Houthis and the Media Blowhards

Duane Patterson 1:50 PM | September 16, 2026
AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman, File

Me again. I know it's only been a couple days since the last update, but the dynamics in the Middle East are developing at such a rapid pace, and media have been doing such an unbelievably poor job covering it, that something had to be done. I may not be able to offer much, but I certainly can throw a few thousand words at the problem so you're at least a little smarter on what's spooking the oil markets and impacting the midterm elections. 

When last we met, the Houthis had escaped being surrounded in open desert in the center of Yemen by blitzing through a gap left uncontrolled by Saudi Arabian forces, taking the coastal city of Mokha, a couple channel islands, and if you believe the media, total control of the al-Mandeb Strait, the alternate route bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. Both the Saudis and Yemeni forces regrouped, re-targeted, and turned that coastal strip into what the Yemen forces were calling the 'Kill Box'. They warned any civilians to not be anywhere near that zone, because death would be flying all around them. Simultaneously, the Yemenis were focused on taking back al-Jawf on the way to the ultimate showdown with the Houthis in Sana'a. 

Another Iran-backed terror proxy in Iraq launched a few drones at the Saudi East-West pipeline, hitting it in a couple places on the western end, destroying at least one pumping station in the process. The pipeline, at capacity, was delivering up to seven million barrels a day to bypass any trouble the Iranians could cause in Hormuz. Oil speculators immediately built in the extra instability and risk, and both Brent and WTI soared back over $100 a barrel. 

The head of the snake behind all this energy disruption in the Middle East, of course, is Iran. Their situation has not improved one iota due to the blockade and increased economic sanctions. The regime is continuing to collapse in new, yet unsurprising ways. 

Let's begin with the status of the pipeline, because the fate of that seems to be a lynchpin for a lot of the oil speculation angst. Without the pipeline, there's not enough oil storage at Yanbu to make up the loss of what was flowing for more than a week or so. Without it, compounded by increasing world demand as much of land north of the equator moves into fall and winter months, and by imited or non-existent Russian exporting capacity, we're in for a lot of trouble. Except....

John's update last night, a very good one, included a glimmer of hope from U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who has been on constant contact with his Saudi counterparts. His take? Partial restoration of the pipeline in days, not weeks. 

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Wright is not the only one with that optimism. Lakshmi Sreekumar is a well-respected oil analyst, and has a very good and very long recap of her view of the pipeline and whether the market overreacted. But with regards to Aramco, Saudi's oil company responsible for the pipeline, she has a lot of optimism. They may not be Halliburton, but they are very capable. 

I cannot tell you how long it will take to bypass the pumpstation at Masbah, that is for Aramco to tell us and I would not blindly trust sources that look at pictures and assume that the pump station itself must be fully repaired from the ground up to restore “some” flows. When it comes to engineering prowess in the field, very few can hold a candle to Aramco, IMO.

As for how much oil has been displaced by the closure of the pipeline, she notes that while the taps were pretty wide open for much of the war through July, in August and September, largely in part to increased menacing by the Houthis, the average for pipeline crude was down to around 1.5-1.8 million barrels a day. 

Yanbu loadings of oil: Aug 2026: ~1.45 MBPD/ Sep 2026 MTD avg: ~1.8 MBPD (this is not even ONE VLCC per day that needs to be re-routed W->E to Ras Tanura to join the naval consort.) Mar 2026 – Jul 2026 avg: ~3.85 MBPD

So the Houthis have not just become a problem in the last week. Now that the pipeline is turned off, that million and a half barrels or so needs to be sent back the other direction, through the Strait of Hormuz on a tanker. That's less than one more tanker a day to match the most recent flow rate, and that's where the United States Navy comes in. 

How does that compare to recent Saudi oil exports? For the first ten days of September, the Kingdom was averaging a million barrels a day by tanker through Hormuz. They were sending just under four million for the last month through the pipeline, with that number decreasing because of Houthi pressure. To compensate, Saudi Arabia was already in the process of increasing tanker traffic since it was deemed less risky with the Navy escort service in place. So an average, between the two platforms, of around six million barrels a day is the baseline from last week. 8.7 million barrels of Saudi products went through Hormuz yesterday. It's still below their historical average, and still below current global demand, and there's no question that Iran is hurting the bottom line almost every one of their GCC neighbors in the oil department. But when the market figures out that oil is indeed still flowing, and if what I'm reading about the state of the Houthis pans out, I believe the speculators are going to catch up to reality once more and prices will begin to come down. 

Simultaneous bi-direction navigation of Hormuz is not a new phenomenon. That's been going on for the last few weeks. What's different as of yesterday? They're no longer reserving sailings to the middle of the night with transponders off. They're traversing in broad daylight now. And any time something from the Iranian side even begins to twitch, it's handled. 

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To summarize, on the oil front, the quantities of oil that had been flowing for the past couple weeks continue to flow out of the Middle East, including exactly zero barrels a day consisting of Iranian crude, and repairs to the pipeline are occurring in real time. 

On the Houthi front, this is the area where there seems to be the most disinformation, depending upon your preference for whom you're supporting in the conflict. What I can piece together, however, is that the Yemeni armed forces, which have never been known to be all that efficient, are now going after the Houthis in a more organized fashion, and are showing much more lethality than any time in recent history. And for all the static the Saudi Arabian forces have gotten over the last week for dropping the ball and letting the Houthis get to the Red Sea coast, they appear to have stepped up their game as well. Besides the attack on the pipeline ticking them off, the Houthis launched a drone that got way to close to Mecca for Kingdom comfort. It was intercepted before it did any damage, but that seemed to have stiffened Saudi resolve to finally get into the fight and do their part against the Houthis to their south. 

After a visit by a bunch of U.S. advisors from Centcom to the Kingdom, an interesting game of telephone developed. Saudi Arabia asked the Israelis for targeting help, but through Centcom. Centcom asked our greatest ally in the region for that help, which the Israelis were eager to assist. Centcom fed that intel back to the Saudis. That way, there's a veneer of separation, or no direct coordination behind which the Royal family can hide. Nevertheless, they suddenly got a lot more accurate in the air against the Houthis yesterday. 

And a little further north up the coast.

The Yemeni forces are still working the Kill Box on the Red Sea coast. This is over Dhubab, a little south of Mokha almost at the mouth of the al-Mandeb Strait. 

These are the people who thought they had it made when they descended through the mountain pass and met very little resistance on the beach. 

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We really have entered into the drone war stage of modern conflict. Everybody's got them. The trick now is what to do about it. In this case, the Yemen National Army are using them on Houthis. Right up to the point of impact, this Houthi terrorist thought he would shoot it down in time. 

Spoiler alert: He didn't. Some drones were much more efficient. Why waste a whole drone on one terrorist when you can take out a whole truckful? 

The worst job in the world yesterday? A Houthi commander's Uber driver. 

Yes, the Houthis grabbed a lot of territory last week they didn't have before. Taking it and holding it are two very different things. 

The Houthis that are lucky enough not to get killed outright are methodically being captured, along with their toys. I mentioned earlier that the Yemenis are more organized than they had been in recent memory. One example? In Taiz, the Houthis launched a missile. You see the first flash from a closed circuit TV at Taiz Airport. Within seconds, there's another flash. That's the Yemeni Army destroying the launch site because they've got much better tracking and targeting capability. 

And it's not just drones, planes and Apaches being flown at the Houthis. Anti-tank guided missiles are being lit up everywhere.

And on flat terrain, even a long, long way away, it's very difficult to change your heat signature into that of a camel that fast. 

It's still only been a couple days since the Yemen/Saudi counter offensive began in earnest, but it just feels different. 

The short version from an account translated from Arabic shows the early stages against the Houthis are a rout. 

The airstrikes being carried out against the Houthis these days in Taiz are not ordinary. 

Every Houthi movement is bombed. 

Every Houthi mobilization is bombed. 

It has reached the point where the air force intercepts missiles in mid-air. 

It has reached the point where, as soon as a missile is launched, the area from which it was fired is destroyed just seconds later. 

And this morning, a video was released showing what happened.
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We'll turn to Iran in a minute, but a very intriguing sequence of events took place in the last week I didn't cover in the last column, because an admission was made by the United States -- one that makes you wonder. 

We have space lasers. Okay, I don't know if they're really lasers, and I'm not going to make a Marjorie Taylor Greene joke here. I'll leave that to you. But this is a welcomed development. I must say, it doesn't bother me in the slightest to know that we have the capability to make space, or more truthfully, the space just outside our atmosphere where all the satellites are, a little less crowded if the need arises, especially with regards to the satellites that have nefarious aims toward the United States. 

Take that data point — that we have offensive as well as defensive capabilities in space now. Then, there's this. 

Now I'm not like Mario. I don't fall for every conspiracy in the book. But it's more than curious that the Iranians did in fact get targeting info from Chinese satellites a few months ago, info that got three Americans killed in missile strikes. President Trump acknowledged that China does spy on us, he's not happy about it, and bristled when faced with the fact that the ChiComs helped Iran kill Americans. 

Then we learn that six weeks after the Iranian attack, one of the very Chinese satellites that would be tasked for that very job of intel gathering suddenly disintegrates into a million pieces with no explanation? The private conversation between Trump and Xi Jinping will be immensely entertaining, were we to be a fly on the gilded walls of the Oval Office. 

With regards to Iran, members of the regime had themselves a scare or two, or three, or actually, more than that. But the biggest thing that caught them off guard? The Israelis and Americans flew in and out of Tehran to say, "Happy Tuesday."

Now imagine being Abdul and Hasan, two lifelong friends having a quiet meal at a cafe in Tehran. I say quiet, because most of the traffic noise you'd otherwise hear is turned off waiting in gas lines, and there's very few people with enough suitcases as walking around money to dine out. Abdul turns to his bestie, Hasan, and says, "Look at that. Those planes are coming in awfully fast." 

Hasan puts down his tea and half a sangak that's going to cost him 15 million rials and spots the inbound planes. "Those don't look like our planes. In fact, I haven't seen planes like that since...DUCK!" 

No shots were fired. It was a milk run — a reconnaissance mission to see what, if any Iranian air defenses have been replaced. The answer? Nothing. They're still as naked as they were when Operation Epic Fury concluded. Nothing tracked the planes until human eyes on the ground spotted them. Does that mean something else bigger is coming? Maybe. Donald Trump put on his socials this week a picture of B-1's and B-2's getting the band back together again. It's also the first time the U.S. and IDF have done anything jointly on a military front in months. Could there be a Pickaxe Mountain raid in the near future? Allegedly, the Pentagon has staged a practice site to see if  'Maverick' can pull it off one more before retiring. 

The best news out of this story is our aircraft seem to be in perfect working order. The Iranians, however, well, that's a different matter entirely. The next time you complain about flying a middle seat in coach on a 737 going from Denver to Harrisburg, be thankful you're not flying Iranian skies. 

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This isn't the first Iranian commercial plane with a pretty severe mechanical breakdown in flight this year. And they fly about 150 times fewer flights a day than in the U.S, so their severe incident rate is a lot higher. It's being blamed as a main gear tire exploding on takeoff, with part of the tire or wheel assembly striking the engine cowling. I can see it hitting the cowling, but the tire is behind the intake, so it doesn't make sense to me that it could have gotten sucked in like a Canadian goose causing the pilot to look for the Hudson. There'd be no water in it anyway. 

I was suspicious Iran's jet fuel was beginning to resemble their gasoline — diluted to make it go farther. But upon further research, seven of the ten refineries active in Iran contribute to the pool of jet fuel, and at least for domestic flights, which are dramatically being reduced because no one has money to fly, there's no shortage of jet fuel. Gasoline? Yes. Diesel? Absolutely. But as of now, jet fuel isn't a crisis. What cannot be overlooked, though, is that it's an indication of the country's infrastructure breaking down. 

The plane obviously is not being maintained in the same way it would be in Europe, and certainly not in the United States. A bad tire would usually be caught in pre-flight checks. There are no spare parts to repair normal wear and tear. There's no money to buy newer planes. International flights are problematic, because they're having a hard time convincing the airport they're in to sell jet fuel to them for the return trip home because of Operation Economic Outcast sanctions. 

The plane vibrating that much sits at the outer bands of credulity that a tire shredding could cause. Damage to an engine to such a degree that the plane shudders in flight causing all the overhead bins and ceiling panels to fly open? That's not well-maintained plane. People aren't getting paid. Ground crews are being forced to work, many of them unpaid. And even those with pay, it's not enough to provide for the basics of life when inflation is over a hundred percent. Morale is in the tank, people give up caring and aren't as attentive at their jobs, and this kind of stuff will continue to happen with increasing frequency. 

Bank branches are closing every week. 

Many of Iran's neighbors, including Pakistan, Iraq, and Turkey, have said publicly they will still do business with Iran, despite the threat of sanctions. That's their words talking. Their actions, however, demonstrate a completely different policy. 

Vice-President J.D. Vance has been talking a lot this week about corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse, and what the Trump administration is doing to weed it out. There's corruption in every government. But then, there's Iranian government corruption. 

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The country is literally starving to death and has no revenue coming in, and 56 million barrels of oil are missing? Seriously? That's 28 tankers' worth, and no one has a clue where the money or the oil went. 

In the southeast of Iran, I mentioned in the last column about a band of unknown militants laying siege to Saravan. Here's the account of an Iranian who is a pro-Pahlavi monarchist, so account for the lie of the green. 

This strikes me as an Iranian Robin Hood story. IRGC brute force cracks heads, this group of armed youth and other muscle comes in, rallies the people in the city to their side, and overpowers the IRGC. They get what they were after, jailed brethren, undoubtedly more spoils like weaponry, and they disappear back into the desert. The point is they're armed. Remember in my last column about armed robberies now focusing on food instead of cars and cash. They're armed as well. Imagine what Iran would look like if the people unhappy with the regime, a rapidly growing number, had weapons. 

Here's a thought experiment. Who were the muscle that joined in with the pro-Pahlavi youth? Five will get you ten (million tomans) it included disgruntled Basij forces, Artesh army, and/or possibly disillusioned IRGC. And you have to assume that the rebels left town with more weapons and ammunition than what they came in with before IRGC reinforcements could arrive. And during the siege, two different Muslim hard-liner clerics were assassinated. Don't be surprised if we see that model rinsed and repeated in another city soon. 

A few years ago, the regime boasted that because of the strength of the revolution, and because of the justness of their goofball theology, Iranians by the tens of millions were willing to volunteer and fight to the death for Shia Islam. Today? They're begging for help. 

Seems as if Pete Hegseth is doing a much better job at hitting his recruitment goals these days. 

Why is the regime doomed? Ultimately, it falls because of the basics. When a large percent of the population can't obtain food without stealing it, the regime itself is bankrupt and is not long for the world. 

You'd think with this unfolding story to tell, American media would trip over themselves to report it. But that's a moral bankruptcy story in and of itself to be told another day. 

Let's hope the Yemenis and Saudis stay in the fight against the Houthis, because it looks like they're very beatable right now. And with that, Iran is finally out of functional proxies. 

Tags:

DONALD TRUMP HOUTHIS IRAN ISRAEL SAUDI ARABIA YEMEN

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