By Andrew Mills
Oct 21 – Iran is deliberately prolonging talks with Washington to weaken President Donald Trump before the November 3 midterm elections, senior Iranian officials told Reuters. They say Tehran is preparing for renewed US and Israeli strikes, not a deal. It is doing so as inflation hits 73.6% and seaborne oil exports have fallen to zero.
Tehran’s diplomacy has stalled on a second front. Iran says its offer to broker an end to the fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis has gone unanswered by Riyadh and the Yemeni group. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi also warned that “any foreign intervention would complicate matters,” a reference to Egypt, whose parliament has delayed until October 26 a vote on helping defend the kingdom. Araqchi said Cairo has told Tehran it would not “directly” interfere in Yemen.
That leaves open the question of how else Egypt might help Riyadh. Today’s analysis asks why Saudi Arabia’s allies are offering a shield rather than a sword, and whether Egypt’s moves could shift that. Our briefing covers a Houthi missile strike in Shabwa that killed 73 people, Turkey’s move to ratify the Mecca defence pact, and Qatar’s plan to rebuild Lebanon’s power grid. We have maps pulled from a special report about the “heat storms” now scorching places with milder climates than the Gulf, before we look at how war has pushed Yemen’s besieged city of Taiz toward a water and disease crisis.
NEWS BRIEFING
* A Houthi missile strike on a Yemeni government security forces training camp in Shabwa province has killed 73 people, according to the local media office. Fourteen more were missing and over 200 injured. The attack marks another escalation in a conflict that pits the Houthis against Saudi-backed forces and is tied to the wider US-Israeli war on Iran. It has put both Saudi oil production and Yemen’s energy-rich (but under-tapped) south in peril.
* Turkey has submitted the Mecca defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to parliament for ratification, with committee debate possible on Friday. The NATO member also plans to submit a mandate allowing for military personnel to be deployed to Saudi Arabia, a ruling party lawmaker told Reuters, though any troops would not take part in offensive operations.
* Qatar plans to build two 825-megawatt gas-fired power plants in Lebanon within three years and sign a 20-year liquefied natural gas supply deal, a document shows. This matters because the plan could end Lebanon’s chronic blackouts, using private financing. But the plan needs government approval and attempts to reform the country’s energy sector have a history of stalling.
SAUDI ARABIA’S ALLIES BRING A SHIELD, NOT A SWORD
Egypt’s parliament has postponed until October 26 a vote on letting its army help defend Saudi Arabia against the Houthis. The delay exposes the limits of the support Riyadh has gathered.
And the allies that have pledged help are bringing a shield, not a sword.
Britain said on Tuesday its Typhoon fighter jets would fly defensive missions only, adding to a refuelling aircraft sent in September. France has promised soldiers, radars and air defences to protect the Yanbu oil terminal.
Even the Mecca pact, which treats an attack on any of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan as an attack on all, has not yet produced new support for the kingdom. Pakistan has not visibly added to the 8,000 troops, fighter squadron and air defence system that Reuters reported in May that it had deployed. Turkey’s parliament has yet to ratify the pact, and any deployment of Turkish soldiers would need its authorisation.
Washington supplies intelligence and targeting support but has so far declined to strike on Riyadh’s behalf. Asked about doing more, President Donald Trump said: “We may. We’re going to look at it.”
Is this allied help enough to defend the kingdom?
Ali Shihabi, a Saudi analyst close to the government, said the kingdom would struggle to defend all of its assets because of its size. A huge country with airports, pipelines and oil facilities, he said, lacks enough Patriot air-defence systems, interceptors and missile batteries to cover everything at once. “Saudi Arabia has an unlimited need for air defences,” he added.
A decisive Saudi win against the Houthis is far from a sure bet. Saudi Arabia launched its intervention in March 2015 and fought for seven years before an April 2022 truce, leaving the Houthis in Sanaa and in charge of most Yemenis. Washington intervened in 2025 with a seven-week bombing campaign, which cost an estimated $2 billion and left the Houthis intact.
In the past two weeks the Houthis have hit targets deep inside the kingdom. A week of strikes reaching Saudi airports killed at least 20 people, and most operations are still suspended at Riyadh’s King Khalid airport. The kingdom has postponed several key events, including its flagship investment conference scheduled for next week.
Egypt has plenty of reasons to pledge support to Riyadh: Suez Canal revenue, Red Sea security and a $5.3 billion Saudi deposit due this month. Yet questions remain about how far Cairo — which was scarred by a costly campaign in Yemen in the 1960s — will go.
If Egypt joins, will it be able to end the war? As King’s College London’s Andreas Krieg put it, Egypt “cannot bomb that problem away.” Two earlier air campaigns, Saudi and American, failed to. The UAE has drawn back from Yemen. That leaves the ground fight to Yemeni forces that Riyadh has struggled to organise.
CHART OF THE WEEK
“There is no shortage of stories predicting the dire consequences we face if we don’t find a way to stop the planet’s temperature from rising beyond that threshold. But what about now? What has already happened? And why do these dire warnings so often land with a shrug?” writes our editor in charge of data and computational journalism, Maurice Tamman. One such story is the deaths of 1,300 pilgrims during Saudi Arabia’s Hajj season in 2024, when temperatures rose to 51.8 degrees Celsius.
Our journalists have been studying extreme heat for months and have coined the term “heat storms” to reflect the magnitude of a phenomenon that hasn’t been studied as much as tropical storms or snowstorms. This series explains what heat storms are and how our journalists arrived at the term.
We’re also inviting our readers around the world to share their stories during these events. Share yours here.
LAST WAVE: Water rationing, rubbish pile-up raise disease fears in Yemen’s besieged Taiz
Families have started rationing water in and around Yemen’s Taiz city, where renewed fighting has disrupted fuel supplies and access to water systems serving 3 million people, aid groups and UN agencies said.
Meanwhile, mounting piles of rubbish along major roads are raising fears of disease outbreaks in the city, Yemen’s third-largest.
Fighting between the Saudi-backed government and the Iran-allied Houthi group since September has cut key supply routes, including the Taiz-Aden corridor, worsening shortages of water, food and fuel in and around the city.
The lack of fuel is hampering the operation of water pumps and hospitals, while disruption to waste collection has left rubbish piled along roads of the city, a stronghold of anti-Houthi forces which is now under siege by the armed movement.
(Editing by Aidan Lewis)