renewal in Russian society today. Parliamentary elections are one way of responding convincingly to this demand without calling into question the stability of the state’s overall strategy or its senior leadership.

The Duma elections are the first parliamentary elections held during the special military operation, during which Russian society has changed considerably. In a sense, they can be called a large-scale political experiment whose outcome remains difficult to predict with precision. For example, it is still difficult to determine with confidence which political force will be supported by the majority of people who have participated in the special military operation or who remain on the line of contact. No less uncertainty remains regarding the likely political preferences of many residents of the new Russian regions, for whom the September elections will be their first State Duma election in their new status.

Such an experiment probably carries a degree of risk for the Russian leadership. Nevertheless, the leadership appears prepared to take that risk, not without reason viewing elections not only as an important but as an indispensable mechanism for public confirmation of its continuing political legitimacy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has stirred up more controversy than most things in the past five years. Ever since the introduction of accessible generative AI in 2022, institutions, universities, students, scholars, activists, cognitive specialists, public policymakers and members of the public have all been divided over the ethics of its use. As of the beginning of this month, even the founders of AI companies have taken the same stance. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, released an essay calling on AI companies to slow the development of their most advanced models, as the safeguards currently in place are unable to keep up. Shortly after Amodei’s essay, his position was endorsed by Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI, Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, and Satya Nadella of Microsoft. In addition, Sam Altman said that OpenAI will not be going public in 2026, as further safety advances are still required. While on the surface this may seem like a development in the collective conscience, the problem is far more multifaceted and layered – leaving the industry and the intended audience divided.

The products

Take a look at the products that each AI giant sells. Amodei, Altman, Musk and Hassabis sell models, while Nadella sells the cloud those models run on. Both groups have advised slowing down. On the other hand, Jensen Huang, founder, president, and CEO of Nvidia, sells the chips that these companies buy before they can build anything. Huang does not advise a slowdown and has instead asserted that AI does not need new legislation because market forces can push companies towards safe innovation without the need for regulation. Mark Zuckerberg, whose company gives its models for free, warned that the proposal could expose companies to greater legal risks.

The common thread between these divisive recommendations is profit. Some companies will benefit from a slowdown, while others will earn greater profits by moving faster. Nvidia’s ability to charge high prices has benefitted from the intense competition between these AI companies, which fear falling behind their rivals. If this competitive pressure decreases, companies may be less willing to pay a premium for Nvidia’s chips. Hence, Huang’s opposition to the proposal may reflect both genuine concerns and Nvidia’s commercial interests.

The word the White House used

In the world of AI, antitrust law prevents these companies from holding private meetings to decide what they can and cannot do. This is intended to prevent them from coordinating the pace of development and engaging in unfair competition. However, some of these AI companies have now come forward arguing that they should be allowed to work outside antitrust law for the sake of technological safety. Huang and David Sacks, the White House AI lead, have been critical of this request, as it could reduce competition and increase the influence of these AI companies over their rivals. Sacks also questioned the independence of nonprofit evaluators tasked with evaluating AI safety “independently”. In essence, he asks: how is it fair for one company to inspect another?

The clause that travels badly

Amodei’s proposal would deny China access to the most powerful AI chips and advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and prevent smuggling and remote access to computing capacity abroad. China’s foreign ministry countered the proposal, saying that these warnings are a fearmongering tactic aimed at slowing down China’s technological advancement, echoing the Cold War. Amodei did admit that China poses the toughest predicament for his plan. Despite its alleged advantages, the proposal gives American firms leverage over Chinese ones.

A precedent, and why it does not fit

Supporters of AI coordination have compared it with the regulation of banks following the 2008 financial crisis. Basel III was introduced only after a major financial crisis had already occurred. Attempts to regulate AI before harm occurs can represent a genuine effort to prevent future risks, rather than reflecting the commercial interests of AI companies. However, there is an important difference between these two cases. Banking regulations were imposed by external regulators, whereas the proposed AI regulations would involve competing companies coordinating with one another.

What the debate is actually about

Before this debate began, researchers had already issued warnings about the capabilities of AI models. OpenAI slowed down the development of its leading systems after a security incident. Amodei and Altman have both claimed that Anthropic and OpenAI will aim to bring in independent evaluators – a practice not seen among “cartels”. Both concerns can coexist: companies may genuinely fear the risks associated with AI while also pursuing their own commercial interests. The more relevant question remains whether the proposed solution adequately addresses the problem it is intended to solve. An agreement between five major American companies, to be overseen by evaluators they fund, would not apply to international competitors such as those in China and would require an exemption from existing competition law. This solution appears to reflect the structure and interests of the AI industry more closely than the nature of the risk it is intended to address.

The seats nobody is sitting in

Much of the debate surrounding the pace and regulation of AI development has taken place without meaningful participation from other regions, including the Arab world. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimates that $31.6 trillion will be invested in AI infrastructure worldwide by 2050. Countries that can provide large amounts of cheap, reliable and low-carbon electricity will be particularly well positioned to attract this investment. Hence, the significant energy, land and investment required for AI infrastructure may provide countries capable of supplying these resources with considerable bargaining power. These states could seek a greater role in determining the conditions under which AI companies operate within their jurisdiction. This could include negotiating who evaluates these AI systems, how the evaluations are to be conducted and who bears legal responsibility when autonomous systems cause harm. This means that the debate goes beyond whether AI development should be slowed to questions of who has the authority to make decisions about its development, and whether other countries should accept decisions made elsewhere.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

On September 12, 2026, United States President Donald Trump stood in Dublin alongside Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin and said in a cool tone that the Houthis “called us, and they don’t want to fight us”, adding that the group was “allowing ships to pass” and that the situation would “work out very well”.

His remarks came just as Houthi forces had completed their takeover of the coastal town of Dhubab and Perim (Mayyun) Island, which divides the Bab al-Mandeb strait into two shipping channels, after seizing the strategic port of Mocha. This gave them a direct presence at the entrance to one of the world’s most important waterways.

Trump was speaking against the backdrop of a Houthi announcement that they would blockade Saudi oil supplies to Asia and Saudi commercial shipping, signalling the collapse of the traditional “security-for-oil” formula.

What is happening at Bab al-Mandeb is not an isolated event, but the latest in a long series of US retreats from security commitments that for decades underpinned the “security-for-oil” relationship between Washington and the Gulf states.

This is not a passing political position, but a profound shift in the regional security landscape: the United States is choosing not to intervene militarily against an armed group designated as terrorist that controls one of the world’s most important straits and whose actions go beyond the logic of conventional deterrence.

Trump’s remarks: Substance and strategic context

In Dublin, Trump said the Houthis had contacted the US administration seeking to avoid confrontation with Washington. He said they were “allowing most ships to pass” and that the problem was limited to “one country”, which he did not name – an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia – promising to “take care of fixing that”.

He also said the United States had “tight control” over the Strait of Hormuz and that about 25 ships were passing through it each day on average, despite maritime sources denying this.

On the ground, Trump’s remarks suggested that the Houthis remain wary of US military force and American deterrence, which has already put considerable pressure on their regional backer, Iran. They were therefore prepared to bargain, just as they accepted US conditions in 2025.

At the same time, Trump’s directives – as relayed by US military and civilian officials – revealed a clear hierarchy of priorities: Iran as the principal threat, securing the Strait of Hormuz as the vital artery for oil and gas flows, and avoiding another military front in Yemen.

This reflects a narrow strategic logic. From Washington’s perspective, Bab al-Mandeb is less vital to American oil interests than to flows towards China and other Asian markets that compete with the US economy. And because Trump believes the Houthis “are not targeting American ships”, direct intervention would, in his view, place an unjustified additional burden on US forces already exhausted by the Iranian front.

Trump’s position also cannot be separated from domestic politics. The US-Iran war has eroded his political support after he promised to keep the United States out of Middle Eastern wars.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Trump told Fox News that he “might not do it because of the elections”, referring to avoiding further military escalation before the congressional elections. Opening a new front in Yemen could further complicate matters for Republicans in closely contested House and Senate races.

Meanwhile, Saudi circles denied an Axios report claiming that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had called Trump twice on the eve of the Houthi takeover of the coast on September 10, urging him to strike the Houthis, and that Trump had refused.

The sources pointed to Axios’s own July 29 report on Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman’s visit to Washington, which said he had told the US vice president that the kingdom could manage the confrontation with the Houthis itself and did not need US military intervention. They regarded the two accounts as contradictions in the reporting of Axios’s Barak Ravid.

Observers in Riyadh see the restrained US position as part of a broader policy: the administration currently has no intention of taking direct military action against the Houthis. At the same time, Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, travelled to Riyadh for urgent coordination talks with Prince Mohammed, indicating that Washington is seeking to “intensify its support” for Saudi Arabia while avoiding direct military involvement – a formula well understood in Riyadh.

Trump sought to reassure Saudi concerns by describing the crown prince as a “good friend” and promising that “everything will work out very well”. But he offered no specific military commitment, and the White House announced no explicit guarantees to protect Saudi energy infrastructure or maritime routes.

This reluctance also follows a series of US decisions that have demonstrated a growing retreat from its security commitments in the Gulf. During his first term, Trump did not respond to the 2019 Aramco attack, for which the Houthis claimed responsibility but which was believed to have originated from Iraqi factions to the north. The attack temporarily knocked out half of Saudi oil supplies.

In February 2026, the United States joined Israel in attacking Iran without consulting its Gulf allies and has since faced growing difficulties defending them against Iranian attacks. US forces are now heavily preoccupied around the Strait of Hormuz, limiting their ability to respond to another front in Yemen.

Paradoxically, Washington, now bogged down in Hormuz, appears to need Saudi help in containing Iranian disruption at Bab al-Mandeb, rather than the other way round.

Since the war began on February 28, Riyadh has resisted all US pressure to become involved in a confrontation with Iran for two reasons. First, it believes such pressure carries an implicit aim of portraying the Saudi front as part of the Israeli front. Second, it was not consulted over the launch of the war and is not prepared to be worn down in a conflict serving Israeli objectives.

The erosion of the US umbrella and the fate of the ‘security-for-oil’ formula

Since the 1970s, the US-Gulf relationship has rested on a clear but implicit bargain: the United States provides a security umbrella protecting the Gulf states and energy routes, while the Gulf states ensure a steady flow of oil to the global economy at reasonable prices.

This was more than a bilateral understanding between Riyadh and Washington. Gulf security meant oil security, and oil security meant the security of the Western economy, making the bargain a pillar of the international energy system for decades.

Today, there are mounting signs that this formula is beginning to collapse.

First, strategic abandonment: Trump’s refusal to defend Bab al-Mandeb, and his response to the Houthis’ request that the US stay out of the conflict in return for allowing American ships to pass – effectively a political deal – marks a watershed. For the first time, the United States is clearly hesitating to defend energy security and a pivotal ally against a direct threat to global energy infrastructure. This is not temporary hesitation, but a redefinition of the US commitment.

Second, the redirection of priorities: Washington’s focus on the Strait of Hormuz and avoidance of a front in Yemen point to a new approach: not a comprehensive security umbrella, but selective protection of direct US interests. Hormuz matters because it carries Gulf oil to markets on which the US economy depends, while Bab al-Mandeb – from Trump’s perspective – primarily serves exports to China and Asia, interests Washington does not consider worth further military investment.

Third, military exhaustion: the US military is exhausted by the war with Iran and its stocks of advanced interceptor missiles have been depleted. This is structural rather than temporary, reflecting a growing inability to manage multiple fronts.

Fourth, domestic politics: the erosion of Trump’s political support because of the Iran war makes further military expansion politically costly. What was once a guarantee of Gulf security – US power – has become hostage to domestic electoral calculations.

Does this mean the end of the “security-for-oil” formula? Not necessarily. But it does point to a fundamental shift from a bilateral US-Gulf arrangement to a more complex, multilateral one.

The US umbrella has not disappeared, but it has contracted. The United States still maintains forces in the region and remains focused on the Strait of Hormuz, but its commitment is no longer comprehensive or unconditional.

Saudi strategic hedging

For years, Riyadh has been pursuing alternatives through strategic hedging. Its announcement of a 14-state multinational defensive maritime alliance – including Turkiye, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan and Djibouti – is an attempt to fill the US security vacuum, while US or European naval forces are also deployed around the strait as part of similar Western coalitions.

Saudi Arabia is also strengthening its air and missile defences, developing its naval capabilities and deepening defence ties with countries including Turkiye and Pakistan. These efforts have included the “Strategic Mutual Defence Alliance” with Pakistan and the Mecca alliance with Turkiye and Pakistan in August 2026.

What we are witnessing is not the end of the US umbrella, but its shift from a “comprehensive guarantee” to “conditional and limited support”, forcing Gulf states to rethink their collective security.

The Saudi position on industrialised countries’ disregard for supply security

Saudi Arabia now faces one of its most serious security challenges: the Houthis control Bab al-Mandeb, are choking Saudi trade and have already launched drone and missile attacks towards Saudi territory.

Saudi oil exports to Asia fell from around 3.4 million barrels a day in June to just 128,000 in August, before partially recovering to 700,000 this month. Oil prices have meanwhile exceeded $107 a barrel, while the price of a gallon of petrol in the United States has risen by 35 percent.

The real danger is the simultaneous disruption of two maritime chokepoints: Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of global oil and gas supplies pass, is almost closed because of the US-Iran war, while Bab al-Mandeb, which accounts for 10-12 percent of global oil, is under Houthi control. Closing both could block about a quarter of global supplies.

Even without complete closure, the continuing threat creates a permanent “risk premium” on prices, according to economic analysts. Although Saudi Arabia benefits in the short term from higher prices, it is strategically harmed by instability because Vision 2030 depends on foreign investment, tourism and stability, not temporary wartime oil revenues.

Riyadh has long played a leading role in stabilising oil markets, frequently using its position as a swing producer to limit volatility. But amid the indifference of industrialised countries to supply security and the threats facing energy sources and routes, Saudi Arabia cannot put aside the dangers to its own security, sovereignty and people for countries that disregard the geopolitics of energy.

For this reason, Saudi Arabia has previously declared that it “will not bear responsibility for any disruptions or shortages in global oil supplies” resulting from Houthi attacks on its oil facilities.

This is more than a warning. It redefines the implicit social contract with its allies: Saudi Arabia is no longer prepared to act as guarantor of last resort for global energy security without something in return.

Its message is that the international community – particularly the major industrialised countries that benefit from oil flows – must share responsibility for protecting maritime routes, rather than leaving Riyadh to bear the cost alone.

‘Collective responsibility’ as a new security doctrine

The Saudi Ministry of Defence reinforced this approach in its statement on the proposed maritime alliance, stressing that “the security of international maritime routes is a collective responsibility that requires effective and sustainable international partnership”.

This is more than a diplomatic appeal. It amounts to a reformulation of the regional security contract: Saudi Arabia is not asking industrialised countries to defend Saudi interests, but to help protect their own interest in the continued flow of oil on which their economies depend.

In July 2026, Saudi Arabia announced a “Multinational Defensive Maritime Alliance” of 14 founding states: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia.

At least 43 countries and organisations attended the founding meeting in Riyadh. The alliance may mark an important turning point, reflecting an implicit Saudi acknowledgement that the US umbrella is no longer sufficient and that Riyadh must build its own security capabilities with regional allies.

US exposure: A deeper strategic reading

Trump’s statements downplaying the Houthi takeover of Bab al-Mandeb and his refusal to intervene reflect not only a political decision, but a structural weakness in US deterrence.

The United States is unable to manage multiple fronts. Its concentration around the Strait of Hormuz limits its ability to respond in Yemen; fighting has depleted stocks of advanced interceptor missiles; and the unpopularity of the war and approaching congressional elections constrain its freedom of action.

From the perspective of countries in the region, the US military presence in the Gulf is no longer an unconditional security guarantee. The question of whether allies could be abandoned again is pushing decision-makers from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Doha to diversify their security and defence partnerships.

That means deeper defence ties with Turkiye and Pakistan, stronger air and missile defences and naval capabilities, maintaining open channels and seeking risk-reducing understandings with regional powers including Iran, and multinational maritime alliances to protect navigation.

But these alternatives have limits. Can any regional alliance fully compensate for the absence of a major power such as the United States when confronting threats on the scale of Iran and its proxies? US intelligence, logistical and interception capabilities have no regional equivalent, leaving a security gap that cannot quickly be filled.

The new regional order: Towards multipolarity

What we are witnessing is not merely a passing security crisis, but the emergence of a new regional order marked by the decline of unilateral US dominance. The United States is no longer the sole security power in the Gulf, as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkiye and Iran gain weight and Gulf states diversify their partnerships and seek more collective regional security arrangements.

Trump’s response to the Houthi takeover of Bab al-Mandeb is therefore not simply a political position, but a sign of a tectonic shift in the regional security order. The “security-for-oil” formula that governed US-Gulf relations for decades has not formally ended, but it no longer provides the guarantees on which it was built. The US security umbrella remains, but it has become selective, conditional and subject to domestic US calculations unrelated to the interests of the Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia, caught between the hammer of the Houthis at Bab al-Mandeb and the anvil of Iran at the Strait of Hormuz, is pursuing a different approach: insisting that protection of maritime routes become a “collective responsibility” and that it should no longer bear alone the cost of protecting the interests of industrialised countries dependent on its oil.

This position – backed by the announcement of a multinational maritime alliance – marks the beginning of a redefinition of the regional security contract, although significant questions remain over whether ambition can be translated into capability.

Oil prices above $107 a barrel may be only an early sign of what lies ahead. If US exposure continues and regional understandings guaranteeing freedom of navigation remain out of reach, the world could face an energy crisis comparable to those of the 1970s, but without a US security umbrella ready to contain it.

Bab al-Mandeb is therefore more than a maritime strait. It reflects the end of one era and the beginning of another, in which Gulf security is no longer an American gift but a collective responsibility still searching for new arrangements.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, appears to favour a combination of deterrence and avoiding all-out war. Rather than sliding into open-ended attrition, it seeks to support national allies on the ground, enable the Yemeni state to restore its sovereignty, contain the logic of the militia and build a national doctrine that limits external penetration.

Yemen’s stability is no longer a purely Yemeni matter, but a first line of defence for the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb and for the cohesion of the Arab sphere, with Riyadh and Cairo remaining central pillars in confronting projects of disintegration and fragmentation.

Within this emerging order, the Saudi-Egyptian partnership is becoming a cornerstone of regional security. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s expected visit to Cairo and summit with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi give practical expression to the principle of “collective responsibility”.

Riyadh and Cairo recognise that the security of the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb is not a local matter: it is vital to the Suez Canal and Egyptian economy, and forms strategic and security depth for Saudi Arabia.

By coordinating diplomatic and military action, supporting the full liberation of Yemen and containing the reach of the militias, the two countries are helping shape an autonomous regional security order intended to fill the vacuums left by retreating international powers, protect international navigation and confront shared threats from a position of parity and capacity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

On Monday, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in the Philippines will hold its first parliamentary election since it was established in 2018. The vote will officially mark the end of the transition period under the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), an interim regional government appointed in 2019.

The election is a significant milestone in the Bangsamoro struggle. It is the outcome of decades of armed conflict and negotiations between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government of the Philippines.

The vote will test the Philippine government’s commitment to the peace process and the MILF’s commitment to the democratic process.

The struggle for self-determination

BARMM is located on Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippine Archipelago, and it covers roughly the territories inhabited by the Moro people, a native Muslim-majority group. For centuries, the Moro enjoyed self-governance in independent states and resisted Spanish colonialism. Following the Philippines’s independence in 1946, they continued their struggle for self-determination.

In 1989, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) was created by Manila to give some devolved rights to the Moro. However, ARMM largely failed to address local grievances and demands due to its weak structural power. It was given limited autonomy in political and fiscal decision-making, but it did not manage to improve socioeconomic conditions in the region. The MILF continued the armed struggle.

In 2012, President Benigno Aquino III recognised the ARMM as a “failed experiment”. Under his administration, the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro was signed between the government and the MILF, paving the way for a new political entity.

Six years later, under President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, the Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was promulgated. This legislation granted the region greater fiscal autonomy, a regional government, a parliament, and a justice system.

Then the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro was concluded to outline the mechanism of transition from ARMM to BARMM and set up the MILF-dominated BTA to lead it. All of this is culminating in the parliamentary election, which will determine the makeup of the region’s first legislative body.

A contested election

The vote comes at a time of heightened tensions in BARMM and internal divisions within the MILF. Two camps have emerged within the movement – one loyal to MILF Chair Al Haj Murad Ebrahim and another supporting Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua.

Last month, Macacua joined the newly formed Bangsamoro Federalist Party (BFP), which will compete in the elections against the MILF’s political wing, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP). Shortly after, his convoy was attacked, but he survived unscathed.

In early September, Macacua and 40 commanders were dismissed from the MILF’s military wing for alleged insubordination.

These tensions have prompted increased public anxiety about possible post-election unrest. There are other factors that could overshadow the vote.

In past elections, vote-buying was widespread, election-related violence was rampant, and electoral fraud and manipulation were pervasive. If these practices repeat at a large scale, the electoral outcome may not necessarily provide a straightforward measure of the will of Bangsamoro’s people. It may also not be an accurate reflection of whether they are satisfied with the transitional government or not.

The MILF presents itself as a champion of moral governance. If it is to retain this label, it should not give in to widespread vote-buying and electoral manipulation. It should also not let internal rivalries turn violent.

But there are already some alarming signs. Prominent MILF figures have conveyed that if the UBJP, the front’s political wing, sees manipulation and fraud, its members are ready to fight. They have also suggested that since the MILF led the transition, it should remain in power. On social media, some citizens have condemned the MILF camp’s threats, calling such tactics un-Islamic.

Before the vote, Manila has deployed military forces in key areas. This has heightened people’s fears that fighting with the MILF may erupt. The tense situation might lead to a low voter turnout.

Under these circumstances, the future of the Bangsamoro is riddled with uncertainties.

Whatever happens in the election, we must remember that the future of BARMM is a shared responsibility. The Philippine government and the Bangsamoro parties are duty-bound to honour the peace agreement. In addition, the people must exercise their civic rights and responsibilities to help sustain the peace achieved after a long and painful armed conflict and to move toward a prosperous Bangsamoro land.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have captured Mocha port and now threaten to control the main waterway of the Bab al-Mandeb strait. They have also attacked several cities in Saudi Arabia, wounding about 70 people, including women and children.

The repeated attacks against Saudi energy, civil, and defence facilities, combined with the maritime blockage by Iran and its Yemeni partner the Houthis, directly raise the question of the Mecca Pact’s operationalisation between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and Pakistan.

The Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia can activate the mutual defence agreement. If that happens, what could a Pakistani and Turkish intervention look like?

The answer to this question necessitates some crucial background first.

The US – the main security partner of the Gulf states – has signalled for a while now that it expects regional countries to take primary responsibility for their own defence and deterrence, with US help remaining critical but limited.

That posture is already visible on the ground. Since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, the US has not been able to provide comprehensive defence for its regional partners. On several occasions, it has even failed to stop attacks on its own bases in the Gulf.

With US presence receding and Washington emphasising regional burden-sharing, Gulf states have had to look into a new defence architecture. In September 2025, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed their first mutual defence agreement, which expanded in August this year to include Turkiye and became the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement.

The three countries have since established a joint secretariat, with its headquarters in Riyadh, with Pakistan taking the chairmanship for an initial three-year term.

The pact remains in a gestation period. It does not publicly identify the thresholds or scenarios under which a member would move to direct military intervention. Its organisational and institutional structure, including rules of engagement, mechanisms of consultation, and collective defence and deterrence, are yet to be formally developed.

Now, back to the question of how the pact will be operational if a member state is attacked.

Earlier this week, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said that an unprovoked aggression against Saudi Arabia, or a spillover of the Yemen conflict into the kingdom, would make the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement operational, adding that “there should be no doubt in this.”

Asif, however, did not share specific details on what shape that operationalisation would take. Last month, Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan clarified that the Mecca Pact would work the same way as NATO: If a member state is attacked, it must actively request and define the specific type of help it needs.

NATO’s Article 4 allows for a member to call alliance consultations and exchange of information. Article 5 requires mutual assistance from allies, but it leaves each state to decide the nature of that assistance.

In 2012, after Syria shot down a Turkish warplane, Ankara invoked Article 4 for consultation and requested specific defence assistance. Instead of demanding direct military intervention, the Turkish government explicitly asked for Patriot missile defence batteries. NATO approved the request and deployed the systems to protect Turkish airspace.

In this context, if the Mecca Pact is to be operationalised, it would have to be Saudi Arabia that defines the type of military assistance and involvement that it needs. If, for example, Riyadh makes an actual request for Pakistani direct military intervention, beyond materiel and intelligence support, Islamabad would be obliged to comply. But the request, and the scale of the response, would still likely need to be defined and agreed in a consultation meeting.

For now, none of this has been tested as Riyadh has not invoked the pact with either Pakistan or Turkiye.

In the meantime, diplomatic efforts have intensified, with Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud talking to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Islamabad has also publicly urged Iran to rein in the Houthis from attacking Saudi Arabia and threatening the Bab al-Mandeb, and has reminded Tehran of Pakistan’s commitment to Riyadh’s defence through the pact. Ankara would likely play its own part in diplomatically restraining the Houthis and Iran.

If diplomacy fails and Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia or the Bab al-Mandeb continue, Turkiye and Pakistan would likely expand the air and technological support they already provide. Islamabad already has an air squadron of about 16 JF-17 Thunder multirole aircraft, defence systems, and thousands of troops deployed in Saudi Arabia.

But a direct military operation by Pakistani forces inside Yemen remains unlikely at the moment. Given the disastrous and lasting impacts of its participation in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union on behalf of the US, Pakistan would be far more wary of joining a war against Iran and its allies, for fear of spillover into its western border provinces’ economy, domestic security, sectarian balance, and societal harmony. Pakistani leaders would find it hard to build domestic consensus for direct attacks on the Houthis or a fight with Iran.

The likely scenario is that Pakistan would increase joint diplomatic pressure on Iran to restrain the Houthis, further augment its support for Saudi defence, and push for a multinational naval coalition to secure the Bab al-Mandeb. Adopting this restraint would still keep the essence of the Mecca Pact intact, while putting more weight behind regional de-escalation.

The new security architecture that agreements like the Mecca Pact are setting up will take years to mature. Until the mechanisms and rules of collective response develop, Pakistan’s existing bilateral defence relationships with Saudi Arabia and other Arab partners will continue to focus on defence needs.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

United States President Donald Trump has made no secret of his hostility towards BRICS.

Last year, he threatened an additional 10 percent tariff on any country aligning itself with what he called the bloc’s “anti-American policies”. Since then, his administration has continued to wield tariffs aggressively against trading partners, including BRICS members such as Brazil, India and China.

The message appears straightforward: Countries that challenge US economic power should expect to pay a price.

But coercion has consequences. And as BRICS leaders meet in New Delhi today, Trump may be strengthening the very incentives that made the bloc attractive in the first place. The more Washington demonstrates its willingness to use access to its markets, its financial system and the dollar as instruments of political leverage, the more reason other countries have to reduce their exposure to them.

This does not mean BRICS is becoming an anti-US alliance. Far from it.

The bloc’s 11 members – Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates – have enormous political and economic differences. Together, they account for nearly half the world’s population and about 40 percent of global gross domestic product, but they do not share a common ideology, security policy or even geopolitical orientation.

Recent events have made those divisions impossible to ignore. Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE find themselves on opposite sides of a growing regional conflict. In May, Iranian and Emirati representatives clashed during a foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi. India and China have had a heated border dispute that led to deadly skirmishes in 2020-2021; only in the past two years have their relations gradually stabilised.

So Trump is not producing a united geopolitical front against Washington.

He may, however, be giving countries with otherwise divergent interests a common reason to cooperate economically: Protection against vulnerability to US power.

For countries outside the Western core, dependence on US-centred economic infrastructure carries risks.

The dollar’s centrality gives the US enormous structural advantages. International transactions pass through financial institutions subject to US jurisdiction; access to US markets can be restricted; sanctions can isolate governments and companies from parts of the global financial system.

BRICS’s efforts to diminish dependence on the US financial system do not mean the dollar is about to lose its position as a global reserve currency. This claim is often made around BRICS summits, usually accompanied by breathless predictions of a new BRICS currency. The evidence does not support it.

The dollar remains overwhelmingly dominant. According to the International Monetary Fund, it accounted for 57.1 percent of global foreign-exchange reserves in the first quarter of 2026. The Chinese renminbi accounted for just 2 percent. Indeed, the dollar’s share rose slightly during the quarter.

But replacing the dollar and reducing dependence on it are two very different things.

BRICS countries are already experimenting with the latter. South Africa has connected to China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, allowing transactions with China to be settled directly in renminbi. Brazil and China are increasingly using their own currencies in bilateral trade, while India and the UAE have settled transactions in rupees and dirhams. China and Russia have shifted much of their bilateral trade into their national currencies.

BRICS itself is also moving cautiously towards greater financial connectivity.

Last year, its leaders called for continued work on a cross-border payments initiative and greater interoperability among members’ payment systems. In August, Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra confirmed that BRICS countries are discussing linking their fast-payment networks and potentially their central bank digital currencies. India itself is also encouraging greater use of the rupee in international trade.

The New Development Bank offers another example. Established by the original BRICS countries as an alternative source of development finance, it has made lending in members’ currencies an explicit strategic objective. Its current strategy targets 30 percent of financing in local currencies, partly to reduce borrowers’ exposure to foreign-exchange risks and costly currency swaps; the number could increase to 40-50 percent for the next cycle, 2027-2031.

None of this amounts to a rival global financial system. Much of it remains experimental, bilateral or limited in scale.

But that is precisely why the fixation on whether BRICS can “replace” the dollar misses what is happening. The more significant development is the gradual construction of options that allow governments and businesses to conduct a number of transactions without relying on the dollar and Western-dominated financial infrastructure.

Trump’s policies give this process additional urgency.

Consider Brazil. Washington imposed a new 25 percent tariff on a range of Brazilian products in July, affecting billions of dollars in exports, despite running a trade surplus with the country. The Trump administration has also scrutinised Brazil’s hugely successful Pix instant-payment system, which competes with established card-payment networks.

Sanctions demonstrate the same vulnerability more dramatically. Russia and Iran have been pushed towards alternative payment and trading arrangements precisely because their access to Western financial networks has been restricted. Washington is now considering further measures that could penalise countries heavily reliant on Russian energy, including China and India.

No BRICS member needs to sympathise with Moscow or Tehran to understand what this implies.

US financial power depends not simply on possessing the world’s largest economy or issuing its dominant currency. It also depends on other countries continuing to regard participation in a US-centred system as more advantageous than the alternatives.

The more frequently Washington turns that system into an instrument of coercion, the stronger the incentive to construct escape routes from it.

That said, most BRICS countries do not appear eager to exchange dependence on Washington for dependence on Beijing.

India maintains extensive relations with the US while buying Russian energy and pursuing closer economic cooperation within BRICS. Brazil has long sought greater autonomy without becoming a Chinese satellite. Saudi Arabia and the UAE remain deeply intertwined with Western economies while expanding their relationships with China.

Their objective is less likely to be replacing one hegemon with another than increasing their ability to manoeuvre between competing centres of power.

That distinction matters. A trade transaction settled in rupees, a loan denominated in renminbi or rand, or a payment made through a system that does not depend on the same Western intermediaries will not overthrow dollar dominance.

But multiply such arrangements across countries and over time, and they begin to reduce the costs of saying no to Washington.

This is why portraying BRICS simply as an anti-US threat risks becoming self-defeating. Punishing countries for seeking alternatives gives them another reason to develop those alternatives.

Trump wants to make challenging US power costly. Instead, he may be making dependence on US power costlier still.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The renewed escalation in Yemen is no longer simply a Yemeni battlefield development. For Saudi Arabia, it is becoming a direct test of national security, economic resilience and the kingdom’s ability to prevent the wider regional war from spilling further across its borders.

The latest Houthi attacks have demonstrated this clearly. Missiles and drones have hit civilian and economic sites in Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jizan and Najran, injuring dozens of civilians and causing fires and temporary disruption at energy facilities. The attacks came as fighting intensified in Yemen and around the western coast, while the Houthis continued to threaten maritime traffic in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb.

Saudi Arabia therefore faces two interconnected threats: Attacks on its territory and attempts to disrupt the maritime routes on which regional and international trade depends.

This creates a difficult strategic equation for Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has spent the past several years trying to move away from direct military involvement in Yemen and towards diplomacy, de-escalation and support for a political settlement. A return to an open-ended war would contradict that strategy and impose unnecessary political and economic costs.

But restraint cannot mean accepting repeated attacks on Saudi territory.

A different security environment

The security challenge today differs considerably from the first years of the Yemen war.

Saudi Arabia has strengthened its air and missile defences, improved coordination between its military and security institutions and accumulated considerable experience in countering drones and ballistic missiles. It is therefore much better prepared to defend its territory than it was a decade ago.

Yet the Houthi threat has also evolved.

The group possesses a combination of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and increasingly sophisticated drones. Even when most incoming weapons are intercepted, relatively inexpensive systems can impose disproportionate defensive costs and create uncertainty around airports, industrial facilities, border communities and energy infrastructure.

This means Saudi security cannot depend on interception alone. No air defence system can guarantee a perfect shield indefinitely.

The strategic objective must therefore be deterrence: Convincing the Houthis that attacks on Saudi territory will impose costs greater than any political or military benefit they expect to obtain.

This does not necessarily require returning to the large-scale military campaign of previous years. Riyadh has more options today. These include intelligence operations, strengthening Yemeni government forces, improving border security, disrupting missile and drone supply networks and, where necessary, conducting proportionate operations against facilities directly involved in attacks on Saudi Arabia.

The distinction is important. Saudi Arabia does not need to choose between doing nothing and returning to a full-scale war.

The economic front

The economic consequences are equally important.

Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s largest energy exporters, which makes attacks on its oil infrastructure internationally significant even when physical damage is limited. The latest attacks affected energy facilities and contributed to renewed concern in already nervous global oil markets.

There is an apparent paradox here: Regional instability can push oil prices higher and temporarily increase Saudi oil revenues. But higher prices caused by war should not be confused with economic benefit.

Saudi Arabia’s economic strategy under Vision 2030 depends increasingly on stability, investment, tourism, logistics, technology and the development of major projects outside the oil sector. Persistent missile and drone attacks can raise insurance and transport costs and affect perceptions of regional risk even if the kingdom’s underlying economy remains strong.

The greater strategic concern is maritime security.

Saudi Arabia occupies a strategic position between two of the world’s most important energy corridors: The Strait of Hormuz to the east and Bab al-Mandeb to the west. Disruption of both routes represents a serious challenge not only for Saudi Arabia but for the global economy.

This is why the Red Sea dimension of the Yemen conflict is particularly important. Bab al-Mandeb connects the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. A sustained Houthi ability to threaten shipping there would increase freight and insurance costs and potentially divert vessels around Africa.

Saudi Arabia, however, possesses an important strategic advantage: Its energy infrastructure is not completely dependent on the Gulf. The kingdom can transport significant quantities of oil through its East-West pipeline to terminals on the Red Sea. This provides an alternative to Hormuz and gives Riyadh greater strategic flexibility.

That advantage does not, however, eliminate Saudi Arabia’s exposure to insecurity elsewhere in the Red Sea, including around Bab al-Mandeb.

Protecting Bab al-Mandeb should therefore be understood not simply as a Saudi or Yemeni interest but as an international economic and security requirement.

Avoiding the Houthi trap

The greatest danger for Riyadh may be political rather than purely military.

The Houthis could benefit from drawing Saudi Arabia back into an extensive war. It would allow them to portray the conflict once again as a confrontation between Yemen and an external power rather than a struggle among Yemenis over the future of their state.

Saudi Arabia should avoid this trap.

Confronting the Houthis must remain fundamentally a Yemeni responsibility. The internationally recognised Yemeni government and its forces should carry the principal burden of confronting Houthi expansion on the ground, while Saudi Arabia provides political, economic, intelligence and defensive support.

This is particularly important on the western coast. If the Houthis consolidate their military position around strategic areas overlooking the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb, the consequences will extend far beyond Yemen.

The objective should not be to retake Sanaa through another large-scale air campaign or restart an indefinite regional war. It should be to prevent the Houthis from using military force to change the regional balance, threaten neighbouring states or threaten international maritime arteries.

Diplomacy backed by deterrence

Saudi policy is therefore likely to operate on several tracks simultaneously.

First, Riyadh will continue strengthening its air and missile defences and protecting critical infrastructure. Second, it can increase support for Yemeni government forces while avoiding unnecessary direct involvement in ground combat. Third, it will seek broader regional and international cooperation to secure the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb.

At the same time, diplomatic channels should remain open.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly demonstrated its preference for a negotiated settlement in Yemen. But negotiations are sustainable only when both sides believe that escalation carries unacceptable costs.

Diplomacy, therefore, must be backed by credible military power.

Saudi Arabia has strong incentives to prevent Yemen from becoming another permanent front in the wider regional confrontation. The kingdom’s economic transformation requires stability, while its geopolitical interests require secure borders, uninterrupted energy exports and freedom of navigation.

But the same logic that encourages restraint also places limits on it.

If attacks on Saudi cities, civilians and energy infrastructure continue, Riyadh will increasingly regard the issue not as intervention in the Yemeni civil war but as the defence of Saudi territory.

That distinction will shape what comes next.

Saudi Arabia does not need another prolonged Yemen war. Nor does Yemen. But avoiding one requires restoring deterrence while preserving the possibility of a political settlement.

The most effective Saudi strategy, therefore, is neither unlimited escalation nor passive restraint. It is calibrated pressure: Defend the kingdom, strengthen legitimate Yemeni institutions, protect the Red Sea, keep diplomatic channels open and make clear that attacks on Saudi territory will carry consequences.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.