分类： world

On Monday, Yemen’s Houthi movement announced an immediate maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia, sending shockwaves through regional security and global energy markets at a moment when the Red Sea has become a critical linchpin for international oil trade. The announcement marks a sharp escalation of hostilities between the two sides, just days after the first exchange of cross-border fire in years broke a fragile informal truce that has held since 2022, despite its official expiration.

The Houthi armed forces framed the embargo as a measure of reciprocal action under the principle of “an eye for an eye” targeting what they called the “criminal Saudi enemy,” but the group did not release specific details on how it would enforce the new restriction. The move comes amid already heightened friction over access to Sanaa International Airport, the main air hub of Yemen’s capital, which is controlled by the Houthi movement. Tensions flared recently after an Iranian passenger jet attempting to land in Sanaa challenged long-standing restrictions that have limited international flights from Houthi-held territory to only Cairo and Amman, triggering the first cross-border exchange of fire between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in years.

Recent reporting from Middle East Eye has uncovered internal division within Saudi Arabia’s leadership over posture toward the Houthis: Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman has indicated to international counterparts that the Trump administration has granted Riyadh broad flexibility to launch offensive military operations against the group, while other segments of the Saudi government maintain that the kingdom’s stance remains purely defensive.

The geopolitical landscape of Yemen has been locked in a stalemate for nearly a decade: the Houthis control Sanaa and most of Yemen’s densely populated northwestern regions, while Saudi Arabia backs the internationally recognized Yemeni government based in the southern port city of Aden. Years of negotiations have failed to produce a durable political settlement to unify the divided country.

What makes the Houthi embargo announcement uniquely consequential for the global economy is the Red Sea’s central role in global energy trade. With the Strait of Hormuz facing persistent security threats from Iran, the Red Sea has become the primary export route for Saudi Arabia’s massive oil production. The kingdom currently ships roughly 4.5 million barrels of crude oil per day through the Red Sea, the vast majority of which is bound for major energy markets in East Asia. Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ports also serve as a critical entry point for essential imports across the Gulf region, making any disruption to shipping in the waterway a risk for the entire Gulf Cooperation Council.

The Houthis have already proven their ability to disrupt Red Sea shipping. Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, the group launched a series of attacks on commercial vessels passing through the Red Sea, framing the actions as solidarity with Palestinians besieged in Gaza. The campaign won broad support across Arab and Muslim-majority nations, prompting then-U.S. President Donald Trump to launch a large-scale bombing campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen in 2025. Trump ultimately halted the strikes ahead of a planned visit to the Gulf, following intensive lobbying from Saudi Arabia, and both sides have observed a maritime truce since May 2025.

Though the Houthis have officially stayed out of the open war that began after U.S. and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iran in February 2025, Gulf and U.S. officials who spoke to Middle East Eye broadly suspect the group carried out several limited land-based strikes on Saudi territory in recent months. The group’s decision to refrain from targeting Red Sea shipping through that conflict allowed Saudi Arabia to maintain steady oil supplies to global markets at a time when exports from Kuwait, Bahrain, and Iraq have been significantly reduced.

Yemeni analysts are divided on how the Houthis will follow through on the embargo threat. Many experts argue the group is unlikely to resume attacking commercial shipping, as it seeks to avoid drawing the Trump administration back into a new round of open conflict in Yemen. Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen specialist based in the United States, told Middle East Eye that the embargo announcement is likely a negotiating tactic rather than a precursor to immediate widespread attacks. “I don’t think the Houthis will start hitting ships yet,” al-Basha said, noting the group is actively seeking a comprehensive negotiated settlement with Saudi Arabia that covers key sticking points including prisoner releases, public sector salary payments in Houthi-held areas, reconstruction funding, and the long-running blockade of Houthi-controlled ports such as Hodeida.

Even if the Houthis do not immediately carry out attacks on shipping, the announcement alone has already created new market uncertainty. International shipping companies and maritime insurance providers are expected to grow more wary of operating in the Red Sea, which could raise costs for energy trade even without direct attacks. As of Monday trading, the Brent Crude international benchmark remained stable at $88.12 per barrel, though market analysts warn that further escalation could push prices sharply higher.

In an unexpected development that has drawn diplomatic attention, X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has suspended the official account of the British Consulate in Jerusalem, the UK government’s diplomatic mission serving occupied Palestinian territories. As of Monday, 24 hours after the suspension was first reported, the @UKinJerusalem account remains inaccessible, displaying standard platform notifications that read “Account suspended” and note that X removes or restricts accounts found to violate its internal community rules.

At the time of reporting, no official clarification has been released by either X or British authorities regarding the specific cause of the suspension, nor which platform policies are alleged to have been broken. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office confirmed to independent outlet Middle East Eye that diplomatic teams have already reached out to X leadership to resolve the issue and restore access to the account as quickly as possible. Middle East Eye has also contacted X for additional comment on the incident, with no response received as of publication.

Per the British Consulate’s official public description, the mission carries out core work advancing the UK’s political, commercial, security, and economic bilateral interests with Palestine. It also delivers critical consular support to British citizens residing in occupied East Jerusalem, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

Investigation into the timeline of the suspension reveals that the account’s last major public activity, shared just hours before it was taken offline, was a coordinated joint statement thread with multiple other international diplomatic missions criticizing Israel’s long-standing practice of administrative detention for Palestinian detainees.

In the public post, the consulate outlined context for the criticism: “Over 9,000 Palestinians are detained in Israeli prisons, including thousands held without charge or trial. Human rights organisations describe prison conditions for Palestinians as severe and life-threatening, citing inadequate food, denial of medical care and systematic abuse. We are deeply concerned by reports regarding the deterioration of Dr Abu Safiyah’s health.”

Hussam Abu Safiyah, the detainee named in the statement, is a Palestinian paediatrician and director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital. Israeli forces abducted Abu Safiyah on December 27, 2024, and he has been held without formal charges or a public trial ever since his detention.

The joint statement concluded by reaffirming international standards for detention: “Detainees have the right to be informed about the charges underlying any detention, must be granted access to legal assistance, and be subject to a fair trial. We call upon Israel to uphold its human rights obligation towards detainees under international law, including by granting the ICRC immediate access to all detention facilities.”

For nearly eight decades, the office of United Nations Secretary-General has stood as one of the most consequential yet constrained positions on the global stage. Unlike heads of state or military commanders, the UN’s top leader commands no armed forces and holds no legal authority to compel sovereign nations to act. Yet from averting full-scale conflict to brokering landmark peace deals and coordinating global responses to catastrophic humanitarian crises, successive secretaries-general have shaped the course of international relations since the UN’s founding in 1945. Today, as current incumbent António Guterres prepares to wrap up his second five-year term on December 31, 2026, the world body is in the final stages of selecting its 10th secretary-general, a process unfolding at a moment of unprecedented challenge to the UN and the rules-based international order it was built to uphold.

Defined by the UN Charter simply as the UN Secretariat’s “chief administrative officer” rather than a formal political leader, the role of secretary-general has evolved dramatically over its 81-year history, shaped by the actions and priorities of the nine men who have held the post to date. A long-standing informal tradition bars candidates from the UN Security Council’s five permanent veto-wielding members – the United States, United Kingdom, France, China and Russia – ensuring the role always goes to a national from a middle or smaller power not aligned with any of the major global blocs.

The office’s trajectory was set early on by its second holder, Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden, who expanded its political scope after taking office in 1953. Hammarskjöld pioneered the practice of preventive diplomacy, leveraging the secretary-general’s “good offices” to mediate in disputes that split the major powers, turning the Charter into a framework for launching fact-finding missions and deploying UN peacekeeping forces. His tenure cut short by a 1961 plane crash while en route to resolve the Congo conflict – a crash that remains mired in conspiracy theories of targeted attack – Hammarskjöld posthumously received the Nobel Peace Prize, and his expansion of the role laid the foundation for all future holders.

Every successive secretary-general built on that foundation: Myanmar’s U Thant defused the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis through quiet diplomacy; Austria’s Kurt Waldheim advanced shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, Cyprus and Namibia; Peru’s Javier Pérez de Cuéllar mediated a permanent ceasefire to end the 1988 Iran-Iraq War; Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali mapped out a new agenda for UN peace operations in the post-Cold War era; Ghana’s Kofi Annan, the first secretary-general to rise through the UN’s internal ranks, shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize with the entire organization; South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon made climate change a top global priority; and current leader Guterres has steered the UN through an era of crippling funding cuts and repeated Security Council deadlock, driven by permanent member vetoes, over catastrophic conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan.

Time and again, secretaries-general have stepped in to act when the Security Council is split along major power lines. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, after Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt following the nationalization of the Suez Canal, Hammarskjöld oversaw the creation of the United Nations Emergency Force – the UN’s first armed peacekeeping operation – which oversaw the invading forces’ withdrawal by early 1957 and set a enduring precedent for global peacekeeping. In 1988, Pérez de Cuéllar spent a year mediating between Iran and Iraq to turn a Security Council ceasefire resolution into a lasting end to their eight-year war. In 1998, Kofi Annan brokered a landmark memorandum of understanding with Saddam Hussein’s government that secured access for UN weapons inspectors and averted an immediate U.S.-British invasion. Most recently, in December 2023, Guterres made the first explicit formal invocation of Article 99 of the UN Charter in decades, bringing the catastrophic Gaza war before the Security Council with a warning that it threatened global peace and security. Though his push for a ceasefire was ultimately vetoed by the United States and drew calls for his resignation from Israel’s UN envoy, the move underscored the unique platform the secretary-general holds to highlight pressing global threats.

Article 99 remains the only explicit independent political power granted to the secretary-general in the UN Charter, allowing the holder to bring any issue they deem a threat to international peace and security directly before the Security Council. It has been formally invoked only a handful of times in history. In practice, the role is defined by four core functions: mediating between conflicting parties, publicly or privately; setting the global agenda as the UN’s official global spokesperson; administering the Secretariat and appointing senior officials and special envoys; and raising early warnings of emerging threats before the Security Council takes formal action. All of these functions depend entirely on the cooperation of UN member states, particularly the five permanent Security Council members that hold veto power.

Three long-standing informal rules govern the selection process. The first is informal regional rotation: while the UN has no official rotation policy, the post has cycled between world regions for decades, and the last holder from Latin America and the Caribbean left office 35 years ago. That has created widespread pressure for the next secretary-general to come from the region, a dynamic reflected in the current candidate pool: five of the six official candidates hail from Latin America and the Caribbean. The second rule, as noted, bars permanent Security Council members from putting forward their own nationals. The third requires that any candidate be acceptable to all five permanent members, each of whom can veto a candidate during the Security Council selection process. The only exception in modern history came in 1996, when the U.S. vetoed a second term for Boutros Boutros-Ghali, citing concerns that he operated too independently of U.S. interests and clashed with Washington over UN interventions in Somalia and the Balkans.

The 2026-2027 selection process follows a six-step framework laid out in General Assembly resolutions, culminating in the new secretary-general taking office on January 1, 2027. The process began in November 2025, when the presidents of the Security Council and General Assembly formally invited member states to submit nominations. All nominations were submitted by mid-June 2026, with each candidate put forward by one or more member states (self-nominations are not permitted) and required to submit a CV, policy vision statement and campaign finance disclosure. Candidates have already completed public interviews before the General Assembly, civil society groups and other stakeholders, and all six will participate in a full public debate in the UN General Assembly Hall on July 23, 2026, hosted by General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock.

After the debate, the Security Council will begin holding informal secret straw polls, where the 15 council members mark each candidate as “encourage,” “discourage” or “no opinion.” Permanent members use colored ballots distinct from non-permanent members, allowing negotiators to identify early which candidates face an eventual veto. Polling continues until one candidate emerges with no veto from a permanent member and at least nine total votes from the 15-member council. The Security Council is expected to formally forward its recommended candidate to the General Assembly between September and early October 2026, aligning with the timeline of the General Assembly’s 81st session and annual high-level general debate. The 193-member General Assembly will then hold a final vote, and has never rejected the Security Council’s recommendation. The winner will receive a five-year term, renewable once for a maximum of 10 years in office.

The current candidate pool marks a potential historical turning point for the UN: of the six candidates, four are women, a first for an organization that has only ever had male leaders. The candidates are: Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; María Fernanda Espinosa, former president of the UN General Assembly from Ecuador; Rafael Grossi, Argentine head of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Rebeca Grynspan, Costa Rican secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development; Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Guyana’s permanent representative to the UN; and Macky Sall, former president of Senegal (the only candidate from outside Latin America and the Caribbean).

Whoever takes office will inherit an organization at a crossroads, grappling with overlapping crises that threaten its very viability. The UN currently faces a record financial shortfall, driven in large part by U.S. funding cuts and withheld dues. Under the second Trump administration, the United States – which has long been assessed to contribute 22 percent of the UN’s regular core budget – has withdrawn from 66 UN bodies and international organizations, including the World Health Organization, UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Council, and withheld billions in mandated contributions. By the end of 2025, outstanding unpaid dues across the UN system hit a record $1.57 billion, forcing the organization to cut its 2026 regular budget by more than 15 percent and reduce staffing by nearly 19 percent. In early 2026, Guterres warned member states that the UN faced “imminent financial collapse” and could run out of operating cash by July 2026.

Beyond the funding crisis, the UN faces growing gridlock in the Security Council, where permanent member vetoes have blocked action on ongoing conflicts that have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. Critics increasingly question the legitimacy of a post-WWII international order designed to prevent global war, at a time when the United States – the primary architect of that system – has itself emerged as one of the greatest threats to the rules and institutions it built.

A dangerous cycle of retaliatory military strikes between the United States and Iran has plunged the Middle East into escalating tension, following the deaths of three American service members in attacks blamed on Iran earlier this month. This outbreak of open hostilities has disrupted critical global energy shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and pushed regional security to its most fragile point in years, even as behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts continue to de-escalate the crisis.

The current spiral of violence began on July 17, when an Iranian drone and ballistic missile attack targeted two key US military installations in Jordan and northern Iraq. US officials confirmed that 25-year-old Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan from Hawaii, 19-year-old Private First Class Isabella Gonzales from Texas, and one additional American soldier were killed in the attacks, with dozens more service members wounded. In response, the US Central Command (Centcom) launched nine straight nights of airstrikes targeting Iranian military assets across Iran, marking one of the largest sustained US military campaigns on Iranian territory in modern history.

In the early hours of Monday, the US military detailed that its latest round of strikes hit a range of key Iranian military infrastructure: command centers, coastal surveillance outposts, air defense sites, missile and drone launch facilities, and military communications networks. US President Donald Trump told reporters that the “very hard” strikes were carried out to honor the fallen American troops, claiming “those who died were fighting so that Tehran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” Trump added that Iran’s military capacity has been left heavily damaged, saying “they’ve lost everything almost – militarily. They’ve got some missiles, some drones, some manufacturing ability, not much.”

Shortly after Centcom announced the latest strikes, Iranian state media reported widespread explosions across multiple Iranian cities, including the southern ports of Bandar Mahshahr, Bandar Imam Khomeini, Bushehr, and Chabahar, as well as the northwestern city of Tabriz. One civilian was killed and several others were wounded in strikes near Tabriz, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency. Strikes also hit multiple locations near Bushehr, home to Iran’s primary operational civilian nuclear power plant, while an under-construction nuclear facility at Darkhovin in southwestern Iran was also hit in earlier strikes. Tehran has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to condemn the attack on Darkhovin, with Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization denouncing the strike as a clear violation of international law.

Iranian officials have issued a fiery response to the US attacks, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei stating that Iran’s leadership is “counting down the minutes to welcome” any US ground invasion. Baghaei also emphasized that the terms of the Pakistan-brokered interim deal signed between Washington and Tehran in June are “completely clear,” leaving “no excuse” for the US to violate the agreement. Despite the military escalation, Baghaei confirmed that diplomatic backchannels between the two sides remain active, with mediators continuing to exchange proposals to end the fighting.

In the wake of US strikes, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched a wave of retaliatory attacks against US military assets and infrastructure across US-allied states in the region, including Jordan, Kuwait, Syria and Bahrain. The IRGC claimed that it targeted US aircraft at Aqaba airport in Jordan with ballistic missiles, inflicting severe damage on multiple planes, and also struck 20 US troop shelters at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, claiming to have killed dozens of American personnel. Anonymous US officials confirmed that dozens of US troops have been wounded and multiple helicopters damaged in Iranian strikes in Jordan over the past week.

In Kuwait, the IRGC said it targeted US military facilities at Ali Al Salem Air Base, striking an aviation warehouse and a hangar housing US MQ-9 surveillance drones and setting multiple aircraft on fire. Kuwaiti officials reported that a civilian desalination plant was struck for the second consecutive day, condemning the attack as a deliberate strike on critical civilian infrastructure, and activated air defense systems across the country to intercept incoming projectiles. The IRGC also carried out a surprise strike on a US-allied command center at al-Tanf in southern Syria, saying the attack was revenge for recently killed IRGC soldiers in southeastern Iran. Air defense sirens also sounded in Bahrain’s capital Manama, with local state media confirming that air defense systems intercepted incoming Iranian attacks.

The escalating conflict has directly threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical energy chokepoint through which roughly 20% of global oil supplies pass daily. The IRGC has issued a stark warning that “not a single drop” of oil will be allowed to transit the strait if US attacks continue, and has already disrupted shipping in the region. The IRGC claimed that it disabled two “offending” oil tankers south of the strait that were attempting to transit the waterway under US coercion, while the UK Maritime Trade Operations reported an unexplained fire on a cargo ship just off the coast of Oman. Shipping data confirms that traffic through the strait has already dropped by 50% amid the violence, falling from eight transiting vessels on July 18 to just four on July 19. Global oil prices initially spiked sharply following the outbreak of hostilities, but fell back below $90 a barrel on Monday following confirmation of ongoing diplomatic talks.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Iran of using the strategic strait as a bargaining chip to coerce the international community, calling on global powers to step up efforts to protect commercial shipping. Despite the ongoing exchange of attacks, Rubio reaffirmed that the United States remains open to a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis. In a public statement, the IRGC doubled down on its opposition to US presence in the region, saying: “This is our land, and the intervention of the American terrorist army from thousands of kilometers away has no legal basis and will be dealt with with certainty. As long as America’s evil deeds continue in the region, this passage will not be safe for the passage of chemical fertilisers or even a single drop of oil and gas.”