Saudi Arabia

Since the Strait of Hormuz largely closed, Saudi Arabia has increasing amounts of its oil through a pipeline to its oil terminal in Yanbu on the Red Sea. This way they can transport their Asian-bound products through the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean and beyond.

That route goes past Yemen and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait  which is another one of the sea-going world’s chokepoints. On Thursday it was announced that the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have taken control of the city and seaport of Mocha and much of the shoreline of the Red Sea near the Bab el-Mandeb strait. The oil price jumped to $109 a barrel.

Control of the Red Sea has repercussions beyond the price of oil and fertiliser. Sandwiched between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean, it links Europe and Asia. Twelve to 15 percent of the world’s maritime trade sails through the Red Sea. All of it is within easy range of any missiles or drones on the Yemeni side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. That trade is valued at over $1 trillion a year.

The Houthis are in a struggle against the Saudi–backed Yemeni government who told Reuters this week that hundreds of officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are currently in Yemen directing the attack on Mocha and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

According to CNN, more than 100 US military advisers are in Saudi Arabia as part of a new joint forces command, providing the Saudis with intelligence and helping them find Houthi targets. Thus, the war widens and escalates. What began around the Strait of Hormuz is acquiring another front—and another strategic chokepoint.

North Korea

North Korea’s Kim Jong-un  has commissioned two new 5,000-ton destroyers. They will form, he says, part of the country’s “nuclear counteraction system.” The ships have vertical launch systems and are assessed to be capable of firing cruise missiles such as the Hwasal-2, which North Korea claims can carry nuclear warheads. Pyongyang is also developing an 8,700-ton nuclear-powered submarine, whose hull Kim inspected in late 2025.

The North Koreans have come up with the technology amazingly quickly, which is why many intelligence analysts are detecting the Russian hand behind these developments. Kim has sent an estimated 15,000 North Korean troops to fight in the Ukraine War as well as thousands of tons of munitions according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, up to another 50,000 North Koreans are expected.

The technology to build a nuclear-armed navy is likely to be part of the bodies for technology agreement between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Donald Trump responded to the new North Korean threat by drastically curtailing and postponing the annual “Freedom Shield” US-South Korean-Japan military exercises. Originally scheduled for 17-27 August. They did not start until 7 September

South Korea’s response to these machinations is interesting. Seoul is moving towards its own nuclear-powered submarines. President Lee Jae Myung’s government has formally advanced the Jang Bogo N nuclear-powered submarine programme. These would be conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines. They will not, however, be armed with nuclear missiles.

Japan’s response is interesting both in diplomatic and military terms. Diplomatically, Japan is building bridges with South Korea with whom it has had a testy relationship since before World War Two. Militarily, it is treating North Korea’s expanding nuclear and missile force as one of its principal national-security threats.

Tokyo is strengthening missile defence, long-range counter-strike capability and trilateral military cooperation with Washington and Seoul. Its Ministry of Défense now routinely emphasises intelligence sharing and surveillance with both allies whenever North Korea launches missiles.

The big worry of Seoul, Tokyo and Washington is that a sea-based nuclear force would give North Korea a second strike capability. North Korea’s existing land-based nuclear missiles are comparatively easy for intelligence analysts to watch.  American, Japanese and South Korean intelligence to watch. A missile hidden on a submarine somewhere in the Sea of Japan is much harder to locate and gives Kima retaliatory strike ability should his land-based missiles come under attack.

North Korea will doubtless make the argument that this increases the deterrent value of their nuclear arsenal. Its opponents counter that it also increases the possibility of a North Korean attack.

United States

Britain in 1640 and America in 2026 are separated by an ocean and nearly 400 years. But Donald Trump and King Charles I have one thing in common—they need money and their legislatures are reluctant to hand it over.

King Charles needed the cash to fight the Scots. President Trump needs it to fight Iran.

Defence/War Secretary Pete Hegseth has already been forced to do what Charles eventually had to do: go back to the legislature for money. In July he asked the Senate for another $67.1 billion.

Trump is not yet in the desperate position occupied by Charles in 1640. The president still has considerable financial room for manoeuvre. On 2 September he signed a stopgap spending bill which keeps the federal government—including the Pentagon—funded at roughly existing levels until 11 December.

The Pentagon can also move money between accounts and spend existing congressional appropriations faster than planned. But that is rather like eating the seed corn. It merely hastens the day when the administration must return to Congress.

But the purse-holding House of Representatives is scheduled for only four days of sittings before the mid-terms.  Under instructions from the president, Speaker Mike Johnson has drastically shortened the House of Representatives’ pre-election calendar. The reason is obvious: a Congress which is not sitting cannot easily cause trouble for the White House over Iran, the Epstein files, Trump’s ballroom, his proposed triumphal arch or a host of other controversies. Much like the position of King Charles in the 17th century.

Charles I discovered what can happen when an executive treats his legislature as an irritating obstacle until the day he desperately needs it. Donald Trump might want to read the history.

9/11

This week marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11. It was quite properly marked with a sombre ceremony at Ground Zero—the former site of the World Trade Center—in New York.

A total of 2,977 people died in New York, Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania as a direct result of the terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda. More than 6,000 were injured. More than 10,000 members of the New York Fire Department have since been certified as suffering from 9/11-related health problems, and hundreds have died from illnesses linked to their exposure at Ground Zero.

These people were rightly remembered.

But the planes that flew into the Twin Towers were stones thrown into a geopolitical pond, creating ripples that are still spreading today.

The wars, instability, destruction and disease that followed 9/11 are estimated by Brown University’s Costs of War project to have resulted, directly and indirectly, in between 4.5 and 4.7 million deaths.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”