Orientul Mijlociu

Key Takeaways

• Iran’s deteriorating economy and apparent difficulties exerting control over the Strait of Hormuz may have contributed to Iran’s recent willingness to engage with the United States. Iran’s renewed engagement with the United States does not indicate that the regime has softened its negotiating position or is willing to make meaningful concessions on core demands.
• The Houthis are attempting to deter the United States and other Saudi partners from any external response that would support Saudi Arabia against the Houthis.
• ISW-CTP is considering five possible Houthi military courses of action (COAs) that the group could take against the United States or other Saudi partners if these parties increase their military support for Saudi Arabia against the Houthis, including by providing defensive air support or conducting airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. In a most likely COA (MLCOA), the Houthis expand their naval blockade against Saudi vessels to include vessels affiliated with the United States or other Saudi partners.
• The Shia Coordination Framework, which includes multiple Iranian-backed Iraqi actors, has reportedly approved some details of an unfinalized Iraqi government plan to disarm Iranian-backed Iraqi militias by June 2027. The Iraqi militias will almost certainly exploit certain provisions of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al Zaydi’s plan to retain their arms.
• Iraq’s most prominent militias continue to condition disarmament on demands that the federal government is highly unlikely to meet, which indicates that they have no intention to disarm.

On regarde le Yémen sur une carte et l’on voit un pays pauvre, fragmenté, ravagé par plus d’une décennie de guerre.

On regarde son PIB et l’on voit presque rien.

Mais on regarde sa population, ses montagnes, son histoire et surtout sa position devant Bab el-Mandeb : soudain, le Yémen change de dimension.

Key Takeaways:

Saudi Arabia built the East-West Pipeline in the Iran–Iraq War as redundancy past Hormuz, moving crude from the Eastern Province to Yanbu on the Red Sea. A 10 September drone strike—Riyadh blames Iranian-backed militias in Iraq—forced a temporary shutdown. The piece says that hits about 4% of world oil supply. Rystad: as of late August, up to 4 million b/d on the line. Prior hits: Houthis at Afif (2019) and Iranian drones in the 2026 Iran war.
Bypassing Hormuz shifts risk to Bab el-Mandeb. The author says Houthis now hold more ground around Perim, Hanish, Mocha, and Dhubab. Hormuz flows: 21.6 million b/d in Q4 2025 to 4.9 million in Q2 2026; Bab el-Mandeb 5.4 million to 8.1 million; Suez/SUMED ~5.8 million. Aramco’s 15% SUMED stake is a backup, but much of that still needs the pipeline and Yanbu; ship size and pipe capacity cannot swap every barrel.
2019: pipeline hit, Hormuz open. April 2026: Hormuz squeezed, Bab el-Mandeb less constrained. September 2026: pipeline, Hormuz, and Bab el-Mandeb under pressure at once. Author: alternatives that share the same nodes are not independent risk. Count independent capacity under simultaneous hits, not the number of maps on the wall.

Key Takeaways:

The author rejects “why Arabs can never be democratic” as Orientalist essentialism (Said). Ask instead which institutions, rents, and power balances have so far blocked transitions—without treating 22 unlike states as one culture. Bellin and Sadiki are used to put discourse and coercive institutions ahead of an “Arab mind.”
Proposed mix, not one cause: Khaldunian asabiyyah recast as modern clientelism (Morocco’s “bak sahbi”); oil and aid rents that buy compliance without taxation-for-representation (Ross); Sharabi’s neopatriarchy; colonial security states plus Cold War and counterterror backing; cohesive armies that fear opening. Culture is not the independent variable.
Tunisia after 2011 is the counterexample: an Arab-Muslim society ran competitive politics, then reversed—proof of possibility and fragility, not destiny. Youth and digital protest can punch holes in narrative control but not replace parties and unions. Democracy, following Sen, is treated as a universal value whose fate is the distribution of power, which can change.

Alors même que les Américains commémorent la douleur des attentats du 11 septembre, au même moment, les Houthis du Yémen, sous la coordination le long de l’«axe de la résistance», mettent sous contrôle absolu, le détroit de Bab el-Mandeb et l’ensemble de la côte yéménite de la mer Rouge.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and his UAE counterpart, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, affirmed their commitment to continue advancing Syria-UAE relations in a way that helps fulfill both countries’ aspirations for development and for building a more “advanced and prosperous” future.

Authorities should view the end of UNIFIL not as a prelude to a security vacuum, but as a chance to establish a workable U.S.-led transition mechanism that brings in Arab, European, and international partners, with the ultimate goal of helping Lebanon exercise full sovereignty over its territory without the support of foreign forces.

À la mi-juillet, l’Arabie saoudite a relancé sa guerre contre le gouvernement yéménite d’Ansarullah et le mouvement houthi :

«Les forces dirigées par l’Arabie saoudite ont bombardé lundi l’aéroport international de Sanaa, au Yémen, relançant ainsi la guerre contre les Houthis yéménites, officiellement connus sous le nom d’Ansarullah, alors qu’un cessez-le-feu tenait relativement bien depuis 2022.

Les nouveaux alliés musulmans de l’Arabie saoudite ne volent pas à son secours et même les États-Unis auraient rejeté sa demande d’intervention directe dans la dernière phase de ce conflit qui dure depuis plus d’une décennie.

L’expert russe Farhad Ibragimov a évalué avec justesse que «l’OTAN musulmane saoudienne est confrontée à sa première épreuve du feu» face à la multiplication des attaques houthies contre des cibles à l’intérieur du royaume. Le Pakistan aurait transmis à l’Iran un avertissement de son allié saoudien l’exhortant à contenir les Houthis, tandis que son ministre de la Défense laissait entendre que la poursuite des attaques contre l’Arabie saoudite permettrait de concrétiser leur alliance de défense mutuelle. Peu après, cependant, le ministère pakistanais des Affaires étrangères a minimisé cette possibilité.

Baghdad Says the Drones Flew From Maysan. Thermal Data and a Post-Attack Optical Frame Put the Damage on a 110-Kilometer Stretch Southeast of Medina, 1,100 Kilometers Away.

On the morning of Thursday, September 10, drones struck Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, the 1,200-kilometer line from Abqaiq to Yanbu that has carried most of the kingdom’s exports since Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz. The Ministry of Energy shut the line “as a precautionary measure” and reported injuries. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs then said the drones came from Iraq and that Riyadh, at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Falih al-Zaidi, had “chosen not to respond at this stage.” Early on Saturday, Baghdad said its investigation had traced the launches to Maysan province on the Iranian border and dismissed the commander of Maysan Operations Command. That is the whole public record.