Indianapolis, IN – September saw the revolution in Yemen enter a new stage. The Ansarallah movement, known in the Western press as the Houthis, secured sweeping victories all along the Red Sea coast and dealt a mighty blow to imperialism and its puppets in the region.

Beginning on September 3, Ansarallah launched a general offensive in Yemen's coastal regions to wrest control of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait from the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), the name for the U.S. and Saudi-backed puppet regime.

Days later, on September 9, Ansarallah fighters positioned in the country's highlands descended roads and riverbeds to the coastal plain and captured the port of Mokha. The Saudi-backed mercenary troops occupying the city, already battered by a month of missile and drone strikes, called for reinforcements but could not hold the line. By September 10, their troops had all run off and the port was liberated.

A day later, Ansarallah took both the Hanish Islands and Perim Island, a volcanic outcrop two miles off the Yemeni coast that narrows the shipping channel. In less than a week, the entire Red Sea coast of Yemen passed into the hands of the revolution. Ansarallah now holds the southern gate of one of the most important trade routes in the world, closing it entirely to Saudi and Israeli shipping.

Since this breakthrough, the fighting moved inland and south. Ansarallah now battles for the Kahboub mountains, which look down on both the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and the road to the key southern city of Aden. The city of Marib, which is both the center of Yemen's oil industry and the puppet regime's last stronghold in the north, has entered the revolution's crosshairs.

The offensive was Ansarallah's answer to a war Riyadh chose to restart. A UN-brokered truce had largely frozen the front lines of battle since 2022. In early July 2026, Saudi Arabia barred an Iranian plane carrying senior Ansarallah officials home from the funeral of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from landing in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, and later bombed the airport runway. Ansarallah declared a naval blockade of Saudi ports on July 20 and has struck Saudi tankers and Aramco facilities in the months that followed.

Riyadh begs, Washington balks

Ansarallah's Red Sea offensive comes at a time of serious weakness for the Saudi oil economy, which is already pressed as a result of the U.S. war on Iran and the subsequent closure of the strait of Hormuz. On September 10, drones launched from Iraqi territory struck pumping stations along the Saudi East-West pipeline, which carries crude oil from the kingdom's eastern fields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Without the strait of Hormuz, the pipeline is Saudi Arabia's only export route that avoids the Persian Gulf entirely, moving between 4 and 5 million barrels per day, representing roughly 5% of the world's oil supply. The damage forced Riyadh to shut it down. Subsequent attempts to re-open the pipeline have encountered further attacks.

The U.S. war on Iran, along with Ansarallah's revolutionary breakthrough in Yemen, has sent oil prices to the moon. Brent crude, which sold for $60 per barrel in January, climbed past $108 per barrel after the attacks. In August of 2026, Saudi Arabia reported its lowest level of crude oil production in over 35 years. These effects have spread across the world, causing fuel prices, particularly for diesel, to skyrocket. A gallon of diesel fuel is approaching $6.50 in the United States, hitting as high as $9.99 per gallon in some parts of the country.

The news of Ansarallah's lightning advances arrived as a terrible shock to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who called U.S. President Donald Trump to demand intervention after the fall of Mokha. Trump refused the Saudi request, though he promised intelligence and targeting data on top of the roughly 200 U.S. military personnel already in the kingdom.

This refusal by the U.S. was not easily accepted by the Saudis, whose existence as a regime is largely premised on the backing of Western imperialist powers. According to the New York Times, Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare strikes on Yemen before calling them off on September 20. Even pleas by the PLC to reconsider fell on deaf ears.

European imperialists stepped in where Washington hesitated, no doubt motivated by the fuel crisis that has gripped the continent as a result of the U.S. war on Iran. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham committed on September 21 to use the Royal Air Force for refueling Saudi warplanes. France, for its part, pledged to guard Saudi energy infrastructure. On September 22, the G7 foreign ministers demanded that Ansarallah halt its attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Yemen and the camp of resistance to imperialism and Zionism

The revolution in Yemen is part of a camp of resistance to imperialism in the Middle East. Ansarallah leads the struggle in Yemen, but this united front is anchored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. This front also includes the Palestinian liberation movement, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and progressive and patriotic forces in Iraq.

When the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran in February, Ansarallah entered the fight in late March with missile and drone strikes on Israel's Ben Gurion airport.

Ansarallah and the Yemeni people have shown consistent solidarity with Palestine and paid dearly for it in blood. In November 2023, the movement seized an Israeli-linked ship and closed the Red Sea to shipping tied to Israel entirely. Over the next two years, Ansarallah targeted more than 100 merchant vessels and sank four. Container traffic through the Suez Canal fell from about 80 ships per week before the fighting to just 26. Israel's only Red Sea port saw its revenue collapse in this period before eventually shutting down. When Washington offered Ansarallah a separate truce in May 2025, the movement accepted but refused to let it cover Israel. Yemen would not trade Palestine for its own safety.

The Zionists answered with terror, with Israeli warplanes striking Sanaa and killing Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi, along with much of his cabinet, in 2025. Military chief of staff Muhammad al-Ghamari was later killed as well, along with his 13-year-old son. Today, Israel remains under blockade by Ansarallah for its ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

The Red Sea offensive has opened a second chokepoint against U.S. imperialism. With Hormuz shut and Bab-el-Mandeb now in Ansarallah's hands, both sea lanes that carry Gulf oil to the world are choked by the camp of resistance. Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, called the coastal campaign a “resounding victory,” and responded to Saudi warnings to rein in Ansarallah by rightly noting that Iran does not control the actions of Yemen's leaders.

Washington is currently stretched thin by its war on Iran. Still stinging from its 2025 defeat in Yemen, the Trump administration is reluctant to reengage Ansarallah, even at the urging of its close ally. For its part, Ansarallah has shown great strategic discipline in its fight with the Saudi occupiers while maintaining its robust presence in the united front against U.S.-Zionist aggression. They have followed the terms of the ceasefire by confining the blockade to Saudi Arabia and Israel, something even Trump has publicly acknowledged. That has left Riyadh to fight alone.

Ansarallah and the National Democratic Revolution in Yemen

Ansarallah is a liberation movement that leads the national democratic revolution in Yemen today. Its base is among farmers, tribesmen, soldiers, and the urban poor of the country's highlands. Its enemies are imperialism, chiefly the U.S. and its Saudi and Emirati clients, and the comprador and feudal forces that sold Yemen out to them.

Ansarallah's ideology is based on the liberation theology of Ayatollah Khomeini as well as Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, who founded the movement, admired the Iranian revolution for its anti-imperialist character, as well as Iran and Hezbollah's resistance to U.S. and Israeli wars in the region. He was killed by Yemeni armed forces, backed by Washington, in 2004 after calling for a boycott of American and Israeli goods. His brother, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, has led the movement ever since and maintained its anti-imperialist, popular character.

While imperialist and Zionist propaganda disparagingly paints Ansarallah as a tribal or sectarian militia, the movement's program is national, democratic and unifying. Its National Vision calls for a modern, democratic, unified Yemeni republic, committed to elections, and equal rights for citizens regardless of tribal or religious identity. Ansarallah leaders, for their part, have said openly that an Islamic Republic along the lines of Iran cannot work in Yemen, owing to the population's religious diversity. In turn, the movement draws recruits across sectarian lines, confirmed in a 2015 Middle East Institute study that found Ansarallah fighters from every region and sect. Its ranks have grown from an estimated 100,000 members in 2011 to 350,000 in 2024.

Ansarallah grew out of the poorest parts of Yemen. Saada, the birthplace of the movement, carried longstanding economic and political grievances stemming from decades of marginalization, neglect, and repression by a neocolonial government loyal to Riyadh and, in turn, the United States. For three decades, Ali Abdullah Saleh ruled Yemen as a client of foreign powers. Between 2004 and 2010, his army waged war on Ansarallah's home province of Saada, backed by the U.S. under the banner of the so-called global war on terror. He was forced out after a series of mass protests in 2011, handing power to his deputy, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Ansarallah's road to power ran through a fight over the price of fuel, which erupted in July 2014 when Hadi's government cut subsidies and sent costs soaring. Mass protests demanded relief for the broad masses as well as the resignation of the government. Ansarallah entered Sanaa on September 21, 2014. Less than a year later, Hadi had resigned, fleeing to Aden and then to Riyadh, where the former regime and its supporters (wealthy sheikhs, generals, and financiers) enlisted Saudi Arabia to wage war on their own people.

When Saudi Arabia, with full U.S. backing, began its brutal genocidal war on Yemen in 2015, Saleh, the ousted leader, temporarily found himself antagonistic to his former master's interests and joined an uneasy alliance with Ansarallah. This fell apart in 2017 when Saleh switched sides again, leading to his elimination by patriotic forces in Yemen. The Presidential Leadership Council that survives today as the puppet rulers of Yemen is what remains of that old order, governing from hotel suites in Riyadh.

Today, Ansarallah leads the real government of Yemen, which administers the areas of the country where about 70% of Yemenis live. It governs from the capital, Sanaa, through the Supreme Political Council, which includes figures from outside the movement. It aims to liberate the rest of the country by driving out the Saudi-backed mercenary forces concentrated in the south and east.

Partition: The imperialist-Zionist fallback option

As the Saudi puppet regime collapses further, the old scheme of partitioning Yemen hangs over the war. It is a reactionary demand, and the class forces pushing it reveal its true purpose.

Until recently, a third force claiming to govern part of Yemen existed. The secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC), built and paid for by the United Arab Emirates, seized Hadramawt and Mahra regions in December 2025. This area accounted for roughly half of Yemen's territory and almost all of the former south. As the closest Gulf partner to Israel and a regional rival to Saudi Arabia, the UAE hoped to partition Yemen into a northern and southern state once again. Riyadh, fearing an Emirati and Israeli foothold on both sides of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, turned its own forces on the STC and crushed it in a matter of weeks, forcing Emirati forces to exit Yemen.

From 1967 to 1990, Yemen was divided into two countries: the Yemen Arab Republic in the north and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) in the south. For more than two decades, the PDRY was led by Marxists, socialists, and progressives and operated as a significant counterweight to imperialism and Zionism in the Middle East. It carried out land reform and mass literacy campaigns, and armed the revolution in neighboring Oman's Dhofar province. Palestinian organizations like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) sent fighters for training in the PDRY and received material support from the government. The country was unified in 1990 amid the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, bringing an end to the PDRY and putting the country under the sway of the Gulf monarchies.

The STC waves the flag of the PDRY, but its politics are its exact opposite. Its vice president, Hani bin Breik, was a Salafi cleric who offered STC aid to reactionary Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, who aided NATO in overthrowing Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Its military was built almost entirely with Emirati money around Salafi religious fundamentalists. The STC's leading figures are Emirati clients, not the veterans of the National Liberation Front who drove the British out of Aden in the 1960s.

While antagonistic to Emirati attempts at extending its influence, Saudi Arabia's only consistent goal for over six decades has been keeping Yemen weak. It armed the reactionary Zaydi monarchy in 1962 to fight the revolutionaries and later worked with the U.S. to isolate and undermine the PDRY. After reunification, Riyadh cynically backed secessionist forces in the 1994 civil war to re-divide Yemen.

Today the Saudi puppet government officially defends unity, but if the Presidential Leadership Council is reduced to a rump in the oil-rich south and east, partition is possibly what the imperialists and their attack dogs will reach for.

As the vanguard of Yemen's national democratic revolution, Ansarallah has opposed dismemberment of the country consistently. They rejected an imperialist-backed scheme for a federalist political system, calling it a plot to divide Yemen into poor and wealthy regions to the benefit of foreign powers.

U.S. hands, Saudi crisis

The war on Yemen has been an imperialist project of the United States from the jump. Washington supplies the bombs, the intelligence, and, until 2018, the aerial refueling that has allowed the kingdom to rain death down on hundreds of thousands of Yemenis. A UN estimate at the end of 2021 put the death toll for the war at 377,000 Yemenis, with 150,000 directly killed in fighting and the remainder, mostly children, through resulting hunger and disease. The World Health Organization found that Saudi warplanes and their mercenaries on the ground deliberately targeted Yemeni water and public health infrastructure to maximize terror on civilian areas. No full count or estimate of casualties has been released since fighting resumed after a nearly four-year ceasefire.

In 2024 and 2025, the U.S. bombed Yemen directly. Trump's Operation Rough Rider savaged Yemen with 339 airstrikes on more than 1000 targets for 52 days, In April 2025, a U.S. strike on the Ras Isa fuel port killed 80 civilians, mostly port workers. A little over a week later, another U.S. air strike on a migrant detention center in Saada killed 68 African migrants. The Pentagon officially admits over 150 civilian deaths, while independent monitors put the number higher.

Operation Rough Rider was a failure. On May 6, 2025, Trump called it off and accepted a ceasefire with Ansarallah despite vowing to annihilate the movement at the outset of war. Even as it has resisted rejoining combat operations out of fear, the White House still backs the Saudi counter-offensive to the hilt. May 2025 saw a $142 billion arms deal announced between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, including the sale of F-35 jets.

Ansarallah's sweeping Red Sea offensive is bringing the internal crisis in Saudi Arabia to a head as well. The U.S. is losing its criminal war on Iran, which has opened all of the Gulf monarchies up to sweeping retaliation. Riyadh is under fire from all sides. Its alliance with the UAE turned into open war in southern Yemen. Its oil exports are cut off at both ends of the peninsula. Recent Saudi attempts to reverse Ansarallah's gains along the Red Sea have also failed, and its forces in Marib are besieged.

The most decisive moment in Yemen's revolution for over a decade is unfolding. Its successes strike a mighty blow to both imperialism and Zionism, and the liberation of the whole country will strengthen the camp of resistance.

#International #Yemen #Ansarallah #Houthis #SaudiArabia #Palestine #Featured

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following October 3 statement from the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN).

Normalization with the racist, settler-colonialist, zionist entity of Israel often begins with a U.S. directive aimed at Arab regimes, as evidenced by the first attempt with the Camp David Accords in 1978, which led to a “peace” agreement between Egypt and Israel. In essence, normalization coerces Arab regimes in the region to accept their subjugated status as compliant agents, which serves the zionist agenda and its U.S. imperialist patron. In light of the fast pace of change in today’s world order, the U.S. finds it necessary to push for normalization in order to maintain its global, imperialist dominance over Arab nations and thwart their progress toward independent, modern democracies.

Therefore, the current Saudi Arabian (and previous efforts like the Abraham Accords and others) push towards normalization with the zionist enemy fundamentally signifies a recognition of the settler-colonialist state’s legitimacy and an attempt to erase our people's historical and national rights in all of Palestine. Any discussion about the so-called “two-state solution” is nothing but an attempt to stall and buy time to create new realities on the ground that will be impossible to reverse. This is when submission, surrender, and betrayal become the inherent traits of Saudi Arabia or any other Arab regime that normalizes relations with Israel. The Saudis and the other normalizers have always supported the repression of the Palestine national liberation movement, and believe that peace deals with Israel will eventually quell Palestinian resistance and bring quiet and “stability” to the region.

Within the normalization context, the zionist entity aims to establish economic, security, and political dominance over neighboring Arab nations, while extending its influence to North African nations as well. All these countries are envisioned as expansive markets for global – predominantly U.S. – capital, perpetuating their dependency and disintegration under the auspices of sell-out regimes, especially that of the most reactionary and traitorous of them all, the criminal kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Although our Arab masses reject normalization, and have been resisting it in the Gulf and other Arab nations like Egypt and Jordan for decades, these deals – brokered by a U.S. government that pays lip service to “democracy,” but promotes all the dictators (who are also, unsurprisingly, the normalizers) in the region – also allow Israel to focus its military firepower on the Palestinian people, as the militaries of the submissive and surrendering Arab states are neutralized.

#Palestine #USPCN #SaudiArabia #Zionism #Israel

San José, CA – Earlier in the day, I glanced at oil prices and saw that they were down 40% for the day at about $10 a barrel. Pretty bad, I thought. Then after financial markets closed, I got a call about it. I looked and saw that the closing price was negative $37.63 and let out an f-bomb, the first of about a half a dozen in my three minute conversation.

Oil futures for May fell more than 300%, from $18.27 on Friday, April 17, to deep in negative prices on Monday, April 20. With futures for June down but still at positive at about $20 a barrel, typically speculators could profit by buying the cheap May future, taking the oil delivery, and then selling the June future and delivering the oil in June. Normally this arbitrage would keep the futures prices within about $10 of each other. But the world is so awash in oil that there is almost no place to store extra oil in the United States. Thus, speculators and hedge funds were willing to pay to take the oil off their hands.

This crisis of overproduction in the oil market is mainly because of the steep drop in oil purchases because of the worldwide recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Socialist China, where the pandemic began, had to lock down their country in a successful attempt to control the virus. New infections are now down to less than 100 per day, many, if not most, from Chinese returning from other countries. But the cost was steep, as the total production of goods and services, or GDP, fell more than 6% from a year earlier. This is China’s first fall in GDP since they began to report it in 1992. Even though China’s manufacturing is returning, service industries are slower to come back. Now that China has become the world’s largest importer of oil, world oil markets took a big hit.

But the pandemic situation in Europe, another major oil importer, is much worse. Despite the news about ‘reopening’ some of the economies, COVID-19 is still raging, with the United Kingdom alone reporting almost 6000 new infections. Together with Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, each of which had over 1000 new infections reported, and other European Union countries, there were about 20,000 new COVID-19 cases despite stay-at-home orders across the continent. This has cut deeply into European imports of oil.

But Europe pales beside the United States, with almost 30,000 new infections reported, and much of the country (but not all) trying to stay at home. More than 20 million people in the United States have lost their jobs in just the last four weeks, and layoffs continue. Oil consumption in the United States has fallen by one-third just in the last month. The United States is still the world’s largest consumer of oil, which puts a huge dent in world oil consumption. While the U.S. is no longer a big oil importer, the drop in consumption means that the extra oil is piling up in the United States.

While not the main reason, a trigger for the recent collapse in the price of oil even before today was a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, the two biggest oil producers. While they were trying to gain market share from each other, they had a mutual target in mind: U.S. oil producers, where it is more costly to produce oil.

Even though the price of oil is now well below the cost of producing oil in the United States, U.S. oil companies cannot just turn off production. The big increase in U.S. oil production over the last ten years has been shale oil. The hydraulic fracturing or fracking process has never been turned off before and could lead to equipment damages or even not being able to restart production.

The drop in oil prices dragged down the stock market on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down almost 600 points or 2.5%. The Dow has fallen 20% from its all-time high earlier this year as Wall Street investors have faith in the huge efforts by the Federal Reserve and the federal government. In contrast, oil prices (using the barely positive $1.26 as oil prices bounced back after the close of U.S. trading) are down 97% from the beginning of the year, and show a much more pessimistic view of the real economy right now.

#SanJoséCA #International #US #MiddleEast #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #stockMarket #SaudiArabia #Russia #DonaldTrump #COVID19 #OilFutures

The attacks serve as the latest in an ongoing war of resistance by Yemen that began nearly five years ago. On one side, there are Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis) and its allies in the camp of resistance including Iran, Syria, and the political organization Hezbollah, and the Palestinian movement; on the other side, Saudi Arabia and their coalition forces – made up in one form or another of the United States, Israel, several Gulf States, and others.

The involvement of the Saudi-U.S. coalition forces represents an intervention into the sovereign affairs of the Yemeni people. Ansar Allah has led the armed resistance against this foreign invasion. With the success of this attack, the tide of the war may have dramatically shifted in favor of the patriotic forces.

The conflict in Yemen has produced the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today, with tens of thousands of people dead, many more wounded, and millions either on the cusp of starvation, victims of disease brought on by the war, or on the move as they flee for safety. Despite the magnitude of the crisis and the fact that the fighting has been raging for nearly five years, the U.S. corporate media has hardly covered Yemen at all. Until now, that is.

Over the last several days, mainstream media outlets have released story after story about this massive strike. A key piece to this narrative being spun by the Western press is that the attacks did not originate from Yemen, but Iran instead. The Iranian government has denied these allegations. As ever, U.S. President Donald Trump was quick to address the situation. The administration claims to be looking into the situation. Trump declared that they are “locked and loaded, depending on verification,” implying that they’re more than ready to retaliate directly in some capacity.

Combining the denial of the Iranian government with the bluster of President Trump leads to the conclusion that the pinning of the attack on Iran is a part of the broader U.S. shift toward open military aggression. The situation represents a danger not only to the people of Iran and the greater Middle East, but to all peace-loving people on the planet.

The demands of the anti-war movement in the U.S. must be clear: No to war on Iran! End military aid to Saudi Arabia! U.S. hands off Yemen!

#MilwaukeeWI #AntiwarMovement #OppressedNationalities #Iran #US #MiddleEast #PeoplesStruggles #Yemen #SaudiArabia #Houthis #DonaldTrump

The Anti-War Committee calls on its supporters to demand Congress and the Trump administration immediately cease all support for Saudi Arabia’s military assault on Yemen.

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia, with the support of President Obama, began waging a ruthless war against Yemen, with the goal of protecting Saudi and U.S. shipping, oil, and imperialist interests in the Middle East. The invasion began in reaction to the September 21 Revolution of 2014, when the Houthi movement for Yemeni self-determination, which for years had protested growing Saudi influence over Yemeni society, led a takeover of the most populous areas of Yemen including government institutions in the capital Sanaa. The war has been waged by a so-called “coalition” of Saudi-aligned governments in the region, together with the United States, and has involved a brutal aerial bombing campaign, a ground invasion and a blockade of Yemeni seaports.

While the ground assault has failed to capture significant territory from the Houthi-aligned forces, the aerial assaults—which have persisted for nearly four years—have destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure along with countless lives.

War on Yemen has Created a Grave Human Rights Crisis

International monitors have documented Saudi bombings of Yemeni refugee camps, hospitals, funeral processions, school buses, and many other civilian targets. Casualties from individual bombings have climbed into the hundreds; tens of thousands of Yemenis are estimated to have been killed overall.

The U.S./Saudi coalition has also blockaded seaports of the Houthi-held areas of Yemen, preventing food and medical supplies from reaching millions of people. As a result, famine has spread across Yemen, with international aid organizations estimating that hundreds of children die of malnutrition daily, and that 14 million Yemenis—half of the pre-war population—are at risk of starvation.

Adding to the carnage, the U.S./Saudi war and blockade have caused what international medical groups have deemed the worst cholera outbreak in human history, with over one million cases and thousands of deaths.

End U.S. Military Intervention!

None of this could have taken place without the initiative, weapons, intelligence, and approval of the United States. The U.S. supplies targeting information and intelligence for Saudi attacks, refuels Saudi planes in the air, has deployed Navy destroyers in the blockade, and supplies arms and training to Saudi forces. There are even U.S. “boots on the ground” near the Yemeni border. As of early 2018, about a dozen Green Beret commandos were stationed in Saudi Arabia along the Yemen border.

Historically the Saudi regime has proven itself a willing partner of NATO powers, chiefly of the United States. The war on Yemen is no exception, as it willingly aids the US in its bid to cement its domination of the oil-rich Middle East and the strategic Gulf of Aden shipping lanes, where Yemen’s southwest coastline forms a narrow choke point connecting Europe to Asia’s ports. Both the US and Saudi Arabia have also been eager to portray the war on Yemen as part of their long-standing beleaguerment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which neoconservative warmongers and regime-changers for decades have sought to punish for its rejection of Washington’s diktats.

In 2017, Trump and Saudi rulers crafted a US arms sales deal totaling $350 billion, all to fuel the profits of CEOs and shareholders of big corporations like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. These arms sales continue the direct complicity of the United States government in Saudi war crimes against Yemen.

Khashoggi’s Case Sheds Light on Horrors of War in Yemen

Meanwhile, the outcry from U.S. media and political leaders about the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been naive at best, and hypocritical and deceitful at worst. While his murder has led to some increased scrutiny of the war on Yemen, the shock being expressed belies the U.S. government’s years-long collusion in exactly the sort of violence and human rights abuses Khashoggi was silenced for writing about. Unsurprisingly, on November 14, House Republicans moved to block a vote to end US military involvement in Yemen under the War Powers Act. While a separate bill in the Senate would end arms sales for Saudi use in Yemen, the bill simultaneously threatens to levy even more sanctions on Iran—sanctions that are already choking off medical and humanitarian supplies—over its alleged support for the Houthi movement. We demand an end to US wars and blockades, with no exceptions!

No Ban, No Bombs, No War!

While continuing the war on Yemen, President Trump has outlawed Yemenis from traveling to the U.S. under his racist Muslim ban. It is criminal for the U.S. to bomb and attack other countries and then turn away refugees when the U.S. has destroyed their homelands! It is outrageous for Trump to ban Yemenis from traveling to the U.S. while destroying their country and starving their people. Trump, since the campaign trail, has painted the Middle East and Muslims in general as “terrorists” and this anti-Muslim rhetoric and this racist travel ban are legitimizing the increase in hate crimes and hate speech against our Muslim neighbors. We cannot be silent in the face of this bigotry! We need to speak out against the racist Muslim ban and the foreign policies which cause refugees to flee.

Take Action!

We at the Anti-War Committee know that the Congress will only end US support for Saudi Arabia if we demand with a united voice: STOP SUPPORTING THE WAR ON YEMEN!

Call Senator Amy Klobuchar at 202-224-3244 and Senator Tina Smith at 202- 224-5641 to tell them to vote against all aid to Saudi Arabia and to voice opposition to US coordination in the war on Yemen.

#TwinCities #AntiwarMovement #OppressedNationalities #US #MiddleEast #PeoplesStruggles #Yemen #TwinCitiesAntiWarCommittee #SaudiArabia #DonaldTrump

The news came after more than a week of investigation and public pressure on the Saudi government by journalists and state officials around the world. Days earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had called on the Saudis to release whatever surveillance footage they had of the embassy, which was met by Saudi denials of involvement. Even President Trump gave into pressure from U.S. lawmakers and others to acknowledge the disappearance, by calling Kashoggi’s fiancé and making a statement.

But the revelation of Turkish surveillance footage within the Saudi embassy has adds another layer to this complex web of brutality and intrigue.

According to officials, these recordings show a Saudi special forces team of 15 men – called an “assassination squad” by Turkish media – capturing Kashoggi upon entry to the embassy. In a scene suited for a horror film like Saw, video and audio show this hit squad torturing and interrogating the U.S. journalist for hours before ultimately killing him and dismembering his body. They likely loaded Kashoggi’s remains onto a plane headed back to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

As a well-known journalist for a prominent U.S. newspaper, Kashoggi heavily criticized the Saudi royal family’s repressive monarchy and its murderous war on Yemen – the likely motivation for his murder at the hands of the Saudis.

On October 10, the Washington Post published a report by the U.S. State Department showing they knew of a Saudi plot to capture Kashoggi. In response, State Department officials commented on the disappearance. Whether U.S. officials warned the journalist of his imminent danger remains unknown.

The news brought a renewed wave of criticism and disgust aimed at Saudi Arabia, which had previously denied any involvement in Kashoggi’s disappearance. Activists and some politicians in the U.K. and the U.S. have called for a full stop of arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to this murder.

Erdogan’s decision to make public the Turkish government’s own surveillance footage will likely shake the uneasy relationship between the two states, as well. Saudi Arabia has provided crucial investment for Turkey’s energy sector in recent years, and the two have cooperated, if unevenly, in attempts to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s national democratic government in Syria. The existence of these recordings paints a different picture: two regional rivals spying on each other to get the upper hand.

The U.S. has relied on Saudi Arabia as one of its main proxies, along with Israel, to dominate the Middle East. As the world’s largest producer of petroleum, Saudi Arabia remains critical to global energy markets, and the U.S. has maintained a close relationship with the repressive royal family to secure its cooperation.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has strengthened this toxic relationship. On his first major international trip as president, Trump signed an arms deal with Saudi Arabia totaling around $110 billion – money that would go towards their disastrous three-year war on Yemen. During the trip, the Saudi royal family rolled out the red carpet for Trump and his advisors and won the egotistical president’s favor through flattery. Since then, the Trump administration has consistently backed Saudi actions, whether through direct support or providing diplomatic cover – even as it threatens key U.S. allies like Canada.

Under the rule of Prince Mohammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has become increasingly bold and vicious in its actions, both at home and abroad. Last November, Saudi forces kidnapped Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, forcing him to issue statements denouncing Hezbollah aimed at stirring up civil war. Increasingly aligned with Israel, Salman’s monarchy has ramped up efforts to destabilize other nations, including other Gulf states like Qatar, and to push for war with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Domestically, Salman jailed rival members of the royal family in the name of ‘anti-corruption’ in 2017. He ordered the public beheadings of dozens of dissidents, including a prominent Shi’a cleric. Internal terror, always a fixture of Saudi society, has become more brazen and far reaching under Salman’s reign.

Saudi Arabia’s almost complete dependency on oil and low-paid foreign labor has plunged the ruling family into a sustained crisis. A global drop in oil prices and revenue from petroleum forced the monarchy to take on massive foreign debt, even as it continues to wage unrelenting warfare on neighboring Yemen. Salman’s anti-corruption campaign, backed by the Trump administration and praised by liberal journalists like Thomas Friedman, has nothing to do with government accountability – it is a move to eliminate internal challenges to Salman’s authority and consolidate wealth in the increasingly desperate Saudi state coffers.

As the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led war on Yemen continues, officials have ceased reporting casualty numbers and UN offices have withdrawn much of their aid to victims. Civilian casualties now number in tens of thousands, according to most observers. Saudi Arabia’s blockade of its neighbor – the poorest nation in the Persian Gulf – has stopped critical food and medical aid from reaching the people. Devastation of public health infrastructure and water sources, deliberately targeted by Saudi warplanes, has led to the resurgence of diseases like cholera. War is literally starving the people of Yemen to death.

The brutal murder of the journalist Kashoggi reflects the monstrous nature of U.S. imperialism and its wars, whether waged through proxies like Saudi Arabia in Yemen or directly in places like Afghanistan. It’s an important event that should draw vocal criticism from people across the U.S. who value peace and free speech.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #torture #SaudiArabia #Kashoggi #MiddleEast

On Nov. 5, 2017, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri appeared in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and abruptly announced his resignation. In his resignation speech, Hariri denounced the Islamic Republic of Iran for supposedly interfering in Lebanese politics through Hezbollah, which makes up part of Hariri’s own coalition government.

The unexpected announcement, made from Saudi state-run television, raised suspicions across the Middle East. Many speculated that Riyadh forced Hariri’s resignation in a clumsy effort to ratchet up aggression towards Iran. Hezbollah and other national democratic forces in Lebanon vocally deny any attempt to drive Hariri from power and claim that the former prime minister, a close associate of the Saudi royal family, was coerced into making the announcement.

The same day as Hariri’s abrupt resignation, Saudi Arabia also announced they had intercepted a Burqan 2H ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s defense forces on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. Saudi authorities claimed the missile was provided to Houthi rebel forces in Yemen by Iran, supposedly proof of the Islamic Republic interfering in the region.

As Saudi Arabia attempts to destabilize Lebanon and continues its three-year carnage in Yemen, the risk of regional war grows. Beneath these sparks of political and military crisis, however, exists an even greater crisis for imperialism in the Middle East. The United States’ efforts to dominate the region, especially with the use of Israel and Saudi Arabia as attack dogs, are crumbling as resistance grows. The heightened risk of war reflects the desperate attempts by the U.S. and its allies to crush that camp of resistance, particularly Iran.

Hezbollah is the target of Saudi interference in Lebanon

Saudi authorities are almost certainly holding Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri prisoner and pressured him into resigning, according to Sayid Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.

“We deem the resignation of Hariri illegal and invalid,” said Nasrallah on Nov. 10. “All of a sudden, out of nowhere, Saudi Arabia called the prime minister on an urgent matter without his aide or advisers, and was forced to tender his resignation, and to read the resignation statement written by them.”

Hariri holds dual Lebanese-Saudi citizenship, prompting some observers to speculate that Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman placed the billionaire prime minister under house arrest alongside the other Saudi officials caught up in a recent crackdown.

In the immediate aftermath, Saudi Arabia has attempted to inflame sectarian tensions in Lebanon by calling for Sunnis to take to the streets against the predominantly Shi'a Hezbollah. But despite these calls for disunity, the response across the country to Hariri's resignation was near unanimous in denouncing Saudi interference. All major political players have called on Saudi Arabia to allow Hariri to return to Lebanon and resolve this crisis.

Hezbollah called for calm and stability while the nation sorted through this bizarre incident. “Lebanon had enjoyed unprecedented stability over the past year,” said Nasrallah. “We declare that the prime minister of Lebanon has not resigned. Saad Hariri is our political opponent, but he is also our prime minister.”

Beyond Hezbollah, Lebanese president Michel Auon appealed for calm. Even members of Hariri’s own party, the Future Movement, expressed concern at Saudi interference in Lebanese affairs.

The target of Saudi Arabia’s interference is Hezbollah. While officially Shi’a Muslim in its religious orientation, Hezbollah is a progressive non-sectarian national liberation movement. Its leader, Sayid Hassan Nasrallah, preaches liberation theology and anti-imperialism. The organization has a mass base among poor and working class communities in Lebanon, and its armed wing has supported the Palestinian liberation movement and Syria’s national democratic government. In 2006, Hezbollah defeated a brutal 32-day-long invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), marking a new chapter in its resistance to foreign domination.

While Saudi Arabia has long interfered in Lebanese political affairs, the Arab uprisings that began in 2011 forced the bulk of their attention elsewhere – Syria, Bahrain and now Yemen. In that period, Hezbollah made marked gains both in its electoral strategy, its social influence, and its military capacity, culminating in their presence in the ruling parliamentary coalition government that Habibi headed. With Lebanese elections on the horizon, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. fear that Hezbollah's victorious return from Syria may translate into serious gains in parliament

“It is clear that Saudi Arabia and Saudi officials have declared war on Lebanon and on Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Nasrallah stated.

Saudi Arabia descends into further crisis

Saudi Arabia’s erratic and violent actions reflect a growing crisis for the gulf monarchy, both internal and external. For over half a century, the Saudi monarchy functioned as a vital part of U.S. dominance in the Middle East. In exchange for its enormous oil reserves and support for the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency, the U.S. provided the Saudis with both military protection and cheap weapons of war to defend its power.

But deep social and economic contradictions exist behind the wealthy façade of Saudi power. Dependent on migrant labor from neighboring countries, like Yemen, and the exploitation of petroleum, Saudi Arabia saw its status sharply decline with the global drop in oil prices. Attempts to drive competitors, like U.S. shale oil producers, out of the market by ramping up its own production backfired, further driving down prices – and with it, Saudi revenues.

Forced to run huge budget deficits, the Saudis have become desperate to shore up their financial situation. On the economic front, they announced plans to sell shares in its state-owned oil industry, ARAMCO. Even more drastic, Saudi leaders agreed to offer oil futures contracts denominated in Chinese Renminbi, backed by gold, in September 2017.

Saudi Arabia’s deep economic crisis has triggered an acute political crisis as well. Earlier this year, Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman relaxed restrictions on women driving cars – one of the more bizarre and widely criticized aspects of the country’s theocratic oppression of women. Far from the image of a ‘reformer’ promoted by the U.S. corporate media, Salman’s move was a cynical attempt to make Saudi Arabia appear ‘more modern’ and drive up foreign tourism. It accompanies announcements to build extravagant beach resort hotels and attract foreign capital from corporations like Virgin Airlines.

Unfortunately for Salman, this concession to the Saudi women’s movement angered the hardline conservative religious elements in the House of Saud, sharpening a power struggle within the ruling family. Salman has responded by savagely cracking down on dissent, beheading Shi’a religious clerics, and even jailing other members of the royal family in the name of “fighting corruption.” In reality, Salman, who is just as corrupt as the royals he throws in prison, cares only about consolidating his power in a time of crisis.

Saudi Arabia’s gangster ‘Game of Thrones’

Salman's purge shows the gangster nature of the Saudi monarchy. Between suspicious plane crashes, the extrajudicial executions of political rivals, and the bizarre jailing of opponents in the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, it plays like a scene from the movies Goodfellas or Scarface. By some estimates, Salman's so-called anti-corruption dragnet have arrested nearly 500 members of the Saudi monarchy and expropriated their wealth. But there's something bigger at work.

Corrupt wheeling and dealing between Saudi royals and international oil tycoons is a key component of the gulf monarchy's wealth. Salman now labels these backroom deals, struck with U.S. and European oil corporations by members of the Saudi government, as “corrupt” and illegal, even though the Saudi monarchy has known and encouraged these practices for decades.

Salman instead hopes to consolidate his power before the death of his father, King Salman, and stabilize Saudi Arabia's massive budget deficits by liquidating competitive elements of the royal family. The younger Salman, a junior member of the royal family, faces external instability and internal crisis, which raises concerns for his power after his father eventually abdicates the throne. Prince Salman himself jumped another Saudi prince, long thought of as the next in line after King Salman, much to the frustration of other elements in the royal family.

Prince Salman's crackdown is a move of desperation from a young, brash monarch who sees the writing on the wall. It's a response to severe crisis, not corruption.

The massive wave of arrests came on the heels of a visit by Jared Kushner, chief advisor to Trump, to Saudi Arabia. During the visit, Kushner praised the Saudis for purchasing U.S. arms and “modernizing” the country – sentiments later echoed on Twitter by Trump, who also praised Salman's crackdown on rival elites.

It isn't hard to see why Trump would support – and many believe greenlighted – Prince Salman's purge. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the most prominent royal arrested in Salman's crackdown is estimated to be the 45th wealthiest men in the world, with large shares in Fox/Viacom and Twitter. But unlike Prince Salman, who has intimately tied his rule to the Trump presidency, al-Waleed voiced criticisms of Trump during the 2016 U.S. election, at one point even calling for the billionaire mogul to drop out of the race. From the White House’s perspective, Prince Salman is weeding out potential obstacles for U.S. domination.

The Saudi killing fields in Yemen

Equally troubling for Prince Salman is the disastrous Saudi-led war on Yemen. While the Saudi state claims they intercepted the ballistic missile fired on Nov. 5, both the Houthi-led resistance in Yemen and many international observers report that the strike was successful. But far from unprovoked aggression by the Houthis, the missile was fired in response to the Saudi coalition bombing of a market in northern Yemen three days earlier, which killed 26 people, mainly civilians. This act of Yemeni resistance highlights the failure of the Saudi war effort. Prince Salman, the primary architect of the Saudi war on Yemen, now faces the reality that the Houthi movement has withstood even the most brutal carnage inflicted on it.

In response, the Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen announced a comprehensive total blockade of the nation, closing land, air and sea ports to aid workers and journalists. Aid agencies connected with the UN and other providers were not notified prior to the implementation of the blockade. Effectively this move cuts Yemen off from the outside world while Saudi warplanes and mercenary death squads strangle the Yemeni people.

The consequences of this latest blockade will devastate Yemen further. Every ten minutes, a child in Yemen dies from conditions stemming from the savage, Saudi-led, U.S.-backed war on the country, according to UNICEF.

United Nations officials say that Yemen will face the world's largest famine in decades, larger than the monstrous famines in South Sudan and Somalia earlier this year, if the Saudi-led coalition doesn't lift its blockade. Out of Yemen's population of 28 million people, about 20 million “do not know where they're going to get their next meal,” said one UN official.

Famine isn't the only heinous result of the Saudi blockade. Since the war began nearly three years ago, Yemen has suffered the largest outbreak of cholera, a deadly disease nearly eliminated by modern medicine, in over a century. Yemen's cholera epidemic, which has stricken more than 900,000 people, is the result of the nation's devastated water and health care infrastructure, which Saudi-coalition warplanes have deliberately targeted. By blocking access to clean water and medical supplies, the Saudis have guaranteed the epidemic will spread and kill more people.

The Saudi-led war on Yemen could not continue without the support of the U.S. Every step of the way, the U.S. and the U.K. have backed the Saudi-led slaughter by refueling warplanes, selling death machines and providing diplomatic cover. The U.S. and the U.K. are the two largest sellers of arms to Saudi Arabia. British arms sales to Saudi Arabia have increased 500% since the war began three years ago, according to a report by the Independent newspaper in the U.K.

Even Sweden, a country that many people in the U.S. don't associate with imperialist war, has stepped up its arms sales to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – one of the partners in the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen.

For the entirety of the three-year assault on Yemen, the Saudis and the U.S. have claimed the Houthi rebels are proxy forces for the Islamic Republic of Iran. In reality, the Houthi insurgency began in 2004 among the rural populations living in northern Yemen, who make up about a third of the entire country. Influenced by the liberation theology of Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, the Houthis formed with the goal of driving out U.S. imperialism, Saudi domination and their puppet rulers.

Today, the Houthis lead a united front against the Gulf monarchy coalition that seeks to dominate Yemen by force. Deposed Yemeni ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, once an ally of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, has joined the united front along with elements in the nation’s south. Together they comprise a united front resisting the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led war on Yemen.

Israel and Saudi Arabia: Partners in crime

Despite the blank check of support offered by the Trump administration, Israel has seen its position in the Middle East decline sharply. Like Saudi Arabia, the Israeli government backed the seven-year war in Syria in hopes of toppling President Bashar al-Assad, a key regional partner of Iran and a supporter of the Palestinian liberation struggle. It covertly assisted fighters from al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and bombed the Syrian Arab Army several times to no avail.

Worse than Assad remaining in power, though, is the strengthening of Hezbollah in Lebanon. As the Syrian civil war winds down, Hezbollah returns from the battlefield victorious, better armed and with greater influence in regional politics. As a key ally to both Palestinians and Iran, Hezbollah poses an existential threat to Israeli power. They defeated the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and have only grown stronger since that time with battle-tested experience fighting the Islamic State death squads in Syria. Publicly released threat assessments by the Israeli Defense Forces in 2016 identified Hezbollah as the main external threat to Israeli security.

Wikileaks cables have revealed growing ties between the Israeli government and Prince Salman, who see a common foe in Iran and the entire camp of resistance. Saudi Arabia, for its part, never supported Arab resistance forces like Hezbollah, who they blamed entirely for the 2006 Israeli invasion, but their collaboration with Israel has deepened. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for instance, released a statement after Hariri’s resignation hysterically denouncing Iran and Hezbollah.

In Washington, Israeli lobbyists have begun working closely with lobbyists from the Gulf monarchies in Washington, particularly from the UAE. After securing greater arms sales to their countries in the latest U.S. military budget, these lobbyists have a singular goal in mind: Build consensus for war with Iran.

Imperialism and the camp of resistance

On Nov. 10, the Syrian government declared final victory over the Islamic State. While pockets of conflict will likely continue, this effectively means the end of the nearly seven-year war in Syria.

The Islamic State (IS), born out of the disastrous U.S. occupation of Iraq, functioned as a proxy army for the U.S. in Syria. While President Obama and later Trump formally declared war on IS, the U.S. contained the bulk of its offensive against the right-wing Salafist militia to Iraq in hopes of pushing the group away from Iraqi oil derricks and into Syria. Often U.S. warplanes bombed Syrian Arab Army forces that were actively fighting IS on the ground. All doubts over the real target of U.S. bombing missions in Syria ended on April 6, 2017, when President Trump fired 59 tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government air base.

At the center of these victories are the anti-imperialist forces in the Middle East, which comprise a camp of resistance. Anchored by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the camp of resistance includes the Syrian Arab Republic, Hezbollah and the patriotic forces of Lebanon, the Palestinian liberation organizations, the Houthi insurgency in Yemen and other allied national democratic movements in the Middle East.

The goal of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel is to destroy the camp of resistance in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, in alliance with the Israelis, has taken stock of the major battlefields in the Middle East. The influence of the camp of resistance is expanding. Almost seven years of trying to topple the Assad government in Syria has failed, and the attempts to stop the Houthi movement in Yemen have proven disastrous for the Gulf monarchies. Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon and beyond has grown. And worst of all for the U.S., Iran's influence has grown.

With Trump’s move to sabotage the Iran nuclear deal last month, the risk of region-wide war in the Middle East rises each day. Imperialism is a brutal, vicious system that guarantees high oil profits for the 1% while brining death and destruction on the rest of the world. All people opposed to that system should resist the threats of war and work to bring an end to the slaughter in nations like Yemen.

#SaudiArabia #MiddleEast #Yemen #Hezbollah #SaadHariri

“The free Yemeni people with all its tribes, popular committees and army refuse the presence of foreign forces on its territory, as it consider the U.S. presence a clear colonization,” the statement said.

“Once again we affirm that the presence of U.S., UAE and other forces is an occupation aimed at spoiling our country and wealth,” the statement added, stressing that this occupation will be met with resistance by all means.

The U.S. Defense Department is stating the number of troops sent is small; but the U.S. is rushing arms to the Saudis, refueling their aircraft and supplying intelligence. Thousands of Yemenis have been killed by the Saudi bombing campaign.

The U.S., Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others began a war on Yemen in March, 2015, with the aim of dominating the country.

#WashingtonDC #Occupation #MiddleEast #PeoplesStruggles #Yemen #UnitedStates #SaudiArabia