Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla on Friday rejected a new threat from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said U.S. ships would make a “small stop” off the island on their return from Iran.

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President Donald Trump has issued a new threat against Cuba as U.S. officials reportedly press ahead with military planning for the Caribbean country, an escalation that coincides with an intensified oil blockade and UN vote scheduled for October 28.

At a campaign rally in Fort Myers, the Republican President laid out his plan in vivid terms. “What we are going to do with Cuba is we are going to come back from Iran. Those beautiful ships, we will pass by Cuba, we will have one of them stop about 50 yards (45 meters) from the coast. They will raise their hands and then we will send Marco Rubio to close the deal,” he said.

RELATED: Cuba Denounces U.S. Pressure Ahead of the UN Assembly Vote On Economic Blockade

The U.S. President closed the scene with a concrete promise: “We will take care of Cuba on our return from Iran. We will make a small stop.”

Cuba answered on X. “We reject all threats related to the ambitions of United States toward Cuba,“ wrote the Caribbean nation’s FM Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla.

He added a description of the coastline that carried an unmistakable warning. “Our coastline is full of beautiful beaches, but there ara also razor-sharp limestone spikes,” he said, referring to the karst rock formations along the shore. “Inhospitable to those who arrive with hostile intentions and dreams of domination,” he warned. The jagged coastal limestone, sharp and cutting, gave the response its edge.

We reject every threat related to US ambitions toward Cuba.

Our coastline is full of beautiful beaches, but there are also razor-sharp limestone spikes, an inhospitable environment for those who make it to our shores with hostile purposes and lust for domination.… pic.twitter.com/jrrBc1jR8S

— Bruno Rodríguez P (@BrunoRguezP) October 23, 2026

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio used the same platform to urge those pushing for “change” on the island to engage in “discreet collaboration with the CIA.” In August, The New York Times reported that the intelligence agency had secretly set up a task force focused on Cuba.

The threat came amid a heated campaign in a state that is home to the largest Cuban community in United States. Its lawmakers and an influential segment of that community shape Washington’s decisions on Cuba.

Rodriguez Parrilla’s post also echoes another phrase from the current U.S. President. In March, speaking at the White House, Trump said he would have “the honor of taking Cuba” and that he “could do whatever he wanted with it.” He described Cuba then as a beautiful place, with “good land, landscapes, wonderful weather and great potential for tourism centers.”

On that occasion his unfamiliarity with the territory was on display. He argued that taking control would be good because the country is “not in the path of hurricanes.” “They won’t ask us for money for hurricanes every week,” he said in that time.

Passing by the island after Iran is not a new idea. In early May, while signing the Executive Order that launched an unprecedented wave of unilateral and illegal penalties against Cuba, Trump had already spoken of “taking control” once his military objectives in Iran were met. Following that, he has promised the war will end “immediately” after the November 3 elections, without explaining how.

The new threat coincides with the campaign Rubio himself is leading to sway the votes of UN member states on the resolution against the blockade against Cuba. In a recent press conference, Rodriguez Parrilla denounced the pressures and threats against governments to make them change their position.

In recent weeks the U.S. administration has seized fuel shipments bound for Cuba as part of an oil blockade. The campaign against Cuba’s international medical cooperation has intensified in parallel.

Elections Add Pressure

The escalation arrives at a difficult political moment for the U.S. President. Midterm elections take place on November 3, and the Republican Party could lose control of Congress. Trump’s approval has sagged, and a majority of voters now reject his management of the country’s main fronts, a rejection that cuts across every issue.

The domestic scenario is complicated further by the conflict with Iran. Tehran retains control of the Strait of Hormuz and has inflicted significant destruction on U.S. military bases in West Asia.

Fuel prices keep climbing in the meantime. The increase strikes U.S. households directly, and every rise deepens the damage to the President’s public standing at a moment when he can least afford it.

The pattern toward Cuba has hardened even as those pressures mount at home. The fuel seizures, the diplomatic campaign and the military planning all point in the same direction, toward an increasingly explicit posture of confrontation against the island.

With the United Nations vote set for October 28 and the U.S. midterm elections following days later on November 3, the coming weeks will reveal whether the planning described in U.S. media translates into further concrete action against Cuba, or whether it remains a lever of pressure in a campaign that already weighs heavily on the island.

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The accumulated losses from more than six decades of the blockade exceed US$150 billion.

On Wednesday, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez denounced the United States for exerting diplomatic pressure on numerous countries to change their stance ahead of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly vote on the economic blockade imposed on the island.

RELATED:

United States Escalated Hostility Toward Cuba Throughout 2026

According to the Cuban minister, Washington’s actions are intensifying in the lead-up to the debate scheduled for October 27 and 28, when UN member states will again vote on the draft resolution calling for an end to these sanctions.

Rodriguez stated that the current discussion is taking place against a backdrop of a tightening blockade and noted that, for the first time, the General Assembly will also address the effects of the energy blockade imposed on Cuba.

The foreign minister maintained that the U.S. measures are affecting Cuban foreign trade and are part of a strategy designed to create economic and social hardship in order to generate instability in the country.

During a public appearance, the Cuban foreign minister asserted that he possesses documents evidencing efforts to influence foreign governments to change their vote on the resolution presented by Cuba.

As the cruelty of collective punishment continues, Cubans are standing together against the shortages caused by the U.S. blockade.

Watch how hundreds of community groups are helping Cubans get the medicine they need 👇 pic.twitter.com/0NdgM0mM29

— Cuban Americans For Cuba (@Cubans4Cuba) October 21, 2026

According to Rodriguez, these documents include messages that deem the blockade legitimate. The minister also denounced threats of sanctions against sovereign countries, including trade measures, restrictions against officials, and other forms of political and economic pressure.

He also rejected claims that, he said, attempt to link Cuba to the conflict in Ukraine, calling these accusations “false” and part of a “smear campaign” against the Caribbean nation.

Rodriguez asserted that these actions reflect the international isolation of U.S. policy toward Cuba and recalled that, according to calculations presented by Havana to the United Nations, the accumulated losses from more than six decades of the blockade exceed US$150 billion.

#FromTheSouth News Bits | In Cuba, over a million students return to school, marking an achievement for the nation's education system amid ongoing United States aggression. pic.twitter.com/oMCCt8jRPD

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) September 4, 2026

teleSUR: JP

Source: teleSUR

European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno has announced a hunger strike to draw international attention to the humanitarian disaster in Russian-occupied Oleshky in Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast, she wrote on X on 20 October. The Italian lawmaker called on associations, citizens, and institutions to join her and demand a humanitarian truce, food and medicine for residents, and safe evacuation for those who want to leave.

Russia has occupied the left bank of the Dnipro in Kherson Oblast since 2022. Its forces have cut Oleshky off, leaving its remaining residents short of food and medicine, Ukrainian officials and UN monitors say. Oleshky had about 24,000 residents before the full-scale invasion. About 1,700 remain, including 47 children, Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said. Picierno’s protest adds to growing international pressure after Pope Leo XIV asked Russian leader Vladimir Putin for a truce to help the town.

“This battle cannot be mine alone”

In Oleshky, thousands of people are trapped in territory occupied by the Russian army, without regular access to food and medicine, Picierno wrote. Mined areas make escape extremely dangerous, she added.

“Those who stay risk dying of hunger, those who try to leave risk their lives,” she wrote. “To draw international attention to this emergency, I have announced a hunger strike. But this battle cannot be mine alone.”

She said the campaign is meant to support the efforts of Pope Leo XIV and others trying to avert a humanitarian tragedy. By the morning of 21 October, 277 people had joined the initiative, Liga reported.

Picierno, who left Italy’s Democratic Party in June and joined the Renew Europe group, has backed military aid to Ukraine, tougher sanctions on Russia, and Ukraine’s bid to join the EU, according to Liga.

A town Kyiv calls a “death trap”

On 16 October, Pope Leo XIV expressed deep concern to Putin about the situation in Oleshky. He asked for a truce so that food and medical aid could be delivered and civilians could leave voluntarily and safely.

A day later, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha urged the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to help evacuate residents.

“Russians are trying to turn the Ukrainian town of Oleshky into a death trap,” Sybiha wrote. “Dozens of bodies lie in the streets or in homes, as Russians forbid residents from burying them.”

Ukraine has flown tons of food into the town by drone. Russian troops seize some of the parcels and accuse the people who receive them of cooperating with Ukraine, local officials say. A resident said eggs there cost nearly 20 times the US price.

Evacuation talks “moved forward”

Talks with Russia on a ceasefire and evacuation are at the stage of “agreeing the final details,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on 18 October. He estimated that about 6,000 civilians, including up to 200 children, remain in Oleshky and six nearby settlements. He gave no timeline.

On 20 October, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was doing everything it could to help people in Oleshky, calling the situation there “simply terrible.”

In “The Muqaddimah”, the 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun wrote that “great dynasties often decline after three generations because they fail to produce capable successors.” Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia now asks this question precisely: Has he weakened the very dynasty he was meant to strengthen and secure? The kingdom is under mounting […]

The post Is time running out for Mohammed bin Salman? appeared first on Asia Times.

Iran’s main oil-loading terminals have remained empty for weeks, adding to signs that a US naval blockade of the country is throttling Tehran’s exports.

When the Iran war closed the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year, about 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas supply stopped flowing almost overnight. Roughly 90% of the LNG that moves through the strait goes to Asia, so the continent has absorbed the worst of it. Gulf producers have had few good responses. Saudi […]

The post Africa’s LNG boom giving Asia an alternative to Hormuz appeared first on Asia Times.

Iran has managed to export some liquefied petroleum gas and jet fuel since July, despite a US naval blockade, shipping intelligence showed and people involved in security said.

Along with other medical supplies, dental materials have not been allowed into Gaza for the past three years, forcing patients to choose between unaffordable treatment, extraction, or painkillers.

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The post How Yemen’s renewed civil war could set the whole region ablaze appeared first on Asia Times.

The US blockade of Iran is keeping dozens of laden tankers bottled up along the nation’s coast, while others outside the Persian Gulf are holding off Sri Lanka, according to United Against Nuclear Iran.

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Masked attackers set fires at the doors of a Paris vocational high school Monday, confining about 100 students and staff inside, as nationwide student protests over school conditions entered another week with thousands already arrested and hundreds reported injured.

At the Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin High School in the 13th arrondissement, Principal Carole Zerbib said a group of about 10 people in hoods, masks and black clothing arrived around 7:50 a.m. as students were arriving. She told BFMTV they looked “very determined, very fast,” and that staff “immediately understood that we were not going to be able to talk with them.”

Zerbib said the group threw full trash bins and other flammable material in front of the entrance, brought a sofa and bicycles to barricade the door, smashed glass with a pair of crutches, and set fires outside using a flammable liquid. A staff member was struck in the face by a shard of glass, BFMTV reported. Firefighters and police were met with mortar fire. Courses were canceled for the day.

A video team from BFMTV recorded flames at the entrance and described staff being blocked as they tried to use an extinguisher, with the principal heard telling confined students to move up to the first floor.

BREAKING: Rioters set fire to the entrance of Vauquelin High School in Paris and blocked the exits when staff tried to put the fire out.

A film crew recorded the terrifying attempted murder.

“The school staff was unable to put out the fire. The rioters blocked them just as the extinguisher nozzle came out; they blocked the exit.”

“The fire continues. You see all the silhouettes moving behind it; they continue to feed this fire, making it stronger and stronger. The school staff is not even going to try to put it out anymore; they can’t manage it. We can hear the principal here asking the hundred confined students to step back and move up to the first floor.”

The building was full of staff, students, and journalists, but these rioters appear ready to kill anyone still inside the vocational chemistry school.

Follow: @RMXnews

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 5, 2026

In the video sequence, a BFMTV host stated: “The school staff was unable to put out the fire. The rioters blocked them just as the extinguisher nozzle came out; they blocked the exit.” The staff speaking from inside the building confirmed they were “under siege.”

Principal Carole Zerbib said, “It was terrible for the students and the staff, who witnessed an outburst of violence…I think we had rarely seen violence this strong in front of us.”

France: Principal shot with firework mortar directly in face, then his school is set on fire in Rouen

She said the attackers “were quite organized and had prepared their move,” and that she had been warned by students and teachers of calls on social media to burn the school. “These aren’t my students. These are groups.”

Junior Interior Minister Jean-Didier Berger, speaking on BFMTV after the fires were put out and the school evacuated, called the images “particularly shocking” and said, “These are criminal acts that fall under the law and must be repressed in the harshest way.”

Outside the damaged school, Zerbib took questions from reporters, then stopped when she saw a CNews microphone.

“Which outlet is that?” she asked. When she was told it was CNews, she said, “Oh no, I had said no.” When the journalist replied that it was the press, she said: “I don’t agree. Because I don’t agree with CNews’s editorial line. I think you don’t do any good. You don’t do any good for young people.”

BREAKING: Another major school arson attack at Blaise Pascal High School in the French city of Rouen. The entire entrance is currently in flames. School staff can only stand and watch it burn. Follow: @RMXnews https://t.co/CZ8h1aDO3U

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 1, 2026

She had earlier told other reporters that as long as police remained outside, “I tell myself it will be all right,” while adding it was “not impossible that they come back, since they want to strike at the symbols of the state.”

The clash came as Education Minister Édouard Geffray said classes would be fully or partly suspended Monday at 400 to 500 of France’s roughly 3,700 high schools because safety conditions were not met. He said 24 schools had been burned or ransacked since the protests spread from the Paris region in mid-September. Organizers have called a further day of action Tuesday, which student unions have labeled “act III.”

France burns: Migration-background students rampage across the country, teachers doused in gasoline, schools set on fire, and hundreds of arrests reported

Geffray said Sunday that 78 education staff members had been injured since the unrest began, including “some of them by high schoolers.” In addition, 170 students had been hurt. He said far-left activists had “hijacked” the movement. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has said more than 5,000 people have been arrested since last Monday, about 85 percent of them minors, and that more than 300 officers and gendarmes have been injured. Police recorded 1,747 arrests on Friday alone, he told TF1.

Among the cases already opened include a 17-year-old was arrested on suspicion of attempted homicide after a police officer was beaten in Belfort, and a 16-year-old was detained Sunday over the assault of a 59-year-old teacher in La Ciotat who was struck and doused with gasoline.

France: Attempted murder investigation opened after plainclothes police officer beaten unconscious during student riots in Belfort

In Tours, prosecutors said a young protester lost sight in one eye while battling with police.

Students and the Union syndicale lycéenne say they are protesting against reduced teaching staff, overcrowded classes, long schedules, the Parcoursup admissions system and buildings in disrepair. The government has called some of those complaints legitimate while condemning what Nuñez has described as a slide into “riot and urban violence.”

BREAKING: A French physics teacher was doused with gasoline today (Oct. 2) while trying to put out a fire students had lit near a tree in La Ciotat. The teacher was reportedly temporarily blinded, according to French news reports, when the gasoline was thrown into his eyes. Youths then began kicking the physics teacher. The main suspect was reportedly arrested. Yesterday in Marseille, youths are being investigated for attempted murder after dousing a principal and a vice-principal with gasoline during an attempted arson outside a high school administrative office. Follow: @RMXnews

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 2, 2026

The post ‘Under siege’ – Rioters set fire to the entrance of Vauquelin High School in Paris and block the exit with 100 students and staff inside appeared first on Remix News.

Two shocking incidents reveal how White women are also being targeted in the French school riots. In one incident, a woman who tried to stop vandalism on the edge of a high school protest was struck in the face by flames from an aerosol can used as a makeshift flamethrower. In another video shared online, a White female school supervisor was surrounded and punched during a blockade in Seynod, as student unrest over school conditions spread across France this week.

The Marseille attack with the homemade flamethrower occurred Thursday afternoon near Place of the 4th of September in the city’s 7th arrondissement, according to police sources. Images authenticated by BFMTV network show a White Frenchwoman attempting to stop students from smashing the bus stop with an iron bar.

An individual dressed entirely in black, with a hood over his head, then “used a spray can with a lighter to turn it into a flamethrower, directed at the head of his victim,” BFMTV reported. The flames hit the woman’s face as the crowd screamed in the video. 

She filed a complaint Friday in Marseille, but the extent of any injuries remain unknown.

A woman had her face burned in the French city of Marseille during student blockades.

A hooded far-left rioter set the spray from an aerosol can on fire and used it on her face like a flamethrower.

Follow: @RMXnews

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 1, 2026

A separate video shows a White female supervisor at Baudelaire High School in Seynod, near Annecy, during a blockade. The woman is completely surrounded when a Black male punches her in the face multiple times.

A White female supervisor at Baudelaire High School is beaten by a mob of multicultural students during a blockade in Seynod.

The woman is completely surrounded when a Black male punches her in the face multiple times.

Follow: @RMXnews

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 2, 2026

The incidents come amid days of blockades and clashes at French high schools that serve students roughly ages 15 to 18. While the protests were presumably about poor teaching conditions and poorly maintained schools, they have since expanded into mass rioting, arson attacks, and attempted murder cases, including another incident in Marseille where gasoline was splashed onto a principal and vice principal during an attempted arson outside a high school administrative office.

The Interior Ministry said 1,027 high schools had been affected by demonstrations, with blockades at 222 of them. On Thursday alone, authorities recorded 1,949 arrests and 305 injured police officers, the ministry said.

France burns: Migration-background students rampage across the country, teachers doused in gasoline, schools set on fire, and hundreds of arrests reported

Education Minister Édouard Geffray said 65 education staff members had been injured, including 40 headteachers, and that there had been “significant damage” to school facilities. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 625 people, mostly young, were detained Wednesday and that 83 officers were hurt that day. Government figures put student and staff injuries over the days of protest at 159, including one student who lost part of the use of a hand after setting off a firework.

JUST IN: A school principal was struck directly in the face by a firework mortar during ongoing violent student blockades in France.

The incident happened at Blaise Pascal High School in Rouen.

Later, the entire entrance of the school was set on fire.

Follow: @RMXnews pic.twitter.com/wTnjXo5dzx

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 1, 2026

Other attacks on staff have been reported. In La Ciotat, a principal was doused with gasoline and beaten, and in Belfort a police commander was thrown to the ground and beaten unconscious, which Remix News also reported on. That case is also being treated as an attempted murder investigation.

France: Attempted murder investigation opened after plainclothes police officer beaten unconscious during student riots in Belfort

The Education Ministry said 564 schools had been disrupted since Friday morning. More than 400 high schools were closed preventively that day. Prime Minister’s office officials, after a crisis meeting Thursday, described the movement as “a maneuver organized by France Unbowed and its ultra-left proxies.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the party, urged young people to use “only methods of nonviolent struggle.” However, intelligence reports cited by French government allege the party is backing the violence covertly.

The post France: White female burned with homemade flamethrower, another White female school supervisor beaten by mob during student riots appeared first on Remix News.

In July, Saudi Arabia joined the US-Israeli war on the West Asia region with strikes on Yemen. The Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces retaliated by launching a maritime blockade alongside attacks targeting vital Saudi interests.

The renewed fighting between the two West Asian nations resulted in Ansar Allah’s takeover of the strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha last week and the liberation of all the group’s prisoners held by Saudi-backed forces on Yemen’s western coast.

Ansar Allah’s seizure of Mokha seaport is reshaping regional and global geopolitics, particularly because it serves as a primary gateway to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and coincides with developments in the Strait of Hormuz.

As these major shifts underscore, Yemen holds immense strategic geopolitical significance.

Situated on the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula and overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait, Yemen represents a vital chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean

Consequently, internal political developments in Yemen can have global political and economic repercussions.

This fact, in turn, has put Yemen in the crosshairs of the US-led Western imperialist bloc and their allies in West Asia, which have endeavored to subjugate the country through a devastating decade-long war and blockade. 

The origin of this war coincides with the emergence of Ansar Allah, beginning when the group managed to take control of large swathes of the country, including the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

The rise of Ansar Allah

Ansar Allah was first established in the early 1990s in the northern Yemeni governorate of Saada as a cultural and educational organization called Al-Shabab al-Mumin (the Believing Youth).

Initially, the organization introduced itself as an unarmed theological movement aimed at reviving and preserving Zaydi Shia Islam and countering the threat of state-backed Sunni Salafism, which sought to uproot the Zaydi religious identity in its homeland of Saada.

From its inception, the movement opposed the government, led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, accusing it of corruption and criticizing its ties to the United States and its ally Saudi Arabia.

Tensions between the group and the government drastically escalated following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was at that time that the group adopted the slogan (Death to America, Death to Israel), during mass protests opposing the war on Iraq.

These slogans posed a political threat to Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was attempting to position his government as a key ally in the “US War on Terror” in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. As a result his government led a brutal crackdown on protesters.

Security forces and riot police suppressed protests using live ammunition, tear gas, and batons, and arbitrarily detained hundreds of political activists, students, and opposition organizers without trial.

In 2004, tension between the Al-Shabab al-Mumin and the Yemeni government boiled over, sparking a series of six internal conflicts known as the Saada Wars. 

These clashes began with the government’s assassination of Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the group’s founder, and triggered five subsequent rounds of fighting that lasted until 2010. The followers of the group became widely known as the Houthis ever since. 

Saudi Arabia reportedly engaged in the Saada wars by providing immense financial, political, and material support to the Yemeni government. Saudi intervention in Yemen escalated in 2009 with a direct military incursion and unilateral airstrikes against positions held by the Houthi movement.

In 2011, the group joined nationwide demonstrations, calling for the overthrow of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. It was then that the Houthi movement formally adopted the name Ansar Allah (Supporters of God). 

The ousting of Saleh weakened the central government and triggered a sweeping power vacuum, which allowed Ansar Allah to rapidly expand its territorial dominance. By 2012, the Yemeni movement consolidated firm control across the Saada governorate and large swathes of northern Yemen.

In early 2012, vice president to Saleh, Abed Rabbu Mansour, Hadi became the President of Yemen via a transition framework brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), as he was  considered as a quiet consensus figure. Hadi was also strongly backed by the Obama administration. 

In late 2014, Ansar Allah allied with forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh against the transitional government headed by Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The fighting that followed led to Ansar Allah’s seizure of the capital Sanaa, forcing Hadi to flee the country.

2015-2022: The Saudi-led coalition’s protracted war against Yemen

From exile in 2015, Hadi requested the Saudi-led coalition to intervene in the conflict, opening the door to one of the bloodiest prolonged wars in West Asia. A conflict that, according to UN estimates, resulted in 377,000 deaths by 2022. 

Saudi Arabia was the main pillar of the coalition, leading the military campaign dubbed “Operation Decisive Storm” with a massive force, including extensive warplanes and ground troops.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also played a key role by commanding ground and air operations particularly in southern Yemen and along the critical coastal strip.

Bahrain took part in the operation with 12 fighter jets (some sources say 15), and deployed ground troops in the southern Saudi borders to protect Saudi Arabia from Ansar Allah’s attacks. Meanwhile, Kuwait contributed with 15 warplanes.

At the beginning of the campaign, Qatar participated with roughly 1,000 ground troops, armored vehicles, a dozen fighter jets, and transport helicopters until it was expelled from the coalition in June 2017 over a diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt.

Jordan and Morocco contributed six fighter jets each, while Sudan under deposed president Omar Al-Bashir sent three aircrafts and thousands of ground troops. Furthermore, Senegal committed 2,100 troops.

Western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France provided logistic and intelligence support, such as aerial refueling for coalition jets, technical assistance, military equipment, coordination support, and maritime surveillance.

The 2022 UN-brokered truce de-escalated the war rather than ending it

In April 2022, the United Nations announced an official two-month nationwide truce agreement, which temporarily halted cross-border attacks, ground and air operations, and allowed fuel imports into ports held by Ansar Allah. It also reopened commercial flights from Sanaa International Airport after years of sea, land, and air blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia. 

Rather than completely removing the blockade, the agreement only resulted in the partial easing of restrictions, while regions under the control of Ansar Allah have continued to face a near-total blockade.

Read more: Yemen demands Saudi-led blockade on the country be lifted immediately

The agreement was renewed in June and extended a second time in August 2022 for an additional two months before it lapsed in October. 

Regional developments reignited the conflict (2023-2026)

In November 2023, Ansar Allah launched a ban on all Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in retaliation for Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza.

About one month later, the group significantly expanded the ban to include all ships heading to Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality or flag.

The ban continued until October 2025, despite waves of deadly airstrikes launched by the US, UK, and Israel on Yemen.

An Omani-mediated ceasefire deal between the US and Ansar Allah was reached in May 2025. The deal stipulated halting Ansar Allah’s attacks on US ships in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, and ending US aggression on Yemen, without preventing the Yemeni resistance movement from launching attacks or naval operations against Israel. 

This same period saw a shift in the conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and Ansar Allah from active military engagement toward a tense, fragile diplomacy.

In early 2026, friction between the two major pillars in the anti-Ansar Allah coalition – namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE – surfaced as different Yemeni groups backed by the two countries clashed, apparently over territorial control in Yemen.

Read more: Tensions in Yemen: Are Saudi Arabia and the UAE becoming frenemies?

The US-Israeli war on Iran has drawn Yemen back into the regional conflict

Although Ansar Allah was established as an independent Yemeni movement, it evolved into a key component of the Axis of Resistance over time. This alignment was driven by mutual ideological foundations, shared anti-imperialist ideology, and deep strategic and military cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah.

Despite its affiliation with the resistance alliance, Ansar Allah chose not to get involved in the recent regional war waged by the US and Israel against Iran, for ostensibly strategic considerations and military coordination tactics with its allies.

Read more: Reflections on the US-Israeli multi-front war in West Asia: How the Axis of Resistance remains resilient

However, because the United States and its allies in the region seemingly view the current war as an ideal opportunity to dismantle the Axis of Resistance, Saudi Arabia decided to resume its aggression against Yemen by attacking Sanaa International Airport in July. The attack aimed to prevent an Iranian plane from landing.

Consequently, Ansar Allah launched retaliatory attacks on Saudi interests inside Saudi Arabia and on Yemeni soil. It further declared a maritime blockade against Saudi-linked commercial vessels passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, demanding Riyadh end its decade-long blockade on Yemen.  

Concurrently, ground clashes over territorial dominance between Ansar Allah and Saudi-backed forces intensified, leading to key victories for the Yemeni group. Escalations have persisted up to the time of publication.

On Wednesday, September 16, Saudi Arabia accused Ansar Allah of attempting a drone attack against the city of Mecca, the holiest city for Muslims, located in western Saudi Arabia.

Ansar Allah dismissed Saudi accusations as false, saying that they reflect a “desperate attempt to mobilize public opinion.”

As the US-Israeli war on West Asia continues to reshape geopolitics, Ansar Allah’s emergence as a regional force has placed Yemen at the center of a struggle that may define the future of West Asia.