The Houthis could tip the Iran war in Tehran's favor

Rapid changes on the ground in Yemen are a serious setback for Washington's military effort

Paul R. Pillar

Sep 18, 2026

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-war-houthis/

The conflict between the United States and Iran has become a contest in enduring economic pain and the political consequences that may flow from that pain. This has characterized the conflict since the breakdown of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in June that had raised brief hopes that the war would end. Each side appears confident that it can outlast the other in the pain-endurance contest.

Fundamental change of this situation is unlikely anytime soon despite some indications Iran is considering military escalation as a possible way to break the stalemate. The Trump administration, after the failure of other options, appears to be hoping that the Iranian regime either will be toppled by an economically strained Iranian public or will somehow give up and make concessions.

One of the more significant recent developments with potential for changing this stalemate, however, is renewed military action by the Houthi regime in Yemen, which includes interdicting shipping traversing the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The Houthis constitute a regime and not just a militia or opposition group. They captured the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in 2014, and for years have been the governing authority over territory that includes about two-thirds of the Yemeni population. Their principal domestic opponent, although commonly labeled the “internationally recognized Yemeni government,” is a weak client of Saudi Arabia, where its leaders spend most of their time.

Earlier Houthi interference with Red Sea shipping was aimed at Israel and intended as a gesture of solidarity with the mauled Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip. This time, the Houthis’ grievance is with Saudi Arabia, and they have declared a blockade on Saudi shipping.

The background to current Yemeni-Saudi strife is a multi-year Saudi aerial assault on Yemen that turned the country into a humanitarian disaster zone before ending with a truce in 2022. The truce mostly held until this year. But the past month has seen rapidly escalating exchanges of fire. Among other recent attacks across the Saudi-Yemeni border, the Saudis say the Houthis sent a drone over Mecca, and the Houthis claim to have shot down a Saudi fighter jet over Yemeni territory.

The Houthis began attacking Saudi ships in the Red Sea last month, and in the past two weeks their gains on the ground against their opponents within Yemen have increased their ability to conduct more such maritime attacks. They captured the port of Mokha (origin of the coffee-and-chocolate drink) and Perim Island, which is in the middle of Bab el-Mandeb. These conquests provide bases for further interdiction of shipping in, and just north of, the strait.

Meanwhile, an attack, evidently by militia in Iraq, on the oil pipeline spanning the Saudi peninsula has forced the Saudis to shut the line down for now. The main direct effect of these recent events is a further reduction in Saudi oil exports. The Saudis had been the world’s biggest oil exporter before the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran suddenly dropped Saudi exports to a 13-year low of 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd). The Saudis have relied heavily on the pipeline to the Red Sea as an alternative to its interrupted exports through the Strait of Hormuz. About 4 million bpd—representing four percent of total worldwide oil consumption—was going through the pipeline at one point during the war, and the Saudi oil company Aramco says improvements had increased its capacity to 7 million bpd.

The Saudis hope to repair the damage and put the pipeline back in operation soon, but the prospect of the Houthis gunning for tankers carrying Saudi oil through Bab el-Mandeb means their problem of finding a secure export route will persist. The Saudis could send tankers north toward the Mediterranean Sea, with the oil traversing either the Suez Canal or a pipeline in Egypt, but this is the wrong direction to reach most of Saudi Arabia’s customers, which are in Asia.

Markets have taken note of this predicament. Brent crude oil futures contracts surged over $100 per barrel and have lingered there.

A major indirect effect of these events is to tip the balance in the U.S-Iranian endurance contest more in favor of Iran and against the United States. The principal pain mechanism affecting the Trump administration is the higher oil price, which means higher gasoline and diesel fuel prices, more overall inflation, and more dissatisfaction among American voters. Iranians certainly have been suffering more pain, economic and physical, than Americans have, but for Iran the stakes also are higher. For the regime in Tehran, the stakes involve survival, whereas the United States and Trump administration have nothing remotely comparable at stake.

Further damage to the global economy—with effects felt within the United States—from the Houthis’ activity may involve disruption of shipping other than oil. Nine percent of worldwide maritime shipping traverses the Suez Canal, Red Sea, and Bab-el-Mandeb. Even though the Houthis say they are aiming their fire only at Saudi Arabia, the nervousness of shipping companies and insurers about sailing through a war zone may curtail this activity, as it has with the Strait of Hormuz.

With the prospect of Tehran crying “uncle” still as dim as ever, any end to the U.S.-Iran war would require a negotiated agreement. Like the earlier MoU, it would almost certainly have to be a ceasefire and skeletal framework that would punt difficult issues to later negotiations. Just as navigation through the Strait of Hormuz was part of the MoU—with disagreement over interpretation of that clause being central to the later breakdown of the ceasefire—navigation through Bab el-Mandeb would likely need to be addressed in any new ceasefire agreement.

Although Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea are outside the main theater of the war in the Persian Gulf, presumably the U.S. side would insist that this subject be addressed, just as Iran insisted that the earlier ceasefire extend to Israel’s attacks in Lebanon. This parallel goes farther, in ways that underscore a difficulty in negotiating a future ceasefire. The United States does not control Israel’s actions, and Iran does not control the Houthi regime’s actions. The label of “Iranian proxy” that usually is applied to that regime is a misnomer. The Houthis have acted against Iranian advice—most significantly in their capture of Sanaa—and development of their ability to make their own weapons makes them less dependent on Iran’s support. The Houthis sympathize with their Iranian allies, but their chief concerns are closer to home and mostly involve their confrontation with the Saudis.

The United States does not control Saudi actions, either, and the kingdom, like Israel, could become a spoiler of any U.S.-Iranian peace. The parallel ends regarding motivation, however. Although the Israeli government opposes any peace agreement with Iran, the Saudis presumably would welcome an end to the war that has been the source of so many of their current economic and security problems. But with no such end in sight, with a financial crisis looming from the sharp curtailment of Saudi oil exports, and with the Trump administration declining so far to take new action against the Houthis, the Saudis may decide they need to escalate further against the Houthis, making Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea even more of war zone than before.

This scenario, besides complicating any diplomacy aimed at ending the U.S.-Iranian war, would further demonstrate the prescience of those who warned that a U.S. military attack on Iran would spread into a wider Middle East conflagration. The Iran war has triggered new violent phases of old conflicts such as Israel-Lebanon and Yemen-Saudi Arabia, which then escalate further according to their own destructive logic.

Undermining the UN is not a new US policy

While acting as the official host for the UN, the US has sought to weaken it for decades.

By Moncef Khane

Published On 22 Sep 2026

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/9/22/undermining-the-un-is-not-a-new-us-policy

The annual general debate of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) starts on Tuesday morning in New York amid dire circumstances. Besides traffic gridlock and overpriced hotel rates, cavalcades of motorcades and successive dignitaries delivering calibrated speeches, this session will hear Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s last speech on the state of the UN.

Guterres headed the UN for 10 years, and during that time, he repeatedly failed to defend it when it came under attack. He passes on his post at the top of a world organisation on the verge of financial collapse and more marginalised than ever before.

Paradoxically, Guterres has the United States, the host government of the UN, and its mercurial president, Donald Trump, to thank for this dismal state of affairs.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration withdrew from dozens of UN agencies and organs and, in an extraordinary move, ceased all payments of its dues to the regular and peacekeeping budgets of the UN. But these drastic policy decisions did not spring out of nowhere. Trump’s unhappiness with the UN is multifaceted, and his decision to stop fulfilling Washington’s legally binding financial obligation may well be the logical culmination of decades-long US policy.

In the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration accused the UN of being a third-world, anti-US forum. To compel the organisation to better serve its interests and under the guise of the ubiquitous need for reform, which all secretaries-general fell for, the US started to withhold a share of its assessed contribution, which accounted for a quarter of the regular budget and a third of the peacekeeping budget back then.

By 1987, the US relaxed its payment withholding policy, but the precedent was set. Washington continued to use the threat of withholding payment to maintain its grip on an organisation it viewed and continues to view as a vehicle serving its national interests rather than a multilateral agent serving the whole of humanity.

Ever since the Reagan years, the US has kept the UN on a short financial leash, and to this day, has been deliberately accruing arrears. It currently owes an estimated $4.2bn – that is equivalent to 120 percent of the regular UN budget for 2026.

Trump has readily embraced this policy of financial blackmail. His administration has slow-walked mandatory payments, although earlier this month it paid $827m towards its outstanding dues so it could preserve its voting rights in the UNGA.

The president’s ambivalent view of the UN may be rooted in a lesser-known detail. In 2001, Trump, then a real estate developer, lobbied then Secretary-General Kofi Annan to be awarded the billion-dollar renovation project of the UN headquarters, but he did not get his way. That was probably not forgotten.

But just like during the Reagan years, there is another major factor driving Trump’s assault on the UN: US congressional politics. As Israel faced growing backlash at the UN for its genocide in Gaza, pressure from the Israeli lobby in Washington mounted. The Iron Dome diplomatic cover the US provided to Israel in the UN Security Council (UNSC) was no longer sufficient.

By 2025, two years into the genocidal campaign, Guterres’s tepid and overdue criticisms of Israeli policies, critical UNGA resolutions and scathing reports by special rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council – including Francesca Albanese, whom Washington placed under sanctions in violation of its host country obligations – became too much for Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US Congress.

In the 1980s, Washington deemed the UN a third-world anti-US forum; today, it is deemed anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. The US’s blind and unconditional support for Israel has brought it growing isolation at the UN, as has its decision to launch a war of aggression against Iran.

Against the backdrop of these developments, the selection of the next secretary-general is dominating the behind-the-scenes agenda. Guterres’s lacklustre tenure at the helm of an organisation on the verge of financial bankruptcy and political demise will soon be forgotten. But what should be remembered is that his appeasement policy vis-a-vis Washington since the first Trump administration has evidently failed.

The new secretary-general will inherit the modus vivendi under which all secretaries-general since Javier Perez de Cuellar have had to operate — chronic cash flow problems due to US arrears.

That should motivate the new UN leadership to consider an overhaul of how the UN budget is put together and how member states’ contributions are allocated. Leaving the power of the purse in Washington’s hands is a self-inflicted perpetual wound that could prove lethal for the organisation.

Another fundamental question is whether the UN would be better off had its headquarters not been in the US. For too long, Washington has seen the UN either as a vector of its national interests or in adversarial terms. It has even used its position as a host to exclude world leaders it has viewed as hostile or undesirable, such as PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and today Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Evidently, those are decisions only the UNGA can take. But a secretary-general with foresight and political backbone ought to provide views and leadership on those seminal questions to save the organisation from further marginalisation and possible demise.

Gulf-Eurasian energy crunch pushes Europe to the edge of an inflationary crisis

Europe will be counting on luck as much as policy to face a mounting energy crisis fueled by wars in Iran and Russia-Ukraine

Ilya Roubanis and Eldaniz Gusseinov

Published date: 18 September 2026

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gulf-eurasian-energy-crunch-pushes-europe-edge-inflationary-crisis

Europe’s oil and gas supply is now disrupted by conflicts in both the Gulf and Eurasia. On Friday, Saudi Arabia told European refineries to not expect any crude oil deliveries next month. The continent will need as much good fortune as foresightful policy to withstand the evolving energy crisis.

Conflicts on the periphery of the European Union, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Straits of Hormuz, the Black and Caspian Seas have made it clear that Europe is not able to secure critical energy value chains. 

With shallow infrastructure in terms of strategic reserves for oil and gas, a dependence on spot markets, and increasingly volatile weather, Europe needs luck.   

Houthi forces have advanced rapidly along Yemen’s southwestern Red Sea coast, capturing the Port of Mokha on 10 September, seizing Mayun/Perim Island inside the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on 11 September, and reportedly taking Greater and Lesser Hanish Islands on 14 September. 

These islands sit directly on tanker and LNG shipping lanes entering the Red Sea, making even limited Houthi presence commercially significant. The strait is not physically closed, but territorial control now allows the Houthis to disrupt traffic.

“The Houthis do not need to physically close Bab el-Mandeb to extract strategic value from their position,” Abdi Guled, editor of Horn Briefs and a former AP and Reuters correspondent, told Middle East Eye. 

War-risk insurance premiums for Red Sea transits have surged, and even a perceived threat can make routine voyages commercially unviable. 

While it’s still early to tell, early indicators show the transit of vessels has declined, with major insurance companies withdrawing war-risk coverage for Bab el-Mandeb, and shipping companies diverting vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10-14 days to voyages and raising costs across global supply chains.

These Red Sea disruptions come as global markets are still absorbing the shock of the months-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year. The combined effect is visible in Europe’s inflation data: reduced supply, higher shipping costs, and refinery outages feed directly into diesel, electricity, and food prices. 

The closure of Hormuz from February to early September removed an estimated 17-19 million barrels per day from global markets, forcing Europe to rely more heavily on Atlantic Basin and Caspian supply. 

Saudi Arabia mitigated part of the shock by diverting crude through its East–West Pipeline to the Yanbu export terminal on the Red Sea, increasing flows – until recently – from roughly two million barrels per day at the start of the year to around six million barrels per day. 

The pipeline can technically carry up to seven million barrels per day, though Yanbu’s loading capacity limits this to some extent. 

A drone attack on a pumping station on 11 September prompted the immediate closure of the East-West line, and, at the time of writing, it is not clear when it will reopen. 

“The current energy crisis is morphing into a global financial crisis with symptoms in Europe now evident as eurozone inflation is accelerating at 3.3 percent and energy inflation jumping at 14.3 percent,” Costantinos Stambolis, Chairman of the Institute of Energy for South-East Europe, told MEE. 

Four seas, two wars, one market 

Europe’s quandary is that conflict is constraining energy supplies from both Russia and the Gulf.

Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries and export terminals have created industrial constraints on Russian supply at a moment when European sanctions limit alternative inflows. 

US President Donald Trump claimed this week that the two countries had agreed not to strike energy targets, but Kyiv said it was conditional and there is no public confirmation from Moscow.

One of Europe’s hopes for diversifying supply beyond the Middle East was Kazakhstan, a country that has quietly become one of the few producers capable of easing Europe’s tightening oil balance. 

However, Kazakhstan’s main export artery is the CPC pipeline, which handles more than 80 percent of the country’s crude exports - but which delivers the crude to a loading terminal at Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. 

“There’s a difference between shortages and total crisis,” says John Roberts, formerly an editor at Financial Times Energy and an Atlantic Council Fellow, “but Europe is now exposed because several supply routes are under strain at once”.

“Ukraine seems capable and indeed willing to attack Novorossiysk,” Roberts said, leaving Kazakhstan unable to rely on its main outlet at a moment when alternative routes are limited. 

The Caspian is the logical alternative to the Black Sea route, with energy transit via Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Through this route, tankers transit the Caspian Sea and feed the Baku-Supsa pipeline, which can handle around 150,000 barrels per day - far below Kazakhstan’s typical export volumes. Additional volumes can be channelled through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, making Azerbaijan’s infrastructure key for Europe’s energy security.

But the Caspian route is not safe either.

On July 25, a Ukrainian drone struck an Iranian vessel in the Caspian. The strike proved that such attacks are possible and can happen again. For the moment, an understanding between Kyiv and Tehran has eased major concerns. There is little doubt that this is also an existential challenge for Central Asian states. 

If Kazakhstan cannot ship west, China becomes the default buyer, reducing volumes available to Europe.

“They don’t want to be dependent on a monopsonist customer (single dominant buyer),” Roberts said. 

Regulation compounds volatility

Experts are now placing their hope for easing inflation on “demand destruction” - poorer countries reducing consumption because they can no longer afford high prices, diverting supply to Europe. 

Weather is a key factor: a mild winter would give Europe breathing space. How weather will affect demand for fossil fuels is anything but clear. 

According to reports from Rystad Energy and ICIS, the 2026-2027 El Niño weather pattern will change how much energy Europe uses over the next year. 

In a July 2026 assessment, analysts warned that while a milder start to the December 2026 to January 2027 winter could initially lower heating demand, a sudden atmospheric shift could trigger severe cold snaps in February 2027, causing a late-winter spike in gas and electricity use. 

Furthermore, historical data from ICIS shows that strong El Niño events can cut European wind power generation by up to 9.8 percent during the winter months, forcing power plants to burn more natural gas to keep the lights on.

However, regulation is reducing Europe’s scope to address short-to-medium pressure.

EU methane rules taking effect in 2027 will require gas and LNG importers to prove that overseas producers meet EU-level monitoring and verification standards. 

Analysts such as Ben Cahill at CSIS say this will immediately split the market between compliant and non-compliant exporters. Many producers lack the equipment and data systems needed to meet EU-level monitoring standards, meaning compliant gas may become more expensive. This is likely to affect suppliers from Central Asia. 

Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are studying ways to access the European market. But this requires the placement of critical infrastructure to carry Kazakh oil or Turkmen gas across the Caspian. This is hard, as the EU cannot offer investment capital or long-term contracts for oil and gas projects due to environmental regulations. 

One proposal is for a short interconnector with a capacity of around five billion cubic metres between Turkmenistan’s own offshore platforms and those of Azerbaijan. 

Advocates have put the cost of laying such a line at around $500m - or closer to one billion if the line were eventually intended to carry 10-12 bcm. Such a pipeline would pass through the territorial waters of only two countries, which, under the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, reduces Moscow and Tehran's ability to block the project. 

Nonetheless, Moscow and Tehran can use environmental impact assessments to exert pressure.

Europe’s energy crisis is turning into an industrial and inflationary challenge that cannot be addressed with policy or regulatory interventions. While in the long run Europe may come to rely on renewables alone, in the short run, there is little that policymakers can say to dissuade concerns. Luck matters more than policy. 

What’s behind Iranian authorities’ push for a mass mobilisation campaign?

Iran has launched a major mobilisation drive, sparking fears of renewed conflict with the US.

By Al Jazeera Staff

Published On 20 Sep 2026

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/9/20/whats-behind-iranian-authorities-push-for-a-mass-mobilisation-campaign

“Do you know how to work with this?” reads the text on banners erected across Tehran, emblazened with the image of a rocket-propelled grenade, a sniper or assault rifle, or other military or communications equipment.

The Iranian authorities’ public messaging campaign is part of a push to train and arm volunteer civilians who would serve as part of state security under the Basij militia arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Islamic Republic first unveiled the messages as part of a major mobilisation drive – called Janfada or “those who sacrifice their life” – in late March at the peak of the war with the United States and Israel.

Janfada recruits held their first public “military exercise” on Friday in Tehran, where thousands of children, women and men – many masked and wearing shades – marched on downtown streets.

Prior to the event, the authorities called it a march of 313,000 people, although footage broadcast by state television did not appear to justify this claim. In Twelver Shia tradition, 313 is the number of the core companions of Mahdi, the messianic hidden imam who will reappear near the end times to establish justice.

Hassan Hassanzadeh, head of IRGC in Tehran, told state broadcaster IRIB that more than 600,000 people had heeded the call this week for the active mobilisation part of the campaign by registering on a website.

The authorities said more than one million people were expected to sign up, and that they had already formed an initial 1,000 units, described as “battalions”.

The Janfada campaign raised eyebrows just one month after its launch in late March when authorities claimed that more than 31 million people – which represents just over a third of Iran’s total population – had registered. It would also be more than half of the over-12 population, men and women.

Foreign-based activists accessed the website’s source code, which showed that fewer than four million people had registered. Only a phone number was required for registry, with no national identification number needed.

After the controversy, a ticker showing the number of recruits slowed down significantly, but then, the IRGC’s Hassanzadeh claimed on Friday that 33 million people are now registered. Authorities have not released documentation to back their figures.

The mobilisation effort is not exclusively military, as organisers said 26 percent of registrants selected military and security work, with other categories including rescue, social services, media, and financial support.

President Masoud Pezeshkian asked the volunteers during Friday’s parade to tangibly help his administration by consuming less fuel, electricity and other resources at a time when the country is challenged by energy imbalance and wider economic turmoil.

The government increased the price of fuel and limited petrol quotas allocated to personal vehicles earlier this month as it battles a budget crunch and fuel production shortfalls related to the war.

Iranian households and industries have also been afflicted, with intermittent power blackouts throughout the summer, with the upcoming cold season expected to bring more natural gas shortages in the resource-rich country.

Focus on children

The latest display of the “sacrifice” campaign in Tehran focused on children. Some teenagers were shown wielding assault rifles and other weapons during Friday’s military exercise, while others marched in the procession. Armed teenagers have been seen manning checkpoints and roadblocks on the streets of Tehran and other cities over recent months.

Sasan Zare, the spokesman of the Janfada campaign, told the state-linked Iranian Labour News Agency on Saturday that boys over 15 have been allowed to register for the campaign, but that there were also plans for under-15s to be recruited.

“Our effort concerning children and teenagers, first and foremost, is to introduce them to the culture of sacrifice and resistance,” Zare said.

“The stronger their value system is formed from childhood, and the more they become familiar with concepts like patriotism and self-sacrifice, the more significant the impact can be on their future.”

Women also featured heavily during Friday’s display, with many chador-clad volunteers wielding weapons on the streets.

Some of them were shown riding on motorcycles, despite women being officially banned from doing so in civilian life.

What’s the purpose?

During Friday’s parade, Iranian military hardware used in the war against the US and Israel went on public display.

The efforts come as Iran and the US clash over the future of the Strait of Hormuz and the outcome of the war. The US continues to impose a naval blockade of Iran’s southern ports and has intensified its sanctions on the country.

Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei told Al Jazeera that seven conditions for negotiations had been relayed to Washington through intermediaries, but added that commanders were also prepared to resume the war.

The authorities have not elaborated on why they require hundreds of thousands of civilians to take up arms or engage in other security activities, considering that there are no prospects of a ground war with the US in the foreseeable future.

The campaign comes months after thousands were killed during nationwide protests in January, which Iranian authorities describe as a “coup” orchestrated by the US and Israel and armed agents acting in line with their interests.

A United Nations fact-finding mission alleged on Friday that the Islamic Republic committed crimes against humanity while cracking down on the protests. Amnesty International last week presented a lengthy report that identified dozens of senior authorities who engaged in crimes against humanity during the 2022-23 protests over Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died in Iranian police custody after being detained for wearing “improper hijab”.

Iranian authorities have repeatedly warned against more public protests in recent weeks, emphasising that any act perceived to be undermining national security and “social cohesion” is strictly forbidden.

Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, told Al Jazeera that he perceives the Janfada campaign as an effort to rebrand the Basij militia, which has become associated with the violent repression of protests.

He explained that following neighbouring Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, hundreds of thousands of Iranians volunteered for front-line service out of a sense of religious or patriotic duty. These were mobilised through the Basij.

“Since the end of the war in 1988, however, the Basij has evolved into an instrument of domestic coercion and the suppression of dissent, severely damaging the organisation’s public image,” he said.

The public mobilisation campaign could thus be viewed as an attempt to restore the Basij’s former patriotic image in anticipation of future internal and external threats – “if not a US ground invasion of Iran, then the prospect of a US- and Israeli-instigated civil war in Iran’s peripheral regions, as well as large-scale popular uprisings driven by mounting economic pressure”, Alfoneh said.

NAZA: Why are old Gaza allegations causing new fury in Israel?

Israeli soldiers’ Gaza testimony causes backlash across much of the country’s political establishment.

By Simon Speakman Cordall

Published On 19 Sep 2026

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/19/naza-why-are-old-gaza-allegations-causing-new-fury-in-israel

Israel’s bitter political divisions are particularly sharp before the country’s October elections. But the furious response to a new documentary about the military’s actions in the genocidal war on Gaza has revealed an issue that much of Israel’s political and media establishment appears united on.

Few of the central allegations in NAZA, made by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, are new. Reports that the Israeli military was relying on artificial intelligence systems to generate targets in Gaza, often killing the inhabitants of entire buildings to kill just one individual identified by the system, were reported in April 2024.

Other accusations against Israel, such as committing genocide, deliberately causing a famine, and unlawfully killing children, have also not received much attention in Israel.

In contrast, NAZA has unleashed a litany of abuse from across Israel, and brought the allegations to the centre of Israel’s political debate.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar reacted to the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival – where it received a 25-minute standing ovation – by calling for the directors to be stripped of their citizenship and to be investigated by the internal intelligence service for treason.

Army chief Eyal Zamir has dismissed the film as being built on blood libel and ordered a legal probe to hunt down its military and intelligence sources.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also cited the film when advancing legislation to revoke citizenship from anyone deemed to be smearing the country’s soldiers, while in the coastal city of Ashdod, graffiti branding the directors “traitors” has appeared on the walls.

“You can’t really understand the extent of the madness from outside of the country,” Orly Noy, an editor at Local Call, which first carried many of the accusations contained in the film, said. “They’re attacking the friends and families of [the filmmakers] Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. They’re talking about revoking their citizenship. They’re asking the Shin Bet to investigate them – for making a film, and it isn’t just the politicians. Journalists, who you might expect to show some kind of solidarity with them, are competing to attack them. It’s scary.”

Denial

In late 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported escalating censorship and harassment in Israel, with Israeli journalists telling the organisation that the media’s approach had become “part of the war effort” and, by extension, significantly shaped Israeli view of their war on Gaza.

In October 2025, a study by the Israeli think tank Molad found that only 3 percent of Channel 12’s coverage of the first six months of the war mentioned Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Of 206 war-related images and video clips broadcast by the network, Israel’s most-watched channel, only two showed Palestinian civilian casualties.

Nevertheless, before the film’s release, polls found that most Israelis believed the coverage they were receiving of the military’s conduct in Gaza was balanced.

“I guess it was because the mainstream media outlets in Israel did not investigate the conduct of the army during the war in Gaza, and hardly covered the war from the Palestinian point of view,” Anat Saragusti, the Israeli jurist and journalist responsible for press freedom at the Union of Journalists in Israel, said of the shock that had accompanied the release of the film. “[The Israeli media] hardly reported on the human toll and the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Compounding the gap, Saragusti said, was a deep-seated national narrative: that the war had been imposed on Israel, that Hamas had carried out a massacre on October 7, 2023, and that Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields made mass casualties in Gaza all but unavoidable.

Palestinian deaths, in this telling, were framed less as the product of Israeli conduct than as collateral damage forced on Israel by its enemy’s tactics, she said.

Lynch mobs

“Even journalists that usually support the anti-Netanyahu bloc have criticised the filmmakers,” Israeli political sociologist Daniel Bar-Tal said.

“Israeli Jews deny the genocide,” he continued, “Even all the opposition parties joined the vicious criticism of the filmmakers.”

The language used against the filmmakers has been echoed by some of Netanyahu’s most prominent political rivals.

On Monday, former military chief and one of Netanyahu’s principal rivals Gadi Eisenkot denounced the film for “moral blindness, a detachment from reality, and harm to the State of Israel in a difficult hour”.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is also running in October’s election, called the film a “horrific blood libel against our sons and daughters”.

“Everything gets heightened the closer to the election we get,” Noy said. “But I think only now, for those of us who live here, is the extent of the fascism becoming clear. Journalists, politicians and the media are forming some kind of incitement machine.”

“I’ve had anxieties over where Israel had been going for a long time,” she said, “but right now I’m genuinely worried for my friends and colleagues.”

UN Report: Reasonable Grounds to Believe US Committed War Crimes in Iran

A UN inquiry found reasonable grounds to believe the US committed war crimes in strikes on a primary school in Minab and a sports center in Lamerd.

by Kyle Anzalone | September 17, 2026

https://news.antiwar.com/2026/09/17/un-report-reasonable-grounds-to-believe-us-committed-war-crimes-in-iran/

A UN fact-finding mission concluded that the US intentionally targeted a school building in Iran that was struck on the opening day of the war, rejecting the possibility that the school was accidentally hit during an attack on a neighboring Iranian military facility. The investigators found reasonable grounds to believe the attack constituted a war crime.

“Based on the available evidence,” a report from the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran said, adding, “The Mission finds reasonable grounds to believe that the US committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack resulting in loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.”

The fact-finding mission was looking into human rights abuses in Iran, including the Minab school bombing. On the opening day of the war, the school was hit by multiple Tomahawk missiles, killing more than 150 people, most of them children. 

The report argues the Minab school bombing amounted to a war crime because the US intentionally targeted the building, and did not engage in thorough target verification to know it currently operated as a school. It described the failure to identify the school as “beyond mere negligence.”

“Credible civil society organizations concurred that the available evidence pointed to US responsibility and that failures in target verification, including reliance on outdated intelligence, were the most likely explanation for the strike on the school,” the report explains. Furthermore, “The Mission concluded that when targeting the school building, the US acted wilfully, that is with the requisite mental element of recklessness.”

President Donald Trump initially blamed Iran for the school bombing without providing evidence. He later suggested Iran possessed Tomahawk missiles, although Iran is not known to have the weapon. 

A Department of War investigation would later admit the US attack was correlated with US strikes on Iranian military sites nearby, although the US investigation has not been made public. 

The UN fact-finding mission also looked into a strike on a sports hall in Lamerd, Iran. The report says the team found “grounds to believe that the munitions used in the airstrike on and around the sports hall in Lamerd were PrSM missiles.”

22 people were killed in the attack, including five children. The fact-finding mission also found the Lamerd strike amounted to the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack. The US denies it conducted the strike. 

 

Israeli officials leak details of secret US-Israel-Arab military meeting, says report

Israeli officials revealed that military chiefs secretly met in Germany to discuss the Iran war and regional military cooperation

Elis Gjevori

Published date: 16 September 2026

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-officials-leak-details-secret-us-israel-arab-military-meeting-report

Israeli officials have leaked details of a secret meeting between military commanders from the US, Israel and several Arab states in Germany last week to discuss the war launched by Israel and the US against Iran.

The report by former Israeli intelligence officer turned journalist Barak Ravid for Axios said the “private retreat” was organised by the commander of US Central Command (Centcom), Admiral Brad Cooper.

Citing two unnamed Israeli officials, Ravid reported that the meeting was attended by the military chiefs of staff of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt.

It was the first such gathering since the US and Israel went to war with Iran more than six months ago.

None of the regional countries publicly confirmed the meeting, although Centcom acknowledged it, saying in a statement that it "hosted senior military leaders from eight nations during a scheduled conference in Germany.

The statement said: "The leaders discussed opportunities for enhancing security cooperation in the Middle East."

During the meeting, Cooper reportedly told the regional countries that despite Iranian attacks on US bases, Washington would not withdraw its forces from the region.

Iranian strikes have damaged at least 15 US military sites across the region, destroying or damaging hundreds of buildings and pieces of military equipment.

US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan have been hit, and many rendered unusable.

Satellite analysis by the Washington Post identified damage at 15 separate US sites. Some positions were left close to unusable, while extensive damage to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain forced Centcom to reroute regional logistics.

The Centcom commander also reportedly said the US has a “plan” to expand ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

An Israeli official speaking to Ravid said Israel's chief of staff, General Eyal Zamir, briefed participants on Israeli military operations in the region.

Israel was moved from the US European Command's area of responsibility to Centcom following the meeting, allowing it to cooperate more directly with regional countries under US military command.

Responding to the news, Andreas Krieg, associate professor at King’s College London, said: “There is a deep-seated suspicion towards Centcom commander Bradley Cooper in Arab capitals in the Gulf as a commander too close to Israel, too hawkish on Iran and constantly presenting the president with military operational options that are strategically disastrous.”