博客

A major new rift has emerged between Saudi Arabia and Iran, just 18 months after the two regional rivals reestablished diplomatic ties in a China-brokered agreement. In an unusually frank public address to journalists on Friday, Saudi Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy Rayed Krimly directly blamed Tehran for the sharp escalation of Houthi attacks on Saudi civilian and strategic infrastructure, saying the Iranian support for the militia breaches both UN Security Council resolutions and the commitments Iran made in the March 2023 Beijing-brokered deal.

Krimly’s accusation marks the first time Saudi officials have publicly acknowledged that the ongoing conflict in Yemen has put severe strain on the fragile detente between Riyadh and Tehran. That 2023 agreement was widely hailed at the time as a landmark diplomatic breakthrough, and a demonstration of China’s growing influence in the Middle East, as Beijing maintained stable, cooperative relations with both nations to bring the long-feuding rivals to the negotiating table. Under the terms of the widely understood agreement, Iran committed to restraining Houthi forces in Yemen to back a UN-supported ceasefire.

“Iran continues to arm, train and support the Houthi militia in violation of relevant UN Security Council resolutions and in violation of its commitments in the Beijing agreement,” Krimly told reporters.

Tensions between the two nations have risen steadily since the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iranian-linked assets across the region, putting the 2023 rapprochement to its most severe test. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia even joined U.S.-led retaliatory strikes on Iranian targets, before shifting back to a diplomatic mediation role, and Riyadh has so far kept its diplomatic channels to Tehran open. Just this week, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan held a scheduled phone call with Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi, and earlier this month, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Iran publicly attended the funeral of Araghchi’s sister as a gesture of diplomatic goodwill.

But that measured diplomatic approach has been upended by a wave of deadly Houthi attacks that have hit critical Saudi infrastructure in recent weeks. The militia, which first gained popular support across much of the Muslim world after targeting Israeli and commercial shipping in the Red Sea following the outbreak of the 2023 Gaza war, has drawn widespread backlash for expanding its attacks to Saudi civilian targets. Among the most deadly was a Saturday missile strike on Riyadh’s airport that killed at least 13 people—many of them Umrah pilgrims—and left hundreds more severely wounded, according to verified footage from the attack site. Strikes have also targeted core Saudi assets including oil facilities and the corporate headquarters of energy giant Aramco.

The current escalation traces back to a resumption of open conflict in Yemen earlier this year, after eight years of Saudi-led military intervention that began in 2015. That original intervention, launched when Houthis seized control of Yemen’s capital Sanaa, triggered a years-long bombing campaign that contributed to what the United Nations has labeled the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. A 2022 ceasefire between the internationally recognized Yemeni government—backed by Saudi Arabia—and the Houthis held for nearly two years, even amid regional tensions, until fighting reignited in July 2024. That resumption came after Saudi airstrikes on Sanaa airport targeted an incoming plane that Middle East Eye reported carried Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah military advisors along with weapons systems.

In response to the July airstrike, the Houthis declared a naval blockade on all Saudi shipping and launched a rapid ground offensive along Yemen’s Red Sea coast that has outpaced Saudi and Yemeni government defenses, while the group has fired hundreds of missiles and drones into Saudi territory. Longstanding open-source intelligence confirms Iran has provided the Houthis with consistent financial support, weapons, military training and intelligence backing for their operations against Saudi targets.

This report draws on independent on-the-ground reporting from Middle East Eye, a leading source of independent coverage of Middle East and North Africa affairs.

TEL AVIV — As Israel prepares to head to the polls on October 27, there is a political figure whose influence overshadows every candidate on the ballot, and that figure is not even Israeli: former (and current) U.S. President Donald Trump. When Trump joked back in May that he could run for Israeli prime minister and claimed a 99% approval rating in the country — a figure no public opinion poll has ever backed up — the quip landed with audiences because it was only half a joke. Thirteen days out from election day, Trump remains the most popular political force in the entire campaign, even as he is not running for any office.

The close relationship between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defined Israeli politics for the better part of a decade, but as the 2026 election approaches, that once rock-solid alliance has grown noticeably frayed. To understand how we got here, we have to go back one year, when the bilateral “romance” between Trump and Netanyahu hit its peak. On October 13, 2025, the last 20 remaining hostages held in Gaza were released as part of a ceasefire agreement brokered by Trump’s diplomatic team, and Trump addressed Israel’s Knesset that very same day. Israeli television broadcast his speech alongside live coverage of the hostages reuniting with their families, and for millions of Israeli viewers, the two events became inextricably linked in the public consciousness.

Highest honors followed the hostage deal. Netanyahu called Trump “Israel’s greatest friend ever” and broke decades of institutional tradition to announce that the Israel Prize — an award normally reserved exclusively for Israeli citizens — would be granted to the U.S. president. Through 2026, major diplomatic and military milestones followed in quick succession: a joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran launched in February, a lasting ceasefire reached in April, and a disarmament agreement for Hamas announced by Trump in July.

While Trump’s 99% approval claim is exaggerated, polling bears out that his popularity in Israel is very real. A Pew Research survey from mid-2025 found 69% of Israelis held confidence in Trump, and a February 2026 poll from the Jewish People Policy Institute put that number even higher, with 73% of respondents rating Trump as better than the average U.S. president. Tel Aviv University researchers have even coined the phrase the “Trump effect”: when Jewish Israelis — especially right-wing voters — are told a diplomatic initiative with Palestinians has Trump’s backing, they become far more open to supporting it. No sitting Israeli politician has that kind of cross-party pull; only Trump can make it happen.

This dynamic has created a lopsided dynamic in the 2026 campaign. Back in 2019, Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party hung massive billboards over Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway showing Netanyahu and Trump shaking hands under the slogan “In another league,” and Trump himself reposted the image to his social media. That was the original bargain: Netanyahu got to borrow some of Trump’s immense political popularity for his own campaign, and Trump got the flattery and international prestige that came with being celebrated in Israel. This time around, however, the U.S. president is holding back any public endorsement.

Back in June, Trump said he would “most likely” back Netanyahu, but added that the endorsement would depend on who his opponent was. When former Israeli general and centrist candidate Gadi Eisenkot joined the race, Trump noted that he had not heard anything bad about Eisenkot. In a recent TIME magazine interview, Trump dodged the question of who he would endorse three separate times, and when reporters asked him about it as he boarded Marine One earlier this week, he only offered that “We may endorse somebody” — no name, no further context. The closest Trump has come to taking a side was a September link to a Newsmax poll showing Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc slightly ahead shared on his Truth Social platform, and it is not even clear that Trump himself posted the link.

What’s more, Israeli media reports indicate that both the centrist Eisenkot camp and the right-wing Naftali Bennett camp have privately reached out to Trump’s inner circle asking him to stay neutral in the race. So far, their request has been granted. With the race so tight, Trump’s deliberate silence matters: across five separate polls conducted in September, Eisenkot’s Yashar party averaged 22.2 seats in the 120-seat Knesset to Likud’s 21.2. Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc held a narrow average lead of 54.4 seats to the opposition Zionist coalition’s 51, putting both blocs well short of the 61 seats needed to form a majority government.

The growing distance between Trump and Netanyahu is not just one-sided. Over the summer of 2026, as Washington pursued new diplomatic talks with Tehran, Trump pressured Netanyahu to scale back Israeli military operations in Lebanon and withdraw troops from parts of southern Syria. Leaked reports from Axios confirm that during a heated phone call, Trump openly called Netanyahu “crazy” with an expletive, and has told associates that “Bibi is his own worst enemy.”

Israeli voters have picked up on this shift. A poll from the Israel Democracy Institute conducted this summer found that the share of Israelis who believe Trump prioritizes Israel’s national security fell from 44% in May to just 28% in June. Among Jewish Israeli respondents, the share who believe Israel can fully rely on Trump’s support dropped a staggering 38 points between March and June. Only one-third of respondents now believe that Israel’s strategic position is stronger than it was before the joint war against Iran earlier this year.

The strangest part of this entire dynamic, however, is that despite growing doubts about Trump’s policy commitments to Israel, his personal popularity among Israeli voters has remained remarkably solid. Even as voters question his approach, they still hold a favorable view of the man himself. Netanyahu’s campaign has already had to navigate this: when a businessman placed on the Likud party list was revealed to have called Trump “morally corrupt,” the candidate issued a public apology within hours, reaffirming that Trump is Israel’s greatest friend ever in the White House. In Israeli politics, insulting Trump remains a career-ending campaign misstep that no candidate can afford.

So what does this all mean for Israel’s upcoming election? It is not that Trump owns Israel; it is that he has become the central gravitational force that every Israeli politician has to navigate. Netanyahu’s entire campaign is built around being Trump’s closest ally. Eisenkot’s campaign is built around not being an enemy of Trump. Every candidate across the political spectrum is competing to prove they can manage the relationship with Trump better than their rivals.

This level of dependency on a foreign political leader is remarkable for a robust, proud, and deeply fractious democracy like Israel, and it has created some highly unusual outcomes. It was Trump who pressured Netanyahu into accepting a 20-point Gaza reconstruction and security plan that no Israeli political coalition would ever have drafted on its own. It was also Trump who sent an official letter to Israeli President Isaac Herzog demanding that he grant a full pardon to Netanyahu ahead of the election, in the ongoing criminal corruption trial against the prime minister. That kind of direct intervention in Israel’s domestic legal affairs would spark massive public uproar if it came from any other foreign leader — but it has been largely accepted as par for the course when it comes to Trump.

On October 27, Israeli voters will cast their ballots for their next prime minister, but for many voters, the real question they are asking themselves is not who they should vote for — it is who will the White House call first after the results come in. Welcome to Israeli politics in 2026: the most influential voice in the entire election cannot cast a ballot here, and for now, he is not saying a word about which way he wants the results to go.

This analysis was written by Leon Hadar, a journalist, blogger, policy analyst, author, and consultant.

Three weeks ahead of the November 3 U.S. midterm elections — where every sitting member of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate face re-election, and results are widely seen as a referendum on the sitting president’s policy agenda — a coalition of U.S. activists is set to embark on an unprecedented 10-day, 5,000-kilometer cross-country journey this Saturday. Dubbed the “Freedom Convoy USA”, the initiative aims to push American voters to confront and question the long-standing bipartisan U.S. relationship with Israel, at a moment when shifting public opinion on the issue is reshaping the national political landscape.

Organized by a diverse group of participants spanning multiple religious traditions, including former federal government employees and military veterans, the convoy plans to center its outreach work in the American South’s Bible Belt — a region where conservative Evangelical Christianity has long deeply intertwined support for Israel with core religious doctrine. Hazami Barmada, a veteran activist who gained national attention for her 2024 Gaza war protest encampment outside former Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s residence, framed the mission in an Instagram statement ahead of the launch. Even in one of Washington D.C.’s wealthiest, most highly educated neighborhoods, Barmada noted, widespread lack of awareness about the reality of Israel’s actions and governing ideology persists.

Crucially, Barmada emphasized that the convoy’s goal is not just to raise awareness of Palestinian suffering. Instead, she argued, the core priority is to educate Americans on the nature of Zionism itself, framing it as a racist, settler-colonial project that creates an ethnonationalist state — and asserting that the ideology is inherently antisemitic. Forty-two participants will take part in the journey, which kicks off at noon local time Saturday at a gathering outside the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, before stopping to host community discussions across 17 states including Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.

Organizers do not claim they will shift long-held public attitudes overnight, acknowledging that decades of targeted pro-Israel messaging have shaped mainstream perspectives in communities across the country. Instead, Barmada explained, the convoy’s core aim is to plant seeds of doubt: to encourage Americans to question the narratives they have been taught about Israel for generations. The trip comes on the heels of mounting international condemnation of Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. For decades, leading global human rights organizations have documented that Israel has committed systematic grave human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza Strip with near-universal impunity. Last year, the United Nations’ top independent investigative body for the region concluded that Israel is carrying out acts of genocide in Gaza.

Successive rounds of polling from major U.S. research firms in 2025 confirm a dramatic, long-term shift in American public opinion three years after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and the outbreak of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza. Just last week, polling from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs made history: for the first time since tracking began, a 56 percent majority of Americans now support cutting or ending U.S. military aid to Israel. Israel’s overall favorability rating hit a new low of 44 on the survey’s 0 to 100 thermometer scale, matching findings released earlier this year by leading U.S. pollsters Gallup and Pew Research Center.

Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor who has tracked American attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1989, described the shift as a lasting, paradigmatic change rather than a temporary fluctuation. Speaking at an event hosted by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research this week, Telhami noted that public opinion now increasingly frames Israel as a villain, even a genocidal one, a shift that runs far deeper than many political analysts acknowledge.

The Freedom Convoy USA is scheduled to arrive at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. on October 26, where organizers plan to deliver a “We The People” petition to congressional offices. With lawmakers currently back in their home districts campaigning ahead of the midterms, the initiative is tying its criticism of U.S. Israel policy to domestic economic frustrations that top voter priorities. In its official press release, the convoy pointed out that millions of American families continue to struggle with skyrocketing costs for healthcare, childcare, and housing. The group is calling for policymakers to reorient federal spending priorities to put the needs of American communities first, and end taxpayer funding that contributes to the suffering of Palestinians.

Facing skyrocketing diesel prices and growing voter pressure ahead of upcoming midterm elections, the Trump administration is actively exploring a controversial policy shift: easing sanctions on hundreds of \”shadow fleet\” oil tankers linked to Russia and Iran, multiple sources and a senior U.S. official have confirmed. This potential reversal of years of harsh sanctions targeting these nations’ energy sectors comes amid an unprecedented global tanker rate crisis that has pushed shipping costs to historic highs and sent domestic fuel costs spiraling.

A fierce debate over political expression and government overreach has engulfed UK politics this week, after prominent author and journalist Sarah Helm publicly challenged the Labour government’s ban on Palestine Action, throwing the legality and public impact of the controversial proscription into the national spotlight.

Helm, a veteran former foreign correspondent for *The Independent* and longstanding critic of Israeli policy toward Palestinians, stepped forward this week to defend best-selling Irish novelist Sally Rooney, who has had all her works pulled from UK distribution after announcing she would direct book proceeds to Palestine Action. The grassroots direct action group, which targets arms manufacturers that supply components to Israel, was proscribed as a terrorist organization by Keir Starmer’s Labour government in July 2025. Under the new law, public expressions of support for Palestine Action or membership in the group carry a maximum criminal penalty of 14 years in prison.

Helm’s public rebuke came in response to veteran Sky News journalist Adam Boulton, who appeared on air Thursday to attack Rooney, claiming she held a “very strong pro-Palestine, and, I have to say, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish stance”. On the social platform X, Helm fired back: “God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action. Sounds like Adam would have all our books swept off the shelves in a jiffy.”

What makes Helm’s act of defiance particularly politically charged is her personal connection to the top ranks of the UK government: she is married to Jonathan Powell, Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s chief national security adviser, who retained the post after Burnham took office from Keir Starmer. Powell, a former senior Downing Street official during Tony Blair’s premiership, made headlines last month when he publicly opposed Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s decision to sanction illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Beyond her career as a journalist, Helm is a noted authority on the history of Gaza, publishing *Gaza: The Long Road to Destruction, 1870-2024* in 2025, a work that draws on firsthand interviews with survivors of the 1948 Nakba to document the territory’s modern history. She has also contributed reporting and analysis to Middle East Eye.

In the wake of her social media post, pro-Israel advocacy groups including the Campaign Against Antisemitism have formally called for UK police to open a criminal investigation into Helm for violating the proscription law. As of this week, thousands of people across the UK have been arrested for holding pro-Palestine Action placards or posting messages of support for the group online, a crackdown that human rights organizations have already labeled draconian and a fundamental attack on civil liberties.

Campaign groups opposing the ban say Helm’s open defiance exposes the inherent absurdity and unsustainability of the legislation, which is set to be challenged in the UK Supreme Court next month. “How can Andy Burnham’s government possibly defend this ban in the Supreme Court next month when his own national security adviser’s wife has openly defied it? This unprecedented attack on free speech in our country is plainly unsustainable,” said a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, an organization campaigning to overturn the proscription. “We know of 36 people who have been arrested and had their homes raided for similarly expressing support for Palestine Action on social media. We hope Sarah will not face the same treatment for standing up for free speech and Palestinian lives. But her defiance further exposes the absurdity of a ban that cannot be enforced against everyone who challenges it.”

Marji Mansfield, a 70-year-old retired tax adviser who was arrested earlier this year for posting a short clip expressing support for Palestine Action on social media and had counter-terrorism officers raid her home, echoed that sentiment. “Sarah Helm is similarly at risk of arrest for speaking out against the first ever ban of a direct action protest group in Britain,” Mansfield said. “We are on the right side of history.”

The current controversy began earlier this week when news broke that Rooney’s books would be removed from the UK market. After the ban was enacted, Rooney publicly stated she would continue supporting Palestine Action, noting that the group remains legal in her home country of the Republic of Ireland. She explained that UK publishers could face criminal charges for continuing to distribute her work, so she voluntarily ended distribution of her books in the UK. Rooney previously canceled a September 2024 trip to England to accept a major literary award out of fear she would be arrested over her political views. The Supreme Court challenge to the ban is scheduled for a hearing later this year.

Even within the UK government, there are growing signs of unease over the scope of the crackdown that has followed the ban. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband acknowledged last month that the government is reviewing whether the proscription was politically wise, admitting that leaders never intended the policy to result in mass arrests of peaceful activists. “I don’t think anyone’s intent was to have those people criminalised, but obviously the Supreme Court has got to look at this issue, and obviously it’s something we keep looking at as government,” Miliband said.

Human rights groups have condemned the knock-on effects of the ban on artistic and political expression, warning that it has created a culture of fear where writers face professional ruin for holding dissenting views. “Whatever one’s views on Palestine Action, we should all be concerned when laws intended to combat terrorism end up silencing artistic freedom and the ability to engage in peaceful political dissent,” Kerry Moscogiuri, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, told *The Guardian*. “Writers should not find their books disappearing from shelves because of their political beliefs. Nor should people have to choose between expressing their conscience and pursuing their livelihoods.”