The Iran War Is Spreading
American Power
This episode of American Power examines the escalating conflict in Yemen involving Houthi forces, their advances along the Red Sea coast, an
Key takeaways
- The Houthi advance near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait threatens critical maritime chokepoints, forcing ships to reroute around Africa and increasing shipping costs.
- Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline shutdown—caused by drone strikes from Iraqi territory—could remain offline for weeks, reducing oil export capacity.
Main topics
- Houthi military advances in Yemen
- Red Sea shipping disruptions
Notable quotes
The bottom line is it's an open pipeline, so it can be struck again.
We've already watched this happen in 2023 and 2024 when they conducted attacks on Red Sea shipping...
Conclusion
As Houthi forces gain control of key Red Sea positions and Saudi oil exports face disruption,
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:16) You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Towson, stand-up comedian, political speech writer, many other forms of writer, and most likely to give me a weird series of write-offs on my taxes, podcast host. I am joined, as always, by my panel of experts, our expert on foreign policy and the military, Chad Scott. Chad, how's Speaker 2 (0:36) it Speaker 1 (0:36) going? Speaker 2 (0:37) It's going really well. I'd just like to point out that Matt talked a lot of trash about my football team last week, and they won, and... Oklahoma lost. So how the turntables, Speaker 1 (0:47) as they said on The Office. There Speaker 2 (0:49) you go. Speaker 1 (0:52) And laughing along with me right now is our expert on all things energy, renewable oil, oil markets all around the world. You know him as Mr. Global losing football predictor of the week. Crying in shame onto the mic, as you can hear, Mr. Global, Matt Randolph. How's it going, Matt? Speaker 3 (1:12) I am disgusted about those turntables. I thought of Chad when we lost. I thought, yeah, I'm going to hear it from Chad. But, you know, that's part of college football. Yes, Speaker 1 (1:29) I'm sure you're getting used to all the taste of the crow you've been eating. Chad, congratulations. We are recording this on September 14th, 2026, in the evening. If you need the year, I would recommend listening to a more recent episode because you're in the future. Speaker 2 (1:49) A Speaker 1 (1:49) lot going on. We had a great conversation last week with Professor Omer Bartov about Israel and its genocide in Gaza and the history thereof and the definition of genocide. And if you have not listened to that, I highly recommend giving it a listen. It is an episode we're really proud of. But we have not talked. about current events as a result nearly as much in the past week or so. And I want to talk to you guys about what's going on in the Middle East right now, and specifically the Houthis invasion and attacks on the Red Sea and the attack on the Saudi East-West pipeline. How is this impacting oil right now? And is the Middle East preparing for a broader war? Chad, can you fill us in on what's been going on in the past few days or the past week? Speaker 2 (2:36) Yeah, basically over the last several days, as you said, the Houthi forces have pushed down Yemen's western coastline and captured some pretty critical cities. The port city of Mocha, they moved into Dubab, they've reached Param Island, which is probably the most problematic because these are the islands that control entry and exit to the Bab al-Mandab Strait. And that's a narrow passage connecting... the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea to Suez Canal. It's a throughput point similar to how Hormuz is, but it does connect two oceans. So it's a little bit more critical in total cargo, but not as much for oil as Hormuz is. And I know Matt can speak to that. But the Houthis are now sitting right on top of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Ships are still moving through somewhat. The focus is on Saudi Arabia. The beef the Houthis have is with Saudi Arabia. But similar to the Strait of Hormuz, they don't actually have to close the strait completely to create problems. We've already watched this happen in 2023 and 2024 when they conducted attacks on Red Sea shipping in response to Gaza, when Israel was in the initial stages of their strikes on Gaza. But by 2024, the... the entirety of the shipping had fallen. Now, at the same time, a lot of these ships have to now move around the southern tip of the Cape of Good Hope, around the southern tip of Africa. And because of this, it's going to cause a lot more issues with shipping, a lot more issues with prices. And we originally saw that Hormuz was... The primary problem, Saudi Arabia had somewhat of a solution. This brings me to the second problem that you brought up, and that's the East-West pipeline that moves oil across the 1,200, roughly 1,200 kilometers from the eastern oil fields to Yanbu on the Red Sea. And they were able to bypass Hormuz. This was something that was potentially, and Matt can speak to this because I'm not as well-versed as he is, but... potentially was the ability for us to continue to get some oil out of the Persian Gulf region. But drones launched from Iraqi territory struck the pipeline and Saudi shut it down. The initial belief was this was just going to be a repair over a few days. But as they've inspected it, it's a lot less reassuring. This could be out for five or six weeks. And the bottom line is it's an open pipeline, so it can be struck again. The Saudis do have oil stored around Yambu, but they... may not have as much as necessary to counterbalance this pipeline being struck. And this is now showing that Iran is widening the theater here. The Houthis have seized territory overlooking the waterway that Saudi Arabia needs to get out. Saudi Arabia has responded by dramatically increasing airstrikes. Speaker 2 (5:34) launched long range missiles and drone attacks. And the back and forth here is now somewhere beyond what we saw in that 2023, 24 era. And we're going to see more strikes, more problems. And as of right now, the United States is sitting on their hands. The Trump administration, the US military doesn't want to touch this because they're hyper focused on Iran. And it's also creating a multiple front problem for many people, whether it's the Saudis, whether it's the U.S. and the Israelis are sidelined because the U.S. doesn't want them involved because anything they do undermines work with Iran. And this just is exacerbating a massive humanitarian situation. More than 85,000 people have been displaced during this latest round of fighting, including 82,000 since the beginning of September. And that's kind of where we sit right now. from an overview of the broader Houthi Yemen Saudi situation that probably the US is going to get drawn into eventually. Speaker 1 (6:38) Thank you. I have a follow up question there. I want to go to Matt in a moment for an energy perspective on this. But I want to clarify something that you said you're talking about how this is a sign that Iran is expanding the, you know, the theater of the conflict right now. And also talking about, you know, the US being hesitant to engage the Houthis while the administration is clearly very focused on Iran. To what extent, obviously, Iran and the Houthis have been sympathetic, but to what extent is this coordinated? To what extent are they acting out of mutual interest, literal coordination, or are the Houthis pursuing their own agenda right now and it's just benefiting Iran? What level of connection is there? Speaker 2 (7:23) So it's the Houthis sit in a different kind of hierarchy than, say, Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a direct kind of roll off of Iranian policy when it comes to their efforts to counter what Israel is doing in Gaza. However, the Houthis, they have their own goals, their own policies, but do rely heavily on the Iranians. The weapons and technology sharing, for instance, that's probably the biggest. The ballistic missiles, the Iranian cruise missiles, attack drones, anti-ship missiles. The Houthis would not have those things if it wasn't for Iran. Iran also sent trainers. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, specifically their Quds forces, are training Houthi fighters in how to use these more advanced weapons. They aren't just saying, here's some ballistic missiles, here's some drones, go figure it out. No, they're sending people over there. to help the Houthis fight. And this is because this broadens the war for Iran. It keeps the focus off the Strait of Hormuz, at least temporarily, as we now have to focus on the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb. Iran is providing intelligence sharing as they help track ships through the Red Sea. They identify military targets, improve missile targeting, things like that. And then the kind of the last two items is they do fund somewhat. the Houthis and enable their smuggling networks pretty significantly through Oman, Somalia, and the Arabian Sea. So there is support there. It's not like a direct proxy where they are fully directing the Houthis hit this target at this time. They're giving the Houthis kind of the freedom of maneuver to execute as they see fit. But it does kind of beg the broader question of what When Saudi is doing this, they just signed a pact with Pakistan and Turkey. And now we're seeing the Houthis strike into Saudi territory. They were supposed to have some sort of pseudo Article 5 NATO-esque type of agreement with these other countries. And Pakistan and Turkey have backed away saying we're not getting involved. And it undermines the whole thing. So a lot of this has to do with the fact that, yeah, when Iran is involved, not a lot of people want to be. putting their stamp of approval or disapproval in any direction because it's just such a volatile situation and the Houthis are no different. Speaker 1 (9:43) What's so funny, Mr. Global? Speaker 3 (9:45) Oh, I was... Pakistan's response to... Saudi Arabia requesting assistance under that. I believe it was called the Mecca agreement. Yeah. Yeah. Their defense pact. I don't know if you heard this, Nat, but Pakistan's response was to Saudi Arabia was the Houthis are a preexisting condition. And I just, I never laughed so hard in my life. And I was like, Hey, Saudi Arabia, welcome to the American healthcare system because it was just so hilarious. They're like, they're Speaker 1 (10:18) becoming HMO. Speaker 3 (10:19) Like Pakistan and Turkey, they have this huge agreement. It was international news, defense pact. You attack one, you attack us all. And then Pakistan's like, yeah, that's sort of a pre-existing condition. We're going to Speaker 2 (10:33) pass. This just passed. Everything's a pre-existing condition. It was August. Oh, you mean to tell me Speaker 1 (10:38) that the political alliances and tensions in the Middle East go back more than a couple of years. That's so interesting. Apparently only a month earlier this year. Pardon me. Yeah. Sorry. A month or so ago. Yeah. It was pretty much smooth sailing up until then in the Middle East. Speaker 1 (10:57) Not complicated. Pretty much Speaker 3 (10:58) smooth sailing. I haven't heard it described that way before, but yeah. Speaker 1 (11:03) That's like Trump's motto. Speaker 2 (11:05) Eh, kind of. We worked it out. Oh, everything Speaker 1 (11:07) was fine until this one moment. That is very HMO vocabulary. Oh, we're so sorry. I thought he read it. Your claim has been denied. We reviewed the terms, and we don't agree that that's what they say. Speaker 1 (11:21) You can feel free to apply for a reappraisal that we will just wait a week and design. That's how they'd handle it over at UnitedHealthcare. I have a question that is for Matt, though. Can you give us a broader energy perspective on this? What is this doing to oil markets right now? Speaker 3 (11:45) It's bad. It's really bad. I don't know if you caught on to that, but it's really bad. Yeah, I got the overall positive negative charge. Speaker 1 (11:55) I was hoping you could get a little more in depth. Speaker 3 (11:58) First of all, yeah. First of all, we've been lied to the whole time. Like we all knew that this pipeline had been hit. We were watching the satellite imagery. They were telling us it was operational flaring. And this was coming from CENTCOM. And I'm like, these lying son of a bitches. Like, so it took them an entire 24 hours to admit that this pumping station had been hit. And that was followed up with a few days, temporary shutdown a few days. And then the next day we get the high res image of the pumping station that is just completely gone. There's nothing left of it. And then they had to admit it would be like. maybe up to six weeks. And what did we get today? We got two more satellite images of two other pumping stations that got hit. So this was a broad attack across a large swath of the pipeline. It wasn't an isolated strike on one station. It was three stations, which, oh, by the way, most of us already suspected more had been hit because one pumping station doesn't shut down an entire 1,200-kilometer pipeline unless you actually part the pipeline. line. And, and, but so they've been lying to us about this the entire time. And it's so frustrating trying to report this out to people when you can't trust anything. Even CENTCOM says that's, that's really bad. I expect it from the Trump administration, but I don't expect it from CENTCOM. Um, one thing that's really important to remember Nat is that About half of the oil flowing through this pipeline was oil that flowed through it before the Strait of Hormuz closed. This wasn't some empty pipeline that they just utilized for the Strait. So not only do you have the loss of whatever's short in the Strait of Hormuz, you have the loss of the bypass amount, and you also have the loss of the original amount. So this is actually... twice as bad as they're trying to claim it is. They keep saying it's a 4 million barrel a day pipeline. It's not. It's a 7 million barrel a day pipeline. That's another way they're trying to, you know, put a cap and lid on oil prices. It's really bad. And, you know, six weeks without this oil in a few days for the first time in. I don't know, since the wheel was invented, Saudi Arabia is not going to be exporting oil. And if you just say that out loud, Saudi Arabia is not exporting oil like that. That's just the craziest thing I've ever heard. So big. Big draws in oil supplies around the world are coming. Trump spent all day on the Internet trying to jawbone prices down, you know, fake announcements of deals, stuff with Ukraine, blaming it on Ukraine, talking about a deal with Iran, talking about the Strait being open. Just whenever the more he posts about oil, the worse it is. That's really all you need to know. The more Donald Trump talks about anything, the worse it is. if he's posting a lot about oil and gas prices, it's really bad. Like it's, it's bad. So yeah, and it's going to have a huge impact moving forward. And, um, Speaker 3 (15:17) I don't know how much help we can offer them because I think part of the strategy may be to stretch the United States thin a little bit and weaken us in the Strait of Hormuz. Like, I don't know if we have what we need to cover both of those areas or even if we would, because Donald Trump seems to be kind of telling Saudi Arabia they're on their own, you know. Speaker 1 (15:36) And when you said that they were, they're saying it's a four, sorry, the little capacity of the pipeline, they're just misreporting. You're saying four instead of seven. They just say the wrong figure every time. But I'm just curious. That's intentional. No, sorry, they're just hedging every piece of information. Okay, so only one pumping station was hit. It's actually four billion. Okay, so it's, and it's just like intentionally trying to. That's a very pathological liar strategy of just like, oh, I was almost going to do, I basically did that. And then we were here and you learned that like everything has been like exaggerated by 20 % as well as this flat out lies. It's just sort of like creating this more sympathetic reality. It's very familiar. They do the same Speaker 2 (16:20) thing with casualties. Really? That's what they've done with Speaker 1 (16:22) casualties. Yep. In this administration specifically, you're saying? Speaker 2 (16:27) In this war specifically. Yep. Speaker 1 (16:31) It doesn't sound like it, but that's horrible. Speaker 3 (16:33) The storage piece that Chad brought up. So Yambu, the port, this is these. So the East West pipeline is actually two pipelines that are side by side. They go to Yambu, the port. Right. And all ports have some storage there. Right. So there's roughly depending on how many ships get into the Red Sea, there's probably four or five days of storage there where tankers will still be able to get oil. But after that. We're done. The pipeline's closed. The storage is gone. So four or five days of oil, you know, probably looking at there's probably. Speaker 3 (17:12) eight to 10 million barrels of oil in storage there. And then, and then, so that's just a drop in the bucket. Once that's gone, there's no more oil going to the red sea for at least six weeks. And I don't know if Chad would agree with me, but anytime Saudi Arabia says something's going to be down, you typically just multiply that times two. Because they downplay that as well, the six weeks. And you also have to consider the fact that they're going to continue trying to hit it the whole time they're working on it, just like they have the Jizan Refinery, which has been down since June. And every time they say it's about to reopen, they just hit it again. So that's likely to continue here. Speaker 2 (17:50) Yeah, Iran wants to exert its... So they're feeling like they're losing some of their strength in the Strait of Hormuz. So they're wanting to expand to places where they can... almost exponentially grow the problem for the United States and its allies. And so what we're seeing is this is an exponential problem for them. As the United States slowly is able to kind of trickle some additional flow through the Strait of Hormuz because of the Omani side, the Iranians are now saying, well, if you think you're being somewhat successful here, here's another problem. hundreds of miles away here here's yet another a third problem hundreds of miles when we activated rocky proxies to hit the other so this is i mean iran this is a very calculated uh step-by-step approach and a plan that iran has that as something starts to wane or the us and its allies start to figure out bypasses to the problems iran creates they are now pushing the buttons in other areas and saying, all right, figure this problem out. And the bottom line is we can't have the same carrier strike group that is operating in Hormuz cannot simultaneously operate in the Red Sea. It's too far away. So we would have to either redeploy one of the ones that is helping in Hormuz, or we would have to deploy a third carrier group to the Red Sea. And the Iranians know this. They know that. And what that's going to do is it's going to pull that asset from somewhere else, whether it's keeping an eye on operations in perhaps the Mediterranean, where we still have to deal with what's going on in the Black Sea with Russia and Ukraine, or as we've just recently had the problems with taking out of Taiwan and China, or perhaps even relieving pressure in a Venezuela situation. If we remove that group out of there to redeploy them to keep the Babamandeb Strait open. That means we might lose a carrier strike group that's conducting what I've been saying are illegal operations striking these boats. And it may be this big interconnected geostrategic play that Iran and Russia and China and Venezuela all are having in which they're forcing the United States to have to make decisions. Where do you want to fight? Where do you want to be? Can you be here at the same time you need to be there? And the U.S. is learning real quickly that they cannot, especially with their munitions. Speaker 1 (20:09) Where's that carrier for the sailors that we sent to Thailand? Are they still in Thailand? Speaker 2 (20:14) They left. They left. They found a bed and