Today’s briefing:
— World oil has a Houthi problem
— China’s spymaster warning
— This diplomat is nuts
Your Insider’s briefing:
— World oil has a Houthi problem
— China’s spymaster warning
— This diplomat is nuts
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. We just had a blast recording our latest monthly Ask Intrigue Anything with our team of ex-diplomats. Insiders will soon get the exclusive link, but here’s a sneak peek at some of your questions:
Do we have an OPEC-style strategic pun reserve? Yes (her name is Valentina, our European editor)
Should you still join the foreign service if you really disagree with your current government? Yes (by the time you finish the visa queue and ambassadorial photocopying, the current administration will be a commemorative stamp).
And are we at Intrigue aware of our own free-world biases? (yes, though maybe just like a fish in water, and mindful that for all our water’s faults, the coming tide will be worse).
And… on that cheery note, shall we explore how the Iran war just got bigger?
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
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Number of the day
188,760
That’s how many court records (mostly civil debt cases) in China mentioned an exit ban last year, up from 89 in 2016. As of today (Tuesday), the practice now has a new formal law, stopping anyone who might “endanger” China’s tech or industrial security from leaving the country.
One war, two fronts.
If you’ve ever tried to force a full suitcase shut by sitting on it, you’ll appreciate what the Houthis are now trying to do to global energy supplies.
That’s because after months of will-they-won’t-they, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have finally done it: they’ve joined the Iran war.
Who now?
The Houthis are the hardline Shia offshoot from northern Yemen who’ve been running the capital since 2014. Famous for their cheerful slogan — ‘Allah is great, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews’ — they’re Iran’s most enthusiastic if unpredictable partner, known for firing missiles at commercial ships.
And while the Houthis (named after their ruling family) might conjure up scrappy images of desert Fremen, they now rule over roughly as many people as the Saudis next door, and have managed to outgun a Saudi-led coalition for over a decade.
So now they’ve gone and done what?
The Houthis really entered the Iran war last month, enforcing an embargo on Saudi ports via hits on cities and energy infrastructure. They framed it all as a) righteous retaliation for Saudi hits, and b) choking Saudi’s remaining Red Sea exports.
But they’ve now gone harder — much harder — launching a lightning offensive to capture key Yemeni cities from Saudi-backed rivals right along the Red Sea coast!
In the space of just a few days, they’ve now yoinked…
a) the port city of Mokha (coffee trading hub and moka pot inspiration)
b) the coastal town of Dhubab (right on the Bab el-Mandeb bottleneck), and
c) the island of Perim, which sits smack in the middle of that bottleneck.
Or translation: the Houthis now have a direct, land-based firing vantage over ships entering or exiting the Suez Canal corridor.
Or translation of the translation: Iran and its allies just expanded the scope of their oil-squeezing strategy from one critical strait (Hormuz), to two:
The Bab el-Mandeb, meaning ‘Gate of Grief’ due to its treacherous navigation conditions, is only 29km (18mi) wide: we’ve legit taken longer Ubers. And linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, it handles ~15% of world maritime trade.
So combined, this move now gives Iran and its friends potential leverage over a ~quarter of global oil, ramping up this conflict’s costs to extract more concessions and better terms.
Okay, so why squeeze now?
The Houthis blame recent Saudi airstrikes (targeting more Iranian arms deliveries) for breaking their fragile 2022 truce.
And that Saudi over-play came right as the kingdom was most exposed, sneaking 4% of the world’s oil away from Hormuz, instead out its Red Sea back door into markets.
But no longer: the Saudis have now had to take their key back-door route offline because a drone hit the relevant pipeline. Hence oil now spiking back around $108.
So how are the Saudis responding?
They’ve tried innovative new strategies like *checks notes*…
Plan A: bombing the Houthis again
Plan B: calling President Trump again (he’s busy with Iran), and even…
Plan C: invoking the new Mecca defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan (though Mecca’s main agreement so far has been to not send troops to Yemen).
And this doesn’t leave the Saudis with many options: wade back into the same Yemeni civil war they just spent a decade trying to escape, or watch their own Davos-in-the-desert dreams get pantsed by neighbours still filming missile launches with a Nokia.
But lest anyone snort too much, keep in mind that whatever hurts the Saudis also hurts us all via higher oil prices.
Intrigue’s Take
This wild development arguably exposes a few gaps…
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Intrigue’s Take
This wild development arguably exposes a few gaps.
First, there’s the gap between sea control and sea denial: the US navy has really spent decades and trillions perfecting sea control: deploy aircraft carriers to project US power anywhere on Earth, and underwrite the world’s freedom of navigation. But the Iranians and now Houthis are showing how, with coastal control and cheap launchers, it’s not too hard to deny full sea control for the US navy or anyone else.
Second, there’s a gap in legitimacy: the Saudis have their giga-projects, ritzy summits, and exquisite US defence tech, but the Houthis have something else — boots on the ground inspired by genuine, domestic, ideological buy-in. And long term, zealots armed with cheap drones (and sure, some ballistic missiles) have a real shot at outlasting suit-and-tie monarchs buying the muscle.
Then third, there’s now a gap between pledges and protection: the region’s US security umbrella was always meant to be formidable. But Gulf monarchs will now wrestle not only with a) its political underpinnings (a transactional president sounds great for petrostates until the transaction abandons you), but also b) the simple fact this umbrella is now leaking. And to the extent the Mecca pact was ever going to paper over any leaks, it is itself now looking like a paper alliance: absent standing forces, shared threat perceptions, and a willingness to put boots on the ground? Thin.
Meanwhile, the uncomfortable truth for Saudi Arabia is that all the McKinsey decks, FIFA events, and vision plans can’t substitute for basic territorial security. And lest you wonder whether the region’s top oil customer (China) might swoop in with another 2023-style fix like its historic Saudi-Iran rapprochement, we might get another reminder that economic mediation and soft-power still has hard limits.
Sound even smarter:
US Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper flew to Jeddah on Monday to offer the crown prince (MBS) increased intelligence-sharing and targeting assistance, but no more.
US diesel prices are now at ~$6/gallon, a new nominal record.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇮🇷 IRAN — Street fight in Baluchistan.
IRGC troops traded fire with a new Popular Fighters Front outfit for nine hours (!) near the Pakistani border earlier in the week, leaving several dead on both sides. (The Telegraph)
Comment: This is not Tehran falling over, so much as its long-running Baluch separatist file — Sunni, poor, armed — flaring up while the regime is busy surviving the bigger war. Still, Iran’s foes will hunt for any cracks, and there are few better than a failure to pacify your own ethnic periphery.
🇬🇧 UNITED KINGDOM — Celtic summit.
The largest parties of Scotland (SNP), Wales (Plaid Cymru), and Northern Ireland (Sinn Féin) have signed off on a Cardiff memo declaring “Westminster’s time is coming to an end”, and “the future of our nations belongs in the European Union.” 🔥 (Politico)
Comment: No dates, no Wexit referendum machinery, and no sense that Brussels is now queuing up to inherit three messy accessions. But it’s the first time all three devolved first ministers come from independence-leaning parties, presenting an opportunity to wring out more fiscal and regulatory concessions from Westminster as much as spike any pressure for London to somehow re-join the EU. For now, Prime Minister Burnham is insisting he’d rather focus on the cost-of-living “than engaging in constitutional debates or further referendums.”
🇫🇷 FRANCE — Oligarch for hostages.
France is now blocking a clean rollover of the EU’s Russia sanctions unless Alisher Usmanov — an Uzbek-born, Putin-adjacent metals billionaire — comes off the list. Paris seems to be trading sanctions relief for several French “spies” held in Usmanov-friendly Azerbaijan. (EuroNews)
Comment: It all hints at the effectiveness of hostage diplomacy, the true value of these mysterious French detainees, or at least how easily European consensus can fracture when shared sanctions start getting traded away for undisclosed bilateral deals.
🇨🇱 CHILE — Anti-Pinochet protesters arrested.
Thousands have marched on the 53rd anniversary of Pinochet’s 1973 coup, both to honour his dictatorship’s victims, and to protest against conservative President Kast cancelling the commemoration for the first time since democracy’s 1990 return. Police detained hundreds after clashes. Touring flood damage in the south, Kast said “I cannot erase history”. (AFP)
🇨🇳 CHINA — Spymaster sounds the cyber alarm.
The head of Beijing’s MSS intelligence agency, Chen Yixin, has used an essay in a Party journal to warn that foreign AI models (he name-drops Claude and GPT) could threaten Party rule. In response, he’s demanding tighter Party control over the industry. (SCMP)
Comment: Yesterday we explored America’s jitters at AI models eating humanity. And now we get Beijing worried about the model eating the Party. It could be a way to draw red lines ahead of the Trump-Xi summit in DC later this month: we’re happy to talk AI safety, but data sovereignty and political security won’t be on the table. It’s also a warning to China’s domestic labs and talent: ultimately, you work for us.
🇮🇩 INDONESIA — Maritime tragedy exposes gaps.
With more than 100 people still missing after another passenger ship capsized in the Java Sea, it’s reviving a lingering political debate around the state of infrastructure in this boat-dependent archipelago. (Al Jazeera)
Comment: With an investigation now underway, and the sector’s safety record long in doubt, this risks morphing beyond another bad weather story into a bigger mix of state capacity and misallocated priorities.
🇳🇬 NIGERIA — It’s time.
Africa’s most anticipated IPO is finally here, with local oil giant Dangote hoping to raise as much as $2.1B with the sale of a ~3% stake. Interest has already overwhelmed two popular Nigerian investment platforms. (Punch)
Comment: We wrote about why this record-breaking IPO is such a big deal for Nigeria, Africa and the world here.
Extra Intrigue
The Intrigue jobs board is back
Executive Director, Operations @ Minderoo Foundation in Perth
Intern, Human Settlements Programme @ UN in Istanbul
Manager, Defence Strategy @ PWC in London
Ethics Officer @ World Food Programme in Rome
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Summit snack of the day
India’s Jaiswal up the top-left (behind Iran’s Pezeshkian). And Mexico’s Velasco down the bottom right.
The 18th BRICS summit in Delhi was supposed to be all about multipolarity, local currencies, and US-free family photos. Instead, the summit’s most enduring legacy might just be the viral footage of India’s foreign ministry spokesman, Randhir Jaiswal, absolutely dismantling a box of cashews and dry fruits while Iran’s Pezeshkian delivers sombre remarks: reach in, nibble, lick fingers, repeat.
Eventually someone just yoinks the box, like a flight attendant reclaiming the pretzels.
But lest you think this is just a Jaiswal thing, the truth is he’s a mere Padawan still learning from diplomacy’s original nut-Jedi, Roberto Velasco Álvarez. Back in 2019, Mexico’s young staffer went viral for the way he calmly punished vast quantities of peanuts off a napkin while the grown-ups discussed trade with Nancy Pelosi. Mexico’s internet quickly crowned him #LordCacahuates (Lord Peanuts), but lest you laugh too hard, he is now Mexico’s foreign minister: proof that a well-timed snack does not end a diplomatic career. It can even season it?
Today’s poll
Do you think the Saudis will be drawn into an all-out war in Yemen?
Thursday’s poll: Which theory do you think best explains AI's current 'slow down' moment?
🤖 Face-value: this tech could kill us all (47%)
🤔 Cynical: Silicon Valley just needs a moat (45%)
🌏 Geopolitical: a US pause just lets China win (6%)
✍️ Other (write us!) (2%)
Your two cents:
🤖 G.S.M: “With so many ‘calls are coming from inside the house’ (Coxon, Hubinger, Amodei etc), one needs to seriously step back, take a look and listen.”
🌏 A.J.H: “The biggest benefit for the American buildout has to be its private model leverage that allows it to scale quickly. This advantage should be pressed. This geopolitical nuance seems credible.”
🤔 G.M: “I do believe in the real dangers of AI. However, when company CEOs chime in I'm suspicious of the reason. You don't expect us to believe they've all grown a conscience??”
✍️ R: “The AI labs can't fund the current pace of buildout.”
PS — shout-out to ‘LH’ in the group-chat for today’s When life gives you Yemens email subject 🔥. Become an Insider and join the banter today!