Trump To Meet With Gulf Leaders - US Met With Houthis, Opts Against Intervention In Yemen

With assorted economic and military crises boiling all across the Middle East in the wake of his disastrous decision to launch a war on Iran, President Trump will meet with Persian Gulf leaders in New York next week, on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly. This diplomacy news came on the same day we learned US officials met over the weekend with representatives of Yemen's Ansar Allah. The group, which is often called "the Houthis," committed against targeting US interests, and the United States opted not to militarily intervene on Saudi Arabia's behalf in Yemen. 

First reported by Axios' Barak Ravid, Trump's meeting with Gulf leaders will supposedly center on American ideas for postwar strategy in the region. With no end of the war in sight, the "postwar" framing seems almost comically premature. On Wednesday Trump told reporters, "Hopefully, we are toward the end of the war. [Iran] wants to make a deal very badly."

Iranian officials have said they are disinterested in renewed negotiations "until Iran's conditions are met." It's unclear precisely what those conditions are, but they seemingly encompass the provisions of the June memorandum of understanding, The MOU briefly halted the war and opened shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, before Trump proceeded to violate multiple MOU requirements and the hot war was back on.  

From periodic volleys of Iranian missile fire to deeply diminished export revenue and an investment environment marred by soaring business risk, Persian Gulf states are all feeling the ill effects of the US-Israeli war on Iran. US bases in their states, rather than serving as a defensive shield, have instead served as magnets for Iranian missiles and drones. Hopes for an exit to the war took a hit with the postponement of what was going to be a Monday, Sept 14 meeting between several Gulf nations and Iran. Iran and Oman were poised to present their proposed arrangement for managing the flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.  

Ravid also reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is asking for his 5th in-person meeting of the year with Trump next week, but no meeting has yet been scheduled. Ravid, an Israeli citizen and veteran of IDF intelligence, is seen by some as a conduit for narratives that serve the US-Israel relationship, with an emphasis on "scoops" about supposed disagreements between Trump and Netanyahu that never amount to anything. 

Trump Disinterested In Battling Yemen's Ansar Allah

On another diplomatic front, Reuters reported that US officials met with an Ansar Allah delegation in Oman over the weekend, in the American embassy in Muscat. Ansar Allah assured their US counterparts that they would continue adhering to an Oman-brokered 2025 ceasefire with the US, and only intended to target Saudi forces and Saudi-shipping that attempted to enter the Red Sea. The meeting was said to have influenced the Trump administration's decision not to heed Saudi pleas for US military involvement in Yemen.  

Some 80% of Yemen's population lives in territory controlled by Ansar Allah, but Saudi Arabia has long backed other forces in Yemen that seek to defeat the group. A four-year truce between Saudi Arabia and Ansar Allah ended on July 13 when Saudi Arabia bombed an airport in Yemen's Ansar Allah-controlled capital of Sanaa, to prevent an Iranian airliner from landing there with a delegation of Yemenis who'd attended the funeral of Iran's ayatollah. Ansar Allah retaliated, declared a blockade on Saudi traffic entering the Red Sea, and then achieved an enormous strategic victory by suddenly capturing the remainder of Yemen's western coastline, positioning its forces on the critical Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Saudi Arabia asked Trump to intervene, and was rebuffed.  

On a Wednesday episode of Daniel Davis Deep Dive, Robert Barnes, who claims to have knowledgeable sources inside the Trump White House, said Trump egged Saudi Arabia into attacking the airport:

"MBS [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] feels betrayed...it was Trump's idea to start that back up. He said, 'you know, I bet you can take them out. This would be a good way to get back at Iran is to finally conquer the Houthis. You've always wanted to.'  You know, instigating MBS. And then of course it backfired terribly....When it went sideways, Trump pretended he had nothing to do with it. 'Sorry, good luck! I'll send you some advisors'." 

Fighting between Saudi Arabia and Ansar Allah has only intensified in recent days, with Saudi jets pounding Ansar Allah and the Yemeni group lashing out at Saudi military installations and the Saudi Red Sea oil hub at Yanbu. The kingdom's military posture is weakened by a shortage of missile interceptors, and it has reportedly asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt to deploy air-defense assets in Saudi Arabia. The US military has seen its own supply of interceptors dramatically shrink over the course of its war on Iran. In one engagement last week in Jordan, the US blew through about 60 to 80 interceptors at a cost of around half a billion dollars. 

With shipping through the Strait of Hormuz hugely diminished, and with Saudi Arabia's east-west pipeline closed after an Iran-allied Iraqi militia attacked it at multiple locations, the kingdom is facing an economic crisis. Earlier this month, it was gauging interest in an $8 billion loan from commercial lenders. On a more optimistic note, it was reported on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia could restore roughly half the East-West pipeline's capacity within days.

However, even that glass-half-full scenario assumes no subsequent strikes on the pipeline.