Greetings, friends near and far! This week, human history has been unfolding at warp speed, as the position of Saudi Arabia— long a bastion of Western influence in West Asia— has been collapsing rapidly along its crucial Red Sea coast. (Saudi Arabia’s standing in U.S. public opinion, never high to begin with, also took another significant blow at yesterday’s 9/11 commemorations in NYC.) Yesterday I put a quick essay onto my personal Substack that explored the impact of those developments. I’ll add a few further thoughts and resources on the subject further down in this newsletter. Here’s what else you can read here today:
Here goes: Early news from the BRICS+ summit in IndiaSo here, hard on the heels of the recent SCO-plus summit in Kyrgyzstan, comes the now-underway BRICS+ summit in New Delhi. Presidents Xi of China and Putin of Russia— along with Pres. Pezeshkian of Iran— are among the nine heads of government of member countries taking part. Here is the roster of participants: The BRICS membership is far broader, geographically, than the SCO membership, which is located mainly in Asia. The two organizations have different remits/goals. BRICS is far more tightly focused on economic/financial cooperation than the SCO, and has run its own “New Development Bank” since 2015. The summit meetings of both bodies have allowed considerably more discreet coordination among the attendees at all levels than is shown in the photos. However, this photo of Pres. Pezeshkian holding talks with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi (UAE) looks significant, primarily because the UAE is the most staunchly anti-Tehran state in the Persian Gulf and has hosted Israeli military and and intel units for some years now… Two FT journos reporting from New Delhi wrote this:
Stay tuned. All this intense diplomatic activity comes, obviously, in the run-up to the High-level Meetings due to open at the UN General Assembly on Sept. 22, as well as to the summit between Presidents Xi and Trump, expected Sept. 24. New PalCast ep on the plight of child prisoners in Israel’s West Bank prisonsIn the latest ep of our PalCast podcast hosts Yousef and Tony sent the mic to the occupied West Bank to record a deeply personal conversation with Abdulkhaliq Burnat, a 26-year-old Palestinian law student from Bil’in who— starting when he was still a minor— spent five years in Israeli jails, including four years under administrative detention without charge or trial. The episode explored the treatment Burnat experienced and witnessed inside Israeli prisons. He described interrogations that lasted between 22 and 25 hours, during which he was handcuffed, held in painful positions, physically assaulted, subjected to forced nudity and cold water, and threatened without access to a lawyer. He also recounted witnessing severe abuse against other prisoners, including an elderly man forced to lick water from the ground and a prisoner who was beaten to death after requesting medication. At the notorious Moscobiyya prison in occupied East Jersualem Burnat was forced to spend 60 days in an underground cell without a mattress or blanket, exposed to freezing air conditioning and unable to see the sun or sky. He said his message from the prisoners was a call for continued campaigns for their release, stressing that the prisoner cause concerns everyone in Palestine. He also described how his experiences shaped his decision to study law and work for the rights of Palestinian prisoners. Listen to (and share!) this whole convo now, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Further gross Israeli war crimes in LebanonIsrael’s ecocidal (and fully U.S.-supported) military has been continuing its truly grotesque destruction of the built environment across broad stretches of South Lebanon. This, despite the existence of a completely chimerical “ceasefire” that was supposedly brokered by the Americans many months ago. On Thursday night, Israeli demolition squads used more than 1,100 tonnes of explosives to blow deep into Jebel Ali Taher. That explosion triggered an earthquake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale. To gain an idea of how extensive, how relentless and destructive Israel’s ongoing campaign of demolition across South Lebanon continues to be, if you are on Twitter (X) I urge you to follow Courtney Bonneau or Roqaya Chamseddine. Here is Courtney’s roundup just from September 10: … In addition, Human Rights watch has just released a 45-page report, “Uncontrolled Burn: The Inhumane Effects of White Phosphorus Munitions and the Need for Stronger Law,” that documents 23 verified incidents of Israeli use of WP in southern Lebanon between March and May 2026. (The report also details the horrific harm the munitions have caused in armed conflicts in recent years.) HRW adds this:
Quick thoughts on the upcoming elections in Israel and here in the U.S.I realize these topics are far too big for me to give them adequate coverage here. However, I note the following: ** Here in the U.S.: Pres. Trump’s standing in the polls is at a fairly historic low of 32%. The main criticisms of voters are (as usual) primarily economic; and very many voters quite correctly attribute the everywhere evident rise in prices to the disastrous effects of the war Trump and Netanyahu launched against Iran back on February 28. Voters also see the effects of the very crazy tariff wars Trump has waged since April of 2025. So then this week, Trump organized an unprecedented “mid-term” party convention, at which he stated with assurance that the war on Iran “would end the day after the election in November” and that thereafter oil and gas prices would start tumbling down. That prediction obviously made no sense, and was inherently non-credible. (As are all of his public promises these days.) So then he also promised all adult voters a so-called “dividend” of $5,000 if the Republican Party can retain control of both the House and the Senate. That promise is also quite non-credible. But in addition, for him to voice it in public seems deeply unconstitutional and anti-democratic. Let’s see if the courts or the non-Republican political parties do anything to constrain him from repeating it? ** There in Israel: The general election scheduled for October 27 looks mainly like a contest between parties, movements, and leaders over who will do the most to continue to inflict grave harm on the Palestinians of Gaza. There is possibly some more divergence of views regarding policies toward the West Bank, regarding which a whole slew of— now seriously ageing— former political figures claim they want to keep “the hope of a two-state solution” alive. Also, really, a non-credible promise since those same former leaders did nothing effective to allow the emergence of an independent Palestinian state back when they had the chance. There was, however, a big fuss in Israeli and pro-Israeli circles on Tuesday, when Haaretz published an account by Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval of a phone call they said UAE president Mohammed Bin Zayed (MBZ) of the UAE had initiated with PM Netanyahu in late September 2023, in which he “warned that Hamas' leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was planning a major operation against Israel. Bin Zayed expressed concern that the event in question would not only lead to bloodshed but also destabilize the entire region and undermine the Abraham Accords… “ The timing of this leak, which almost certainly came from the camp of MBZ and his aides, clearly looks as if it was intended to undermine Netanyahu’s chances in the upcoming election. (Not that any other conceivable victor would be any better for the Palestinians than Netanyahu, I note… ) The leaker/s also shared some information about peace/de-escalation offers that Sinwar and other Hamas leaders had delivered to Netanyahu both in the lead-up to the breakout of October 7— and also in the days and weeks afterwards… Those overtures were all, they wrote, completely stonewalled by the Israeli PM. Much of this information has been publicly available for quite some time now. But the direct involvement of MBZ in the contacts seems new to me. By all accounts, including this one, he has maintained a very close relationship with numerous Israeli leaders for several years now… The UK government’s baby steps toward upholding international law…On Tuesday, Britain’s new Foreign secretary Ed Miliband announced a new set of sanctions against those involved in economic ties (including purchasing, or investing) with Israel’s extensive networks of— as we know, quite illegal— civilian settlements all across the West Bank. In the speech in parliament in which he announced the sanctions, and since, Miliband made clear that he was speaking “as a proud British Jew,” and that the government was committed to these new sanctions “as a way to save the two-state solution.” He also denounced the actions of those settler extremists in the West Bank whom he described as “settler terrorists” who were carrying out “ethnic cleansing” against the Indigenous Palestinians. Hi boss, PM Andy Burnham, and all the other Labour grandees seated around them in the House of Commons all looked notably unenthusiastic as he delivered the speech. Miliband was quite unwilling to utter “the G-word” regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza over the past three years, or to announce any new UK initiatives regarding that now-devastated enclave. What he said about Gaza was this:
Talk about mealy-mouthed. “Increasing evidence”? How much further does it have to increase? “War crimes appear to have been committed?” By whom? … Also left unclear:
Additional thoughts on Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc (and a couple of good maps.)In the essay I published yesterday evening on the speedy gains that Ansarullah have been making against formerly Saudi-supported positions along the Red Sea coast I focused in particular on two aspects of these developments:
There are many other dimensions to the way this conflict will continue to unfold over the weeks ahead. Saudi Arabia is very clearly the major actor among the six Gulf-Arab states that are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC. Just as a reminder, here are some quick population figures for three key GCC states: The other three are Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait. Non of them are any bigger than the UAE. I need to get their numbers into an updated version of this little table… Iran’s population is 93 million. That of Iraq, which sits at the northern head of the Gulf, is ~$46 million. Saudi Arabia is also a significant player in world financial markets. Even before these most recent setbacks, there was a lot of speculation about kits ability to weather the storms caused by the Israeli-U.S. War on Iran. (E.g., here and here.) … Anyway, there are lots of indicators I’ll be watching over the coming days. I’ll try to share them in a timely way on my personal Stack. Meantime, here are a coupe of good maps I dug up for you: And this shows, within the light-green lines, the extent of the Ansarullah advances in the Southwest portion of Yemen in the past few days: The historic port of Mokha was the origin of some coffee of worldwide renown. Centuries ago, Yemeni merchants from there also took their produce to the far end of the Indian Ocean, to Java. Just so you know… … That’s it for today then. I just want to send a HUGE thanks to all the folks who have made donations to Just World Ed over the past couple of weeks. Your support means so much to us!! And it’s what keeps our programs going… We are totally reliant on donations from the public If you haven’t given recently, here’s your chance: Meantime, have a good week, and stay healthy and sane— ~ Helena You're currently a free subscriber to Just World Ed's substack. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. © 2026 Just World Educational Foundation |