“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) called President Trump twice Thursday, urging him to launch strikes against the Houthis as the Iran-backed group closed in on a vital Red Sea chokepoint,” Axios reported, citing two U.S. officials. “Trump declined, and U.S. officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now.”
Is this the moment the Saudis have to finally admit to themselves that Trump isn’t just a power obsessed narcissist lost in his delusions who has kicked all the adults out of the room, he actually genuinely has no clue how to string ideas together into coherent thoughts and will undermine literally everything for zero reason?
Godspeed to the Ukrainian drones bound for Russian oil transport and infrastructure.
Unfortunately, the shutting down of the Red Sea will only make the case for nations in the vicinity of russia buying russian oil more, which is one of the reason Trump’s daddy clearly wanted him to start the Iran War even though russia is ostensibly Iran’s ally and thus has ostensibly been “disadvantaged” by the Iran War.
…don’t pay attention to the fact that the one thing Ukraine desperately needs is ballistic missile interceptors and the US and Israel chose to start a war of aggression that everybody knew would consume almost the entire stock of air defense missiles in Europe and European allied nations in short time.
If there is a silver lining here for Ukraine it is that Ukraine is the best in the world at littoral maritime small unit incursion with unmanned vehicles and Ukraine is similarly by the same capability the best in the world at securing littoral environments from small unit unmanned incursions (at least in terms of skill and doctrine, maybe not in raw equipment capability) so Ukraine will and already is playing a crucial role in building the future picture of maritime security that facilitates global shipping being relatively reliable and safe.
To be honest, I think a lot of what is happening here is probably classified, but suffice to say the obvious question when you cannot sail a ship through a strait because of the capacity of troops, small gunboats and ground launched missiles to destroy surface targets is well… can we just sail through the strait 10 meters below the water? These are the kinds of questions I am sure many Ukrainians have already thought very hard about and acted on.
I think that the Ukraine War cannot end until the Palestinian Genocide and connected Iran War reach some kind of resolution or end trajectory as well, and hopefully the geopolitical change in leverage here is enough to make the regional actors doubt the wisdom of just falling in line with whatever plan the US and Israel has even if it means blowing up Turkey next… which might lead to the end of the Ukrainian War finally becoming possible but make no mistake in general this is a tenuous position for the entire earth in a way that isn’t good for Ukraine, it distracts nations from spending time supporting Ukraine.