Iran demanded Israel’s expulsion from the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) for its crimes against Palestinians and other countries, calling it “the most important source of insecurity and instability” in the region.

“If the international community does not stop America and Israel today, their aggression will spread to all independent countries … it is time for this [Zionist] regime to be expelled from the CICA mechanism,” Iran’s deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said during its meeting on Thursday, October 15.

The seventh summit of the 29 member CICA process, formed in 1999 as an inter-governmental forum for establishing peace, security, and stability in Asia was held in Baku, Azerbaijan on Thursday.

Prior to Iran putting its demand for Israel’s expulsion, representatives of almost a dozen countries including Iran, Turkiye, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Egypt walked out of the meeting once the Israeli President Isaac Herzog started speaking.

This was the second time this year that a top Israeli official faced mass boycott on international forums. Last month, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing the annual session of the UN General Assembly, delegates from 77 countries boycotted his speech over the genocide in Gaza and other wars in the region.

Representatives from Kuwait also joined the walk out on Thursday, contradicting recent reports in Israeli and US media about it being one of the probable countries to join the so-called Abraham Accords, devised by US President Donald Trump during his first term in office to end the isolation of Israel in the region. 

Despite the Trump administration’s push, so far only the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco have joined the accords.

Israel is the threat to regional peace

Gharibabadi mentioned how Israel has been involved in two illegal wars against his country within 16 months from its continued “occupation of Palestinian territories, violation of the rights of Palestinian people, and the escalation of tensions in Lebanon, Syria, as well as other parts of the region,” the IRNA reported.

Gharibabadi claimed that his country believes that “one cannot speak of sustainable security in Asia while remaining indifferent to occupation, aggression, military threats, and violation of the rights of the Palestinian nation.”

He also pointed out the broader challenges to regional and global peace and stability, claiming that the CICA meeting was held at a time when the international order is facing “one of its most significant challenges, namely; the “normalization of the use of force, alongside attempts to impose its political will upon independent nations through military aggression, sanctions and threats.”

Gharibabadi highlighted the combined role of Israel and the US, claiming each of the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians and other countries in the region is committed with the support provided by the US who acts as a “big brother” to the Zionist regime.

Answering the concerns raised by several delegates in the meeting, Gharibabadi underlined that peace in West Asia and safe navigation through the waterways in the region is only possible if there is a permanent end to all kinds of aggression and war and there is respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The CICA conference ended with the adoption of the Baku Declaration, which highlighted the need to address growing military, political, economic, and environmental risks.

During a high-level visit to Tehran earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed his country’s official position demanding a restoration of the pre-war situation in the Persian Gulf region and guarantees that there will be no return to war against Iran in the future.

Lavrov also claimed that his country was ready to assist in “searching for mutually acceptable solutions to resolve” the “artificial” crisis created by “unprovoked US-Israeli aggression” against Iran.

Later on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin repeated the offer of mediation during the visit of Steve Witkoff, the White House’s special envoy to the Middle East, to Moscow.

Lavrov, who visited Iran on Monday, October 18, also reiterated the Russian position that Iran’s responses to US aggression was justified and legitimate and claimed his country has provided whatever political and economic assistance it could to help it face the repercussions of the unlawful US-Israeli war.

Lavrov’s statement could be seen as a rebuttal to US President Donald Trump, who appreciated Russia’s supposed neutral role in Iran during the eight-month-long war.

Trump claimed it was a “positive” development that Russia did nothing to help and was even “laying off Iran” as the US is hitting Iranians economically and militarily.

Trump was forced to withdraw some of its sanctions on Russian energy exports, imposed from 2024, in his bid to secure an energy deal earlier this month.

Trump’s move is largely seen as an attempt to lower the impact of the rising gas prices on the prospects of Republican candidates before the upcoming midterm elections.

Lavrov, however, cited the Russian veto in the UN against the US attempts to justify its military aggression against Iran, providing humanitarian aid including medicine, other medical supplies and food during the war also claiming that such aid is continued to be “delivered regularly.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also appreciated the Russian help during the war and expressed his country’s desire to further deepen cooperation between the two countries.

Iran and Russia signed and implemented a 20-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty last year. The treaty has provisions of close coordination on issues related to economy, geo-politics, and security.

Lavrov pointed out the growing bilateral trade between the two countries in the last two years, despite the war and sanctions they are both facing. According to him, in the first eight months of the present year, the bilateral trade between Russia and Iran grew 10% in comparison to the same period last year.

Lavrov also informed that Russian scientists who were withdrawn from Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant during the war have started returning gradually.

Russia and Iran are closer than ever

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi claimed that bilateral relations and cooperation between Russia and Iran has never been as good as it was today.

While addressing a joint press conference with Lavrov in Tehran on Monday, Araghchi reiterated that both the countries maintain close cooperation and consultation on all regional issues, including Iranian relations with the US.

He claimed that the two countries agree that the instability and disruption in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz is a result of unprovoked US-Israeli aggression and that they share the vision of a diplomatic solution to all outstanding conflicts.

Talking about their mutual understanding about regional issues, such as Lebanon and Palestine, Araghchi claimed that both Russia and Iran agree the “genocide of the Palestinian people and the Israeli regime’s dangerous expansionism in the region must stop.”

Lavrov alleged that some countries are trying to push the Palestinian issue to the background, which should not be allowed. He stated that both Iran and Russia would push for the implementation of all relevant UN resolutions because it is “crucial to intensify efforts to resolve the Palestinian issue.”

Lavrov also demanded an end to all Israeli hostilities in Lebanon and peace in Yemen, demanding the full implementation of all relevant UN resolutions and previous understandings.

Lavrov rejected US threats of secondary sanctions over its relationship with Iran, claiming “despite the challenging situation … Russia has no intention to abandon the implementation of economic and investment agreements with Iran.”

As a part of its ongoing war, the Trump administration had announced the complete economic isolation of Iran in August, threatening secondary sanctions against all the countries who still maintained economic relations with it.

Only a handful of countries, such as the UAE, have announced compliance with the US attempts to economically isolate Iran so far.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reiterated that his country’s proposal to end the war with the US and to restart nuclear negotiations is “still on the table,” claiming the Iranian conditions are “completely clear” and “unchanging.”

Talking to Iranian state media on the sidelines of the 52nd session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Baghdad on Sunday, October 18, Araghchi also said that Iran is currently studying the US response to its proposals.

If the US meets its conditions, “the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened on the sixth day, and negotiations will resume on the seventh,” Araghchi said. 

Though Araghchi did not talk about them explicitly, he reiterated that the Iranian conditions are the same as what the US had agreed to under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed in June.

On several previous occasions Iran has made clear that if the US lifts its naval blockade, releases Iran’s foreign frozen assets, and ends the war on all fronts in the region, it will allow the Strait of Hormuz to open.

As per the MoU, in the first 60 days after the deal took effect both sides were to initiate negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. However, the MoU expired in August after hostilities were resumed within weeks of its signing.

The US resumed its military strikes on Iran in July, leading the Iranians to reimpose their blockade in the Strait of Hormuz in response, reversing its decision to open it for navigation as per the MoU.

Tehran had claimed that it presented a plan to reopen the Strait to the US in September, in a brief meeting with its delegation during the annual session of the UN General Assembly. However, US President Donald Trump later declared he had rejected the Iranian proposals.

Beware of Israeli provocations

Araghchi also rejected the repeated threats of new strikes and economic isolation against his country, claiming that Iran will not bow to threats and will defend its strategic and economic interests.

Last week it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a tough election at home, apart from planning to escalate war against Palestinians in the West Bank, also pressured Trump to resume the military strikes on Iran.

Read more: Netanyahu presses Trump to renew aggression on Iran ahead of Israeli elections

On the same day, Trump claimed that the US may attack some specific targets in Iran in order to disrupt its nuclear program. Media reports also claimed that the US is preparing to use the so-called “mother of all bombs” to again target Iran’s energy and nuclear infrastructure.

This is despite the fact that Trump has repeatedly boasted about “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear program during the joint US and Israeli airstrikes in June 2025.

Reacting to those reports, Araghchi warned both the US and Israel to learn from their mistakes and stay away from Iran to avoid consequences more severe than during the earlier wars.

“Last time you wanted to “finish the job” Iran emerged even stronger. Want to try your luck again? Be our guest. But be careful; we have unfinished jobs too,” Araghchi said in a post on X on Monday.

He claimed that Netanyahu is pressing for a fresh war simply because he wants to stay in power and out of jail over corruption charges he has been facing for years now, without thinking about consequences to Israel or the US.

In a similar reaction, the head of the Iranian armed forces Ali Abdollahi also claimed on Sunday that his country was waiting for their [the US and Israel’s] foolish decision and miscalculation. Any attack by them would invite “a response war more severe, distinct, and devastating than in the past,” Abdollahi claimed.

Abdollahi’s warnings were relayed by several other Iranian officials on Sunday.

It is reported that the US has spent billions of dollars in the last eight months of war on Iran. It has lost most of its military infrastructure in the Gulf countries in Iranian responses, with over a dozen of its soldiers killed and several dozen of its aircraft lost. The US also faced a severe shortage of crucial ammunition due to the war on Iran, forcing it to suspend the strikes midway.

The continuing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could cause an increase in food insecurity in Asia and Africa, an UN official warned on Wednesday, October 14, asking both the US and Iran to allow free shipments, particularly of fertilizers.

“It is absolutely crucial to get the deal in the next few weeks. Otherwise, we will miss the planting session,” UN Under Secretary General Jorge Moreira da Silva told Reuters on the sidelines of the ongoing annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Bangkok, Thailand.

Almost one third of all global supplies of urea and around half of sulphur used to pass through the Strait of Hormuz before the US-Israeli war on Iran began in late February and Iran blocked traffic through it in retaliation.

Most countries in Asia and Africa get their urea products, used in the majority of fertilizers worldwide, from the Gulf nations.

Given the fact that global fertilizer supplies from Russia had already been affected due to the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia imposed by the EU and US, the restrictions on the Gulf have intensified already existing shortages pushing up prices and making farming more expensive for the majority of farmers.

Food prices are already rising in different countries in Asia and Africa and it is expected that if the supply constraints remain the same, food production could be impacted and prices will rise further in the coming days, affecting millions of people in the region.

The crisis is further intensified due to the rising cost of oil, particularly diesel which is extensively used in farming.

The Strait of Hormuz was the source of around a quarter of world energy supplies before the war. Despite the claims that supplies of energy have been normalized in recent days the global oil prices remain much higher than the pre-war period.

According to a Reuters’ report, fertilizer supplies from the Strait of Hormuz have remained negligible despite resumption of other shipments including the oil in recent weeks.

Iran asserts control over the Strait of Hormuz

The UN set up a taskforce to facilitate the passage of fertilizers through the Strait of Hormuz in March itself. The taskforce has proposed an interim arraignment to resume the fertilizer supplies through the region with the consent of both the US and Iran.

Iran has demanded that it will only allow normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz after the US ends its war, lifts its naval blockade on the country, and fulfills its obligations under the interim peace deal signed in June.

The US claims the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) are redundant and refused to lift the blockade.

Reuters reported the US State Department reiterating on Wednesday that it will continue to target Iran, accusing it of disrupting freedom of navigation and taking the global economy hostage.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) carried out a fresh attack on a small vessel in the Gulf of Oman, allegedly linked to the IRGC on Wednesday.

The US and President Donald Trump have also repeatedly claimed the Strait was fully under its control and free for all kinds of navigation. CENTCOM also reiterated on Wednesday that Iran has no navy to control the Strait.

However, Iran has refuted the US claims, citing fresh attacks on several ships trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz without its prior permission.

At least two ships, one container ship and a large bulk carrier, reportedly bound for Singapore, sank after allegedly being hit by projectiles on Wednesday.

The IRGC also claimed that another tanker was hit by the Iranian Navy on Thursday after it ignored repeated warnings. The ship carrying oil caught fire in the attack.

“The Americans claim that the Strait of Hormuz is open and they control it, but this claim is far away from the realities on the ground,” Ali Ozmaei, IRGC Navy chief, said on Tuesday, asking the US armed forces to “step into the field and see who is in control of it.”

It blamed US restrictions on media reports for a wrong impression about the status of the shipping through the Strait and repeated that all ships wanting to transit through it must obtain prior Iranian permission if they want to avoid any kind of mishap.

Two weeks before the Israeli legislative elections scheduled on October 27, 2026, the far-right Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has revealed its intentions to further perpetuate and expand its three-year multi-front war across West Asia.

On Tuesday, October 13, Netanyahu appeared in a televised speech during a visit to the apartheid wall established inside the occupied West Bank, threatening the Palestinian Authority.

Standing near the Tulkarm refugee camp alongside Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz, the Israeli PM confirmed that the camp’s displaced residents, whom he described as “terrorists,” will not return to their homes despite an order from the Israeli Supreme Court authorizing their return.

The Tulkarm Refugee Camp was among the three largest Palestinian refugee communities in the northern West Bank targeted in the large-scale Israeli military operation dubbed “Operation Iron Wall.”

The operation resulted in the displacement of at least 33,362 Palestinians, the killing and injury of hundreds of others, and the arrest of over 1,000, according to UN estimates. It also caused severe damage and destruction of residential buildings, infrastructure, and properties.

Read more: Israel kills a toddler in Jenin and expands “Iron Wall” operation to Tulkarm

The “Iron Wall,” which was launched in early 2025, was followed by another extensive operation at the end of the year.

Netanyahu’s government claimed that both operations aimed at eliminating Palestinian armed groups in the targeted areas. However, for many the outcome of the operations makes clear that their objectives reflect Israel’s ethnic-cleansing policy against the Indigenous Palestinian population.

Critics accuse Netanyahu of manufacturing rivals to bolster political survival

As those operations have seemingly resulted in largely restraining resistance groups across the West Bank, no valid pretext has been left for Netanyahu’s government to further escalate military operations in the occupied territory.

Therefore, Netanyahu has sought to designate a new enemy posing a potential threat to Israel’s security: the Palestinian Authority (PA), whose security apparatus represents the only remaining armed force on the ground today.

The stance and actions of the PA under President Mahmoud Abbas have been, for over two decades, marked by compliance, reconciliation, and on some occasions blatant collaboration with the Israeli authorities. 

Thus, accusing the entire political entity of orchestrating hostilities against Israel would not have sounded credible to the public. This arguably led Netanyahu and Katz to formulate the pretext for a justified potential war against Palestinians in the West Bank by alleging that personnel of the PA’s security forces, alongside members of the Fatah-affiliated Tanzim, may defect and launch “Jihadist attacks” against Israeli forces and settlers. 

It’s worth noting that the majority of the PA’s security forces are affiliated with Fatah, the ruling and largest Palestinian faction in the West Bank. Meanwhile, the Tanzim represents Fatah’s grassroots and quasi-military field activity.

“Our enemies are thinking of testing us in these days leading up to the elections,” Netanyahu noted, referring to the PA, during his tour near the apartheid wall.

“I warn them: we are prepared for any scenario, including a so-called reversal of roles. In such a case, I do not suggest our enemies test us. You will face force here that you never dreamed of,” he continued.

Netanyahu’s statements came to reaffirm a “contingency plan,” which Katz revealed last week and said Netanyahu had approved in case the imagined scenario occurs.

Analysts believe a war in the West Bank ahead of the upcoming Israeli elections is not off the table, particularly if Netanyahu and his far-right coalition feel their victory is uncertain.

Early polling ahead of the election consistently shows Netanyahu’s bloc falling short of the 61 seats required to form a majority. It is currently positioned at just 51 to 53 seats.

Even if launching the war does not succeed in delaying the upcoming elections, it apparently aims to strengthen public support for his coalition, which gains much of its backing by pushing for ethnic cleansing to fulfill the “Greater Israel” project.

Israel’s escalating violence and provocations seen as prelude to war in West Bank 

The last few weeks have made clear that Netanyahu’s government previously laid the groundwork for a desired war scenario in the West Bank.

Israeli forces escalated their raids in different parts of the West Bank, focusing on the de facto administrative capital of the PA, Ramallah, and Al-Bireh, which has simultaneously become a flashpoint for settler violence. 

The Israeli military has also launched a campaign, destroying memorials of martyrs and late prominent Palestinian leaders all over the territory.

This included the demolition of a memorial displaying photos of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and other deceased top Fatah leaders in the Al-Jalazone refugee camp north of Al-Bireh city on Wednesday, October 14 – a move that many interpreted as an attempt to provoke indignation, particularly among the movement’s grassroots.

The offensive on Al-Jalazone came one day after the Israeli military launched an expanded operation in Ramallah and Al-Bireh, shutting down Addameer and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (two civil society organizations concerned with documenting violations committed by the Israeli occupation authorities against the Palestinian people).

Journalists were obstructed from covering the raid as Israeli soldiers threatened them with rifles, and fired rubber-coated metal bullets and teargas at them.

As part of the operation, the Israeli forces also raided the courtyard of the Palestine Medical Complex (previously known as Ramallah Hospital), arrested journalist Abdul Qader Hailan, and wounded journalist Yousef Shehadeh alongside two other Palestinian citizens.

Netanyahu reportedly pressed Trump to resume aggression on Iran

While the likelihood of igniting a war in the West Bank is seen as higher and more immediate for Netanyahu and his cabinet, recent media reports indicate he has attempted to persuade US President Donald Trump to resume the aggression against Iran before the Israeli elections.

Even if Trump does not comply with Netanyahu’s demand regarding Iran, the situation in the West Bank foreshadows more tragic events for the Palestinian people and a predicament for the PA in the upcoming weeks.

The war in the Middle East is widening and people around the world are feeling the impact. Resistance forces in Yemen have delivered crippling blows to key infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, a key US ally.

Brian Becker and Layan Fuleihan discuss the roots of the war between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, how the current conflict was triggered by the unprovoked US-Israeli war against Iran, and how this conflict goes back several decades.

Three months after Saudi Arabia resumed its aggression against Yemen’s Ansar Allah-led government by attacking Sanaa International Airport in July, the conflict continues to spiral.

Saudi-backed forces claimed that they managed to cut off the main road connecting the Red Sea port city of Mokha with the Bab al-Mandeb strait on Monday, October 12, in a bid to reverse Ansar Allah’s major territorial gains along the Red Sea coast.

This came after Ansar Allah launched an intensified military operation that resulted in encircling Yemen’s southwestern city of Taiz last week. Taiz has been under the control of the Saudi-backed Yemeni government for roughly the last ten years.

As Yemen’s third-largest city, the encirclement of Taiz constitutes a critical development in the country’s armed conflict and geopolitical landscape, especially with a vital supply route linking Taiz with Aden being cut off. For over a decade, Aden has served as the temporary capital of Yemen’s Saudi-backed government.

Ansar Allah’s encirclement of Taiz sparked heavy ground clashes with the Saudi-backed forces, while Saudi warplanes intensified their strikes on the city as well as other parts of Yemen.

Ansar Allah emerges undeterred by the Saudi escalation

However, those airstrikes have not deterred the Ansar Allah-led armed forces from targeting Saudi airports and vital energy facilities with missiles, and drones. 

The Yemeni Armed Forces’ spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Sare’e confirmed on Sunday, October 11, that the attacks disrupted air traffic at King Khalid Airport in Riyadh and King Fahd Airport in Dammam. They also caused fires in Aramco’s Shuqdam gas and Tanajib oil facilities in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.

On Monday, Ansar Allah announced the targeting of King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh once again with a ballistic missile, and Khamis Mushait Air Base in southern Saudi Arabia with a drone.

As a result, Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation extended the suspension of flight operations at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh until October 17, 2026.

The Yemeni movement clarified that its latest attacks on Saudi airports, alongside other energy and military facilities, came in response to the recent Saudi strikes on civilian infrastructure across Yemen. This included an attack on a passenger bus in Taiz, reportedly killing two civilians and injuring seven others. 

Trump says US may join Saudi Arabia in striking Yemen

Commenting on the attacks on Riyadh’s main airport, US President Donald Trump told reporters he is considering joining Saudi Arabia in striking Ansar Allah in Yemen.

“We just found out about the recent attack. So, we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly,” Trump said.

Tehran suggest mediation of talks between Ansar Allah and the Saudis

For its part, the Islamic Republic of Iran called on Saudi Arabia to resolve the conflict through diplomacy rather than a military approach.

According to Saudi and Iranian media outlets, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi proposed on Sunday that Tehran mediate a dialogue between Riyadh and Ansar Allah, during a telephone call with his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan.

The Pakistan government’s decision on Monday, October 5, to deploy its armed forces to Saudi Arabia and provide other military assistance in its fight against Yemen is facing widespread criticism from the left and other progressive sections within the country.

Critics have questioned the rationale behind the decision, expressing concerns that it will further erode the credibility of Pakistan among the people in the region and unnecessarily drag it into endless wars.

According to the joint statement, the constituents decided “to move immediately to the practical implementation of the collective defense commitments” under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement and provide military force and other capabilities to Saudi Arabia to protect its security and territorial integrity.

The statement was issued after a meeting of the Strategic-Political and Defence Committee of the Mecca Alliance countries in Riyadh on Monday. 

The Mecca Alliance is a three party group (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye) created earlier this year as a regional collective security alliance. 

Though Pakistan has one of the largest armed forces in the world along with being the sole Muslim majority country with a nuclear weapon, the decision has invited strong criticism from the scholars and activists in the country.  

Critics have pointed out how its armed forces have already been engaged in numerous domestic conflicts, such as prolonged operations against the terrorist groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and other separatist forces in Balochistan 

These groups have been allegedly involved in carrying out large-scale violent attacks against civilian and military targets.

Terrorism and the failure of the country’s armed forces to curb it has emerged as one of the central issues in the ongoing long march to the capital, Islamabad, by thousands of supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and the country’s main opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).  

Pakistan, which is also facing a grave financial and economic crisis is also involved in cross border fights with the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan for months now and has an active decades-long conflict on its eastern borders with India.

Given the multifrontal engagement of the Pakistan army at the moment it would be dangerous to get involved in yet another conflict in West Asia, experts have pointed out.

Pakistan is being drawn into an endless quagmire 

Saudi Arabia has been involved in an over-a-decade-long war against Yemen since 2015. It has imposed a complete air, sea, and land blockade on the country, which has caused an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the Arab world’s poorest nation.

Though the joint statement issued after the meeting on Monday did not name Ansar Allah or Yemen explicitly, it condemned the alleged attacks on Mecca and Medina, two of the holiest places of Islam, last month.

Ansar Allah has denied Saudi Arabia’s accusations about its involvement in those attacks.  

“Pakistan is getting sucked into the Saudi-Yemen war. We can all thank Trump for igniting a new war in the Middle East. But shouldn’t we also have more sense to stay out of such a quagmire?” asked Taimur Rahman, leader of the left-wing Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), in a post on X on Tuesday.

Ammar Ali Jan, leader of another major left formation in the country, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP) claimed that the “deployment of troops in Saudi Arabia is a dangerous escalation that can push Pakistan into an endless quagmire.”

He questioned the government for moving against “the people of Yemen” who “have shown exemplary solidarity to Gaza despite suffering endless aggression and siege,” claiming “attacking them would be a political and moral catastrophe.”

The withdrawal of the remaining US troops from Iraq is a victory for the Iraqi nation and the resistance force in the region, Iran claimed on Thursday, October 1, also calling for greater cooperation between both the countries to achieve complete sovereignty for Iraq.

“The US, despite possessing vast resources and equipment, has been expelled from Iraq, and the Iraqi people are celebrating this victory,” head of Iran’s Quds’ forces Esmail Qaani said during a program held in Tehran to mark the second anniversary of the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah.

He thanked the “resistance of the Iraqi nation and the heroes of the Resistance Front” for making the end of the US occupation a reality.

The US withdrew all its remaining forces from Iraq on September 30, as per the 2024 understanding between both the countries marking the conclusion of over a decade-long military presence in the country.

The news of the withdrawal led to widespread celebrations in Baghdad and other parts of the country on Wednesday.

The US occupied Iraq during the 2003 war which lasted until 2011 when it publicly stated that it withdrew all its forces. They were then re-deployed in 2014 as part of the international coalition fighting against the Islamic State or ISIS.

Iraqi people, as well as the resistance groups in the country, have been demanding the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the country for years now. Their presence is seen as undermining the country’s sovereignty.

Due to popular resistance, most of the foreign troops left the country by 2019 after a victory was declared over ISIS. Remaining US troops were redeployed to some bases in Baghdad and Erbil.

In 2020, the Iraqi parliament adopted a resolution demanding the withdrawal of all remaining foreign troops from the country following popular protests over the US assassination of Qassem Solemani during a visit to Baghdad. Soleimani was the head of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and key military strategist.

Also an Iranian victory

Qaani claimed that the US withdrawal from Iraq is also a victory for Iran which has been in support of the call on the ground that the presence of foreign troops in the region undermines regional security and stability.

Qaani also linked the withdrawal to the setbacks the US faced in its war with Iran in the last seven months. Contrary to its expressed wish to force Iranians to surrender within days of the war launched on February 28, “they encountered a reality vastly different from their calculations,” he said.

The US had used its military presence and the bases in Iraq to launch attacks across the border in Iran in the past and also during the ongoing war. This has prompted Iranian retaliations causing destruction and death of some of its servicemen.

Iran has also accused that the US military’s presence in Iraq has been used by Israel for its clandestine operations inside the country.

Reacting to US withdrawal from Iraq, IRGC said on Thursday that it is the beginning of its withdrawal from the entire region.

Qaani expressed hope that in the aftermath of US troop withdrawal there will be increased coordination between the governments in Iraq and Iran for purging the remaining US influences on the country and creating a secure and sovereign Iraq.

Though the US has withdrawn militarily, the legacy of its occupation still remains in Iraq. It continues to control Iraq’s economy by controlling the payments to its oil exports which are routed through the American Central Bank.

Oil revenues made up 90% of the Iraqi government’s total budget and over 40% of its national GDP.

Qaani accused that banning the Iranian airlines to Iraq and other countries in the region is a distraction used by the US to undermine the significance of its military defeat.

Iraq and several other countries in the region complied with the US sanctions on Iranian airlines last month following Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s threats of secondary sanctions.

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China’s President Xi Jinping concluded his three-day state visit to the US on Friday, September 25, with hopes of enhanced cooperation and partnership between the world’s two largest economies.

Xi arrived in the US on Wednesday and received a large-scale welcome from President Donald Trump. Though this was their third in-person meeting it was Xi’s first state visit to the US in over a decade.

On Thursday, the leaders had a long in-person conversation in the White House and finished the day with a state dinner with 130 guests, including tech executives. Though the US is yet to release its version of the official proceedings, reports indicate they discussed a range of outstanding issues such as the dispute over trade and tariffs, cooperation in Artificial Intelligence, the issue of Taiwan, and the US-Israeli war on Iran. 

During the meeting with Trump, Xi called for strategic stability in the China-US relationship which will benefit both countries and the people around the world, Xinhua reported.  

“China and the US should be partners, not rivals,” Xi said. 

Xi’s statement comes at a time when the two countries are negotiating a longer trade deal after briefly facing each other in a tariff war last year. Both countries agreed to extend their temporary trade truce which halted the tariff war till January to give their negotiators more time.

The so-called Busan Trade Truce was set to expire in November this year.  

Xi hoped that “both sides would stay committed to the principles of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation and promote the sustained, stable and sound development of China-US economic and trade relations.” 

Technology and AI

Successive administrations in the US have characterized China’s advancements in technology and other economic sectors as a threat to American interests and have tried to curb them by restricting its access to technology.

In his attempt to address such apprehensions, Xi proposed that “both sides work towards a relationship featuring cooperation as the mainstay, moderate competition, manageable differences, and the promise of peace.” 

Talking about the competition in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Xi offered increased coordination and cooperation between the countries as a way of mutual benefit. 

While emphasizing that “two sides should maintain human control over AI technologies, uphold people-centered approach and the principle of using AI for good” he proposed greater exchange of information to “prevent any misuse and abuse of AI.”

Read more: The AI frontier asks to be paced: anatomy of a panic

Xi also expressed hope that Chinese companies “are treated fairly in the US” while inviting more US companies to invest in China. “Working together, we can lengthen the list of cooperation and shorten the list of issues” he underlined.

The US has sanctioned or put a large number of Chinese companies, including its AI firms on various watch lists in recent years, after accusing them of working with the Chinese armed forces or being involved in the so-called technology theft.

Notably, however, major US tech and finance executives such as Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Eric Yuan of Zoom, Kelly Ortberg of Boeing, Larry Fink of Blackrock, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla, were present at the state dinner for Xi’s visit hosted at the White House on Thursday, September 24, though no details of cooperation between US and Chinese tech firms have emerged.

Taiwan

Reiterating China’s resolve to “safeguard national reunification and territorial integrity,” Xi expressed hope that the US will “adhere to the correct position on opposing ‘Taiwan independence’ and handle the Taiwan question with caution.”

China has repeatedly accused the US of promoting the separatist cause in Taiwan, despite officially adhering to “one China policy.” The US under Trump has sold or agreed to sell billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Taiwan in complete disregard of China’s objections.

China has also accused the US and its allies in the region of promoting an arms race by deploying advanced weapon systems close to its borders.

Xi said if the US follows the correct position on Taiwan it “will enable both the countries to lay a solid foundation for their strategic cooperation and the development of their bilateral relationship.”

US-Israeli war on Iran 

China has refused to intervene or get involved in the US-Israeli war on Iran, despite Trump’s repeated calls for them to do so. China has maintained the war was unnecessary and repeatedly warned against its prolongation. It has supported the interim peace deal signed in June under international mediation.

Xi reiterated this position during his visit to the US, expressing hope that both Iran and the US would soon return to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and end the war.

Xi claimed that “China-US cooperation may not solve every problem in the world, but without it, it would be hard to solve many of the world’s problems” and proposed more dialogue and “mechanisms of crisis communication and prevention” between their armed forces.

Read more: No new talks with the US until the previous conditions are met, says Iran

Trump said his meeting with Xi on Thursday was “great” also claiming they have maintained close communication.

Trump also agreed that “continued dialogue” with China is necessary to reach agreement on significant issues.

China called the latest US threats of secondary sanctions on airline service-providing companies across the world an illegal unilateral measure without any basis in international law. The US said the sanctions would be applied if these companies do not stop providing services to Iranian airlines.

China said they “firmly oppose illicit unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law and lack UN Security Council mandate,” Guo Jiakun, official spokesperson of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said during a regular press conference on Wednesday, September 23.

China’s reaction came on the same day the latest US sanctions against Iran went into effect. 

The US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has asked companies across the world who are involved in providing services such as refuelling, ticketing, and other kinds of ground support to stop serving Iranian airlines starting at midnight on September 23. If they fail to comply they will be “locked out of the dollar system,” Bessent threatened.

The latest sanctions against its airlines is part of the recently announced US attempt to completely isolate Iran from the global economy in order to pressure its government to re-open the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz following the resumption of US airstrikes as well as Washington’s attempts to bypass Iranian control over the waterway in the Persian Gulf since July. Iran has claimed that those American moves were in violation of the peace deal signed under international mediation in June.

The adoption of new sets of sanctions is widely seen as an indication of Washington’s failure to achieve its objectives in Iran militarily, even after seven months of war, which began on February 28. 

Iran has reiterated that no amount of economic coercion will open the Strait of Hormuz. They listed the withdrawal of the US naval blockade, the unfreezing of its international assets, and an end of the war on all fronts in the region as preconditions for opening the Strait. 

Air blockade

While some of the countries in the region cancelled Iranian flights to their airports in fear of US sanctions, Iran claimed most of its international flights remained scheduled and operational. Some countries also decided to close their airspace for Iranian airlines.

Iraq has diverted most of the Iranian flights from its Baghdad airport to Najaf.

If the flights remain suspended for a significant number of countries for a longer duration it would amount to an air blockade on Iran. This will have an effect on thousands of people employed in the aviation sector in the country which is already heavily facing tremendous economic troubles due to existing sanctions 

A prolonged suspension of flights could also impact hundreds of thousands of Iranians who have to travel out of the country for medical or other reasons.

Iran has maintained that unilateral US sanctions are illegal and an “act of terrorism” against Iranian people. It has urged the nations across the world to not succumb to the unilateral actions of the US. 

Chief of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaei, in an interview on Wednesday, warned neighboring countries against submitting to US pressure to shut down Iranian flights, claiming such acts will force Iran to retaliate.

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Latin America and the Caribbean countries are being re-colonized. This time it is not by Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Portugal, but by the United States.

At a period of time the United States had an anti-colonial position and had advocated for the ending of colonialism. That was one of the features of the Monroe Doctrine that has become somewhat obscured since the US became so bellicose.

Today, in a de facto way it has become a super colonial power. It is imposing its will on regions and countries. Those that stand up for their rights are sanctioned, destabilized and sometimes physically removed.

The fact that it used its military might to kidnap a sitting president, President Maduro of Venezuela, is a clear indication that the United States has decided to ignore international law and to get its own way.

Strikingly, only the President of Brazil protested vigorously. Our Caribbean leaders have generally been tight lipped.

The United States has gone even further. They have, using the guise of fighting drugs, established a strong military presence in the region. They have been murdering hundreds of persons traveling in small boats in the Caribbean. Without producing a scintilla of evidence, without attempting to board the boats and get evidence, the US just killed the occupants. We may never know if any were really involved in drug trafficking.

There has been a deafening silence from Latin America and the Caribbean leaders to those atrocities. As if these events were not enough, many of the governments in the region are, on the request/orders from the United States, acting against their countries’ best interests. The ending of the cooperation in health with Cuba which was in place for more than fifty years and which benefited millions of the region’s citizens, is a case in point.

That has left a massive gap in the health sector of the region. The US has not provided any assistance to help with the dislocation and shortage of technical personnel created by their insistence to remove Cubans.

The US is now also pressing regional governments to stop doing business with China. Many governments are beginning to comply with those orders as we see more big contracts going to US companies, despite some of those companies having poor performance records.

If some newspaper stories are to be believed, (and they have not been countered) in some cases Chinese contractors won bids for certain projects, but they were not given the jobs, they went to US firms instead.

The US and other Western countries have ignored us and kept us in a state of underdevelopment since independence. Now that we are getting assistance from China to build important and much needed infrastructure to facilitate socio-economic progress we are getting push back from the US.

It appears that they want to keep us in a state of perpetual underdevelopment and in poverty.

We see the open intention to super exploit our natural resources and labor for the benefit of big business in the US. They are mainly interested in our natural resources. They do not add value in the region nor establish any type of manufacturing. Those are reserved for the rich, developed countries.

The recent “deal” with Venezuela is worse than highway robbery. Venezuela has to provide oil and gas to US companies at cost for one hundred years. This is barefaced robbery and has demonstrated that Venezuela is now a de facto colony of the US. This will not benefit the poor in the US. It is designed to enrich the huge corporations.

Venezuela was forced to abandon its long and well-known principle of standing in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine. It is now forced to recognise the Fascist, Apartheid Israeli regime that continues to bomb defenseless civilians in makeshift camps in Gaza, the West Bank (where ethnic cleansing is taking place) and in East Jerusalem.

Today the sovereignty of our countries is already severely compromised. If we don’t stand up now it would be completely lost.

Donald Ramotar is a former President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana (2011-2015).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Lee en español aquí

The 18th BRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on September 12–13, occurred amid an exceptional intensification of international contradictions. Wars in West Asia, unilateral sanctions, tariff barriers, and the weaponization of finance and technology have exposed the fundamentally unequal character of the imperialist-dominated international order. Against this background, the continued expansion of BRICS reflects the desire of developing countries for greater strategic autonomy and a more democratic system of global governance. At the same time, the summit demonstrated that BRICS+ remains a heterogeneous grouping whose members differ substantially in their political alignments and economic interests.

The New Delhi Declaration, the outcome of the summit, reiterated the demand for reform of the United Nations, international financial institutions, and the multilateral trading system. It opposed unilateral sanctions not authorized by the United Nations Security Council and advocated greater trade in national currencies. The declaration also supported increased representation for developing countries in institutions whose rules continue to be determined primarily by the United States and its allies. These positions have objective significance at a time when Washington increasingly employs sanctions, tariffs, export controls, and control over payment systems to discipline countries unwilling to accept its dictates.

Read more: BRICS nations call for end of US blockade on Cuba, condemn Israeli and US violations in Iran

Ambiguity

Yet the declaration’s carefully-negotiated language also revealed the limitations of the expanded formation. BRICS+ now includes countries subjected to sustained Western pressure, such as Russia and Iran, as well as the United Arab Emirates and other states retaining extensive economic and security ties with the West. Consensus can consequently be maintained only through formulations that acknowledge conflicts without always identifying their political causes. 

This ambiguity was especially apparent in the summit’s treatment of the widening war in West Asia and the position adopted by Iran.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used the summit to denounce unilateral sanctions and the war of aggression against Iran carried out by the United States and Israel. He correctly stressed that economic resilience cannot be separated from peace, sovereignty, and security. 

Iran also advocated trade in national currencies, greater use of the New Development Bank, and the construction of independent transport and energy corridors (as it has already created through Pakistan, which has provided six roadways for Chinese and Russian goods to enter Iran). For a country subjected to decades of sanctions, exclusion from Western financial networks, and repeated threats of regime change, membership of BRICS+ provides an important diplomatic and economic opening.

Iran’s position, however, contains a marked ambiguity. Tehran presents BRICS+ as an instrument for resisting unilateralism and defending sovereignty. Simultaneously, it must seek accommodation with neighboring Gulf states, several of which are deeply integrated with Western capital and security arrangements. Iran signed a declaration calling for restraint and de-escalation even while accusing the United States and Israel of aggression and defending its own retaliatory actions. Its militancy against hyper-imperialist pressure is therefore combined with a pragmatic effort to avoid regional isolation, secure sanctions relief, and preserve channels of negotiation.

Read more: No new talks with the US until the previous conditions are met, says Iran

This should not be understood simply as inconsistency. Iran confronts a vastly superior military and financial coalition and must maneuver within severe constraints. But it also illustrates the broader problem facing BRICS+. Opposition to Western domination does not automatically produce a coherent anti-imperialist program. The participating states are capitalist states pursuing their respective national interests. Their ruling classes may resist particular aspects of US hegemony while remaining prepared to reach accommodations with global finance or with regional reactionary powers. BRICS+ is consequently an arena of struggle within the changing world order, not an already constituted alternative to hyper-imperialism.

Partners

The summit’s most consequential political development for Asia was the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi’s first visit to India in seven years confirmed the gradual improvement in relations since the military disengagement arrangements initiated in 2024. The two leaders agreed that India and China should regard each other as partners rather than rivals and approach bilateral relations from a long-term strategic perspective. They also discussed the boundary question, trade, market access and supply-chain problems.

Any durable improvement in India–China relations must be welcomed. The prolonged confrontation following the Galwan Valley clash of 2020 damaged both countries, increased military expenditure and strengthened the efforts of the United States to incorporate India into its Indo-Pacific strategy. Washington has consistently sought to turn India into a strategic counterweight to China through the Quad and expanding military and technological cooperation. A continuing India–China confrontation therefore serves US strategy far more than it serves the interests of the Indian or Chinese peoples.

Peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control remain indispensable. Agreements on disengagement must be followed by sustained diplomatic and military-level engagement, clarification of disputed areas and strict observance of existing arrangements. Neither nationalist rhetoric nor competitive infrastructure construction should be allowed to trigger another confrontation. Differences over the boundary cannot be wished away, but they can and must be managed without subordinating the entire relationship to militarised rivalry.

Economic relations present an equally difficult contradiction. China is one of India’s largest trading partners and an important source of machinery, electronic components, chemicals, renewable-energy equipment and other industrial inputs. India’s enormous trade deficit with China, however, reflects both the weakness of Indian manufacturing and the obstacles faced by Indian exports in the Chinese market. Addressing this imbalance requires improved market access, Chinese investment under transparent conditions and, above all, an Indian industrial policy capable of developing domestic productive capacity. Over the past six months, two-way bilateral trade has soared.

The Modi government’s approach has alternated between dependence on Chinese imports and politically motivated restrictions on Chinese investment and technology. Its “China-plus-one” rhetoric cannot conceal the failure of its own policies to generate broad-based industrialisation. Nor can closer strategic alignment with the United States supply India with an independent manufacturing base. The US seeks privileged access to the Indian market while using tariffs, technology restrictions and political pressure whenever Indian policies diverge from its interests. The incoherence of the Modi government is best demonstrated in its inability to actually produce a national development agenda that takes advantage of the buoyancy of the Chinese economy and disengages from a United State more geared towards economic nationalism.

China, for its part, must recognize that stable relations require sensitivity to India’s legitimate concerns. These include the unresolved boundary, unequal market access and the trade imbalance. The considerable asymmetry between the two economies makes reciprocity particularly important. Beijing’s call for partnership will acquire substance only when accompanied by practical measures enabling Indian goods and services to enter the Chinese market and preventing border tensions from repeatedly overwhelming political dialogue.

Cooperation between India and China would give BRICS+ far greater weight in the struggle for democratization of the international order. Together, the two countries represent more than a third of humanity. Their cooperation could advance reform of international institutions, climate finance, technology sharing, public-health initiatives, and a fairer trading system. Conversely, renewed confrontation would paralyse BRICS+ and permit outside powers to exploit divisions throughout Asia. India must therefore pursue an independent foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence, not participate in a US project to contain China.

The New Delhi summit produced proposals for institutional continuity, stronger financial cooperation, and greater resilience among developing economies. But declarations will have limited value unless translated into material arrangements. The New Development Bank must expand lending in national currencies and prioritize socially necessary infrastructure rather than reproduce the conditionalities and corporate orientation of the World Bank. Cross-border payment mechanisms must be developed transparently, without creating new forms of domination by the strongest BRICS economies. The strong statements on behalf of the Cuban Revolution and the Palestinian people’s aspirations for self-determination will need practical application. 

Will the BRICS+ find a way to break the cruel and illegal US embargo on Cuba, and will the BRICS+ provide support for the revival of Palestinian political life?

BRICS+ embodies both the movement towards a new world equilibrium and all the contradictions of that movement. The cautious India–China rapprochement is one example of the contradiction, combining recognition of mutual dependence with unresolved strategic distrust. The future of BRICS+ will depend upon whether such contradictions are peacefully managed and whether cooperation delivers tangible gains to working people rather than merely expanding the room for maneuver of national ruling classes.

For India, the necessary course is clear: restore normal and peaceful relations with China, resist incorporation into the United States’ military strategy, oppose aggression and unilateral sanctions against Iran, and work for a genuinely democratic multilateral order. A new world equilibrium will only be when it restricts hyper-imperialist domination and enlarges the sovereignty and developmental possibilities of peoples. The New Delhi summit marked another step in that contested transition, but the direction and social content of the emerging order remain matters of political struggle.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa. He is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

In July, Saudi Arabia joined the US-Israeli war on the West Asia region with strikes on Yemen. The Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces retaliated by launching a maritime blockade alongside attacks targeting vital Saudi interests.

The renewed fighting between the two West Asian nations resulted in Ansar Allah’s takeover of the strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha last week and the liberation of all the group’s prisoners held by Saudi-backed forces on Yemen’s western coast.

Ansar Allah’s seizure of Mokha seaport is reshaping regional and global geopolitics, particularly because it serves as a primary gateway to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and coincides with developments in the Strait of Hormuz.

As these major shifts underscore, Yemen holds immense strategic geopolitical significance.

Situated on the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula and overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait, Yemen represents a vital chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean

Consequently, internal political developments in Yemen can have global political and economic repercussions.

This fact, in turn, has put Yemen in the crosshairs of the US-led Western imperialist bloc and their allies in West Asia, which have endeavored to subjugate the country through a devastating decade-long war and blockade. 

The origin of this war coincides with the emergence of Ansar Allah, beginning when the group managed to take control of large swathes of the country, including the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

The rise of Ansar Allah

Ansar Allah was first established in the early 1990s in the northern Yemeni governorate of Saada as a cultural and educational organization called Al-Shabab al-Mumin (the Believing Youth).

Initially, the organization introduced itself as an unarmed theological movement aimed at reviving and preserving Zaydi Shia Islam and countering the threat of state-backed Sunni Salafism, which sought to uproot the Zaydi religious identity in its homeland of Saada.

From its inception, the movement opposed the government, led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, accusing it of corruption and criticizing its ties to the United States and its ally Saudi Arabia.

Tensions between the group and the government drastically escalated following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was at that time that the group adopted the slogan (Death to America, Death to Israel), during mass protests opposing the war on Iraq.

These slogans posed a political threat to Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was attempting to position his government as a key ally in the “US War on Terror” in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. As a result his government led a brutal crackdown on protesters.

Security forces and riot police suppressed protests using live ammunition, tear gas, and batons, and arbitrarily detained hundreds of political activists, students, and opposition organizers without trial.

In 2004, tension between the Al-Shabab al-Mumin and the Yemeni government boiled over, sparking a series of six internal conflicts known as the Saada Wars. 

These clashes began with the government’s assassination of Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the group’s founder, and triggered five subsequent rounds of fighting that lasted until 2010. The followers of the group became widely known as the Houthis ever since. 

Saudi Arabia reportedly engaged in the Saada wars by providing immense financial, political, and material support to the Yemeni government. Saudi intervention in Yemen escalated in 2009 with a direct military incursion and unilateral airstrikes against positions held by the Houthi movement.

In 2011, the group joined nationwide demonstrations, calling for the overthrow of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. It was then that the Houthi movement formally adopted the name Ansar Allah (Supporters of God). 

The ousting of Saleh weakened the central government and triggered a sweeping power vacuum, which allowed Ansar Allah to rapidly expand its territorial dominance. By 2012, the Yemeni movement consolidated firm control across the Saada governorate and large swathes of northern Yemen.

In early 2012, vice president to Saleh, Abed Rabbu Mansour, Hadi became the President of Yemen via a transition framework brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), as he was  considered as a quiet consensus figure. Hadi was also strongly backed by the Obama administration. 

In late 2014, Ansar Allah allied with forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh against the transitional government headed by Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The fighting that followed led to Ansar Allah’s seizure of the capital Sanaa, forcing Hadi to flee the country.

2015-2022: The Saudi-led coalition’s protracted war against Yemen

From exile in 2015, Hadi requested the Saudi-led coalition to intervene in the conflict, opening the door to one of the bloodiest prolonged wars in West Asia. A conflict that, according to UN estimates, resulted in 377,000 deaths by 2022. 

Saudi Arabia was the main pillar of the coalition, leading the military campaign dubbed “Operation Decisive Storm” with a massive force, including extensive warplanes and ground troops.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also played a key role by commanding ground and air operations particularly in southern Yemen and along the critical coastal strip.

Bahrain took part in the operation with 12 fighter jets (some sources say 15), and deployed ground troops in the southern Saudi borders to protect Saudi Arabia from Ansar Allah’s attacks. Meanwhile, Kuwait contributed with 15 warplanes.

At the beginning of the campaign, Qatar participated with roughly 1,000 ground troops, armored vehicles, a dozen fighter jets, and transport helicopters until it was expelled from the coalition in June 2017 over a diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt.

Jordan and Morocco contributed six fighter jets each, while Sudan under deposed president Omar Al-Bashir sent three aircrafts and thousands of ground troops. Furthermore, Senegal committed 2,100 troops.

Western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France provided logistic and intelligence support, such as aerial refueling for coalition jets, technical assistance, military equipment, coordination support, and maritime surveillance.

The 2022 UN-brokered truce de-escalated the war rather than ending it

In April 2022, the United Nations announced an official two-month nationwide truce agreement, which temporarily halted cross-border attacks, ground and air operations, and allowed fuel imports into ports held by Ansar Allah. It also reopened commercial flights from Sanaa International Airport after years of sea, land, and air blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia. 

Rather than completely removing the blockade, the agreement only resulted in the partial easing of restrictions, while regions under the control of Ansar Allah have continued to face a near-total blockade.

Read more: Yemen demands Saudi-led blockade on the country be lifted immediately

The agreement was renewed in June and extended a second time in August 2022 for an additional two months before it lapsed in October. 

Regional developments reignited the conflict (2023-2026)

In November 2023, Ansar Allah launched a ban on all Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in retaliation for Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza.

About one month later, the group significantly expanded the ban to include all ships heading to Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality or flag.

The ban continued until October 2025, despite waves of deadly airstrikes launched by the US, UK, and Israel on Yemen.

An Omani-mediated ceasefire deal between the US and Ansar Allah was reached in May 2025. The deal stipulated halting Ansar Allah’s attacks on US ships in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, and ending US aggression on Yemen, without preventing the Yemeni resistance movement from launching attacks or naval operations against Israel. 

This same period saw a shift in the conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and Ansar Allah from active military engagement toward a tense, fragile diplomacy.

In early 2026, friction between the two major pillars in the anti-Ansar Allah coalition – namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE – surfaced as different Yemeni groups backed by the two countries clashed, apparently over territorial control in Yemen.

Read more: Tensions in Yemen: Are Saudi Arabia and the UAE becoming frenemies?

The US-Israeli war on Iran has drawn Yemen back into the regional conflict

Although Ansar Allah was established as an independent Yemeni movement, it evolved into a key component of the Axis of Resistance over time. This alignment was driven by mutual ideological foundations, shared anti-imperialist ideology, and deep strategic and military cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah.

Despite its affiliation with the resistance alliance, Ansar Allah chose not to get involved in the recent regional war waged by the US and Israel against Iran, for ostensibly strategic considerations and military coordination tactics with its allies.

Read more: Reflections on the US-Israeli multi-front war in West Asia: How the Axis of Resistance remains resilient

However, because the United States and its allies in the region seemingly view the current war as an ideal opportunity to dismantle the Axis of Resistance, Saudi Arabia decided to resume its aggression against Yemen by attacking Sanaa International Airport in July. The attack aimed to prevent an Iranian plane from landing.

Consequently, Ansar Allah launched retaliatory attacks on Saudi interests inside Saudi Arabia and on Yemeni soil. It further declared a maritime blockade against Saudi-linked commercial vessels passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, demanding Riyadh end its decade-long blockade on Yemen.  

Concurrently, ground clashes over territorial dominance between Ansar Allah and Saudi-backed forces intensified, leading to key victories for the Yemeni group. Escalations have persisted up to the time of publication.

On Wednesday, September 16, Saudi Arabia accused Ansar Allah of attempting a drone attack against the city of Mecca, the holiest city for Muslims, located in western Saudi Arabia.

Ansar Allah dismissed Saudi accusations as false, saying that they reflect a “desperate attempt to mobilize public opinion.”

As the US-Israeli war on West Asia continues to reshape geopolitics, Ansar Allah’s emergence as a regional force has placed Yemen at the center of a struggle that may define the future of West Asia.

The Lee Administration leaked the possibility of deploying Korean forces to the Strait of Hormuz on September 3. The backlash was immediate from Korean civil society that opposes any type of support for Trump’s war of aggression. Furthermore, recent polls reveal that even 55% of Lee’s supporters oppose the dispatching of forces. And while the Lee administration has publicly backtracked, stating that nothing has been decided, it is, nonetheless, quietly undergoing the process of deployment: more than simply an assessment of the security conditions on the Strait of Hormuz, the Lee administration sent a team to check key military bases and ports that could be used at the United Arab Emirates.

Despite growing public opposition, the Lee administration is expected to introduce at the end of September a motion into the National Assembly, where it is likely to pass given his party’s considerable majority. Unlike his predecessor, the impeached Yoon Suk-yeol, President Lee is not a pro-US ideologue; he is a pragmatist. Why then is Lee going out on a limb with this deployment when the rest of the world is staying out of it?

Well, South Korea’s history has always been entangled and shaped by US foreign policy. The darker side to South Korea’s pop-culture is a country dominated and shaped through US policy and interventions. Today, it hosts the largest overseas US military base and controls the Korean military (through wartime operational control). In effect, it’s never been a sovereign state. Its economic, political, and military interests have always been beholden to the United States. 

Today, Lee is horsetrading with Trump: military support in exchange for more favorable terms in the US’s AI global supply chain of semiconductors and data centers along with a return of wartime operational control. While Lee’s pragmatism is navigating the real structural constraints on South Korea, it is ultimately short-sighted and harmful to Koreans and the world.

The war in Iran is inflicting considerable pain to the world’s economies, including South Korea that imports 61% of its crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Yet, even from a completely pragmatic perspective, sending Korean forces to the Hormuz does nothing to resolve this problem. In fact, getting entangled with US aggression against Iran would strain the 64-year diplomatic relations with Iran while putting a target on South Korean assets in the region. Furthermore, if the world’s greatest naval and air power cannot secure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, how could South Korea’s contribution make a difference? In fact, the deployment of Korean troops prolongs this war of aggression by giving Trump cover and leverage to demand that other countries, such as Japan, also deploy forces.

This isn’t the first time that South Korea would deploy forces due to US requests. In 2004, after pressure from the George W. Bush Administration, the Roh Moo-hyun administration deployed non-combat support troops to Iraq. In response, a militant Islamic group kidnapped a Korean translator and, when the Roh administration refused to cancel further and withdraw current deployment, beheaded the translator.

Most importantly, this war of aggression is not only illegal under international standards, but deployment also violates article five of the Korean constitution that mandates the government to “maintain international peace” and “renounce all aggressive war.” Thus, whether intervening in the frontlines, or in the rear, whether combatant or non-combatant, any deployment would be complicit in Trump’s war of aggression.

Ultimately, as Hamid Shahrabi, an Iranian activist and co-founder of the Global Resistance for Peace & Justice states, securing free passage through the Strait of Hormuz can be achieved but not through military pressure and destruction but by adhering to the “Islamabad MOU, which outlined measures to ensure free passage through the Strait.”

Being dominated by the US brings out the pragmatic among South Koreans. Yet, the world demands that we fight and that we hold the line against Trump. Deploying forces will prolong Trump’s illegal war of aggression. Fortunately, if Koreans can be pragmatic, they can also be fierce fighters against US imperialism when provoked. Instead of fanning the flames of war, we should fight to extinguish Trump’s forever wars.

Dae-Han Song is a part of the International Strategy Centerand the No Cold War collective and is an associate at the Korea Policy Institute.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

At the BRICS Business Forum in Bharat Mandapam on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin read out the numbers. The eleven members of this grouping now produce more than 40% of the world’s output. The G7 produces 29. Over the last five years, BRICS countries generated more than half of all global growth. The G7 managed 18%. Narendra Modi, speaking at the same event, added that the bloc is home to half of humanity and a quarter of world trade.

This is not rhetoric. The center of gravity of the world economy has moved, and India is in the chair while it happens.

Now recall something else that took place in that same hall. On May 24 of this year, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down in Bharat Mandapam for an interview with India Today. Asked about Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, he called it “illegal, unlawful, reckless, dangerous, and unacceptable.” Then he said something more revealing. “I think the whole world needs to say that, and most of the countries in the world are saying that. India is saying that.“

A US official, sitting in Delhi, announced India’s foreign policy position on its behalf. Nobody in the room corrected him. In the same interview Rubio said the trade agreement was “weeks, not months” away. Four months later, it is still unsigned.

India and the construction of the Global South

In March 1947, months before independence, Delhi hosted the Asian Relations Conference. At the Bandung Conference in 1955, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was among the chief architects of an idea that seemed audacious then and remains unfinished now: that newly free countries did not have to rent themselves to Washington or Moscow to be taken seriously. The Bandung spirit produced the Non-Aligned Movement, then the Group of 77 in 1964, and then the demand through the 1970s for a New International Economic Order, which was simply a demand that the IMF and the World Bank stop working only for the countries that funded them. India made those arguments first and made them at a time when the material conditions were not as conducive as we see today.

What India has done inside BRICS follows directly from that. At the Delhi summit of 2012, under Manmohan Singh, the group took up the idea of a development bank and asked its finance ministers to study it. That became the New Development Bank, with an Indian, K.V. Kamath, as its first head. The same summit set up the $100 billion Contingent Reserve Arrangement. At Goa in 2016 both were made operational, and India put forward the idea of a BRICS credit rating agency, aimed squarely at the three Western firms whose verdicts decide what every poor country pays to borrow. In 2021 India proposed the BRICS platform for digital public goods. Across four chairships and two very different governments, India’s contribution has been consistent: turning complaints about an unfair world into institutions that can actually be used.

Now look at how Washington talks about the country.

In July 2025, announcing his first tariffs, US President Donald Trump called India and Russia “dead economies” and said they could “take their dead economies down together, for all I care.” He has called India the “tariff king” and its trade rules “obnoxious.” After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, Trump called the relationship “a totally one-sided disaster.” In April this year he shared, without comment, a post describing India as “some other hellhole on the planet.” Our foreign ministry replied that this was “uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste.” When Rubio was asked in Delhi about the racist abuse Indians face in America, he said that “every country in the world has stupid people.”

No country of India’s size is spoken to this way. The damage is not to anyone’s feelings. It is what other governments now expect of us.

Standing is not a sentiment. It is a prediction that other capitals make about how you will behave when you are pushed. For seventy years, the prediction about India was that it would not be told what its position was.

Five things India should do this week

Start with Iran, because the silence there has cost us the most.

Standing with Tehran has nothing to do with liking its government. A member state of the United Nations was illegally bombed by Israel and the United States of America, and its leadership killed. If the largest grouping of developing countries cannot say so plainly, then sovereignty becomes a privilege granted at Washington’s pleasure, and every country sitting in Bharat Mandapam holds it on loan. Bandung was convened to reject exactly this, and India wrote the rejection.

Our own losses are not abstract. The frigate Dena was sunk on March 4 with 87 men aboard, days after exercising with the Indian Navy at Visakhapatnam. Admiral Arun Prakash, a former navy chief, called it “a perverse act” by a country “supposed to be friends and partners.” More than 11 Indian sailors have been killed since. The Hormuz carries most of our cooking gas, and its closure puts queues outside Indian kitchens. The Iranian port city and free-trade zone Chabahar, representing a decade of Indian money and our only road to Central Asia that avoids Pakistan, was abandoned when an American waiver was allowed to lapse in April. We have been here before. In Trump’s first term, India resisted American sanctions on Iran and then gave in completely, ending every barrel of Iranian oil and damaging a relationship built over centuries.

So why does the Indian state keep walking towards Washington after every humiliation? Not out of confusion. The corporate class that matters politically in this country raises money in New York, lists there, sells services there and answers to regulators there. For them, alignment is good business. For the sorghum farmer in Rajasthan, whose tariff protection was traded away in February, it is ruined. Over 45% of Indians still depend on farming.

The chairship is the one thing Washington cannot take from India this week. Five demands would make the Delhi Declaration an important step towards global south solidarity and action.

One. Name it. The declaration must say what was done to Iran and to the Strait of Hormuz and must reject unilateral secondary sanctions as a category. Washington has increased sanctions on its targets by 933% in recent decades. A bloc that cannot describe the main act of force in its own year has told everyone what its words are worth.

Two. Put Global South debt at the center. Some 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt interest than on health or education. In 2023 the poorer nations paid $25 billion more to foreign creditors than they received. India should make debt relief the bloc’s headline demand and push the New Development Bank to lend without IMF-style conditions attached.

Three. Open the door wider. BRICS should stop behaving like a club of the eleven. Expand New Development Bank membership to developing countries outside the grouping, give partner states a real say rather than a seat at the back, and have India publicly champion Africa’s place in the bloc’s decision-making.

Four. Build food security together. Set up the grain exchange, and behind it a shared reserve that member and partner countries can draw on. India, of all countries, knows what it means to depend on someone else’s harvest. We must remember the history when India went to Washington for wheat in the 1960s and spent thirty years making sure we would never do it again.

Five. Make reform a demand of the bloc, not a bid for ourselves. India has spent two decades asking for a permanent Security Council seat. It should spend this week asking for Africa’s, and for an end to the 85% voting rule that gives the United States a permanent veto at the IMF. Ask for everyone, and the asking carries weight. Ask only for yourself, and it looks like what it is.

In 1947 India convened the Asia Relations Conference in Delhi with no power and enormous standing. In 2026 it has real power and is spending the time standing down. A new Bandung will not be built by a country that waits to be told what it thinks.

Atul Chandra is the Asia Co-Coordinators of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaei refuted United States President Donald Trump’s latest claims about his country seeking fresh talks. He reiterated that there will be no new talks with the US until it implements the conditions already agreed upon.

“Dont get distracted by the US president’s mix signals-from ‘no negotiations’ to ‘we are ready to talk.’ The stakes around oil and the straits have changed. Damage control won’t stop what’s coming,” Rezaei said in a post on X on Tuesday, September 15.

Rezaei was responding to Trump’s latest claims made on his social media post about Iran seeking a deal “quickly and badly.” Trump called Iran a “failing nation” and said he will decide “whether or not the US will choose to engage.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, during his visit to the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi earlier this week, also said there is no need for fresh talks with the US until the conditions in the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed between the two countries in June, are implemented.

Iran and Oman are seeking regional consensus

On Monday, Iran claimed it had finalized an agreement with Oman regarding the management of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and said it’s details would be announced soon. 

“The understanding between Iran and Oman, as two littoral states, has been finalized. In consultation with Oman, we will decide on the next step, including how to announce or register the understanding,” official spokesperson of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Esmail Baghaei said in a press conference on Monday, September 14.

He also claimed that a scheduled discussion over the issue with the Persian Gulf countries on Monday was canceled at the last minute after Saudi Arabia’s intervention. He called the Saudi move “ill-advised” and a lost opportunity.

It is speculated that the Saudi intervention is linked to recent attacks carried out by Yemen’s Ansar Allah forces inside its territories, hitting a crucial oil pipeline and King Khalid Air Base, along with other infrastructure.

Ansar Allah claimed its attacks inside Saudi Arabia were in retaliation to hundreds of Saudi airstrikes and over a decade-long blockade of the country.

Read more: Over 300 killed in Yemen in clashes between Ansar Allah and Saudi-backed forces

Ansar Allah has also announced it will target Saudi ships carrying crude through the Bab-al Mandeb in the Red Sea.

In the past, Saudi Arabia had accused Iran of supporting Ansar Allah militarily. Iran has denied such claims, calling Ansar Allah an ally with its own independent agenda. 

Earlier, both Iran and Oman had claimed that the regional meeting on Monday was not postponed for a later date, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi saying the delay was in the “interest of consensus.”

The talks for an agreement over the joint management of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with Oman began in June, after Iran proposed it.

On August 25, Iran and Oman announced an initial agreement on the establishment of a temporary joint maritime corridor and a joint-mine clearance project.

The agreement, once finalized, is expected to “restore safe navigation” through the Strait while preserving the sovereignty and sovereign rights of coastal states, Press TV reported.

Strait of Hormuz is closed

On the evening of September 14, a super tanker hit a mine after trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz through what Iran calls the “illegal route” near Omani waters, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement.

Later it was reported that several of the crew members of the said ship were missing.

The IRGC reiterated its warnings to all the ships in the Persian Gulf to refrain from using the US-backed Omani route, repeating the claims about the Strait of Hormuz being shut and under its full control.

The IRGC has repeatedly questioned US President Donald Trump’s claims of the restoration of free navigation through the Strait, calling them lies. 

The Strait, through which nearly 20% of the global energy trade flowed before the US-Israeli war on Iran began in February has seen a massive fall in traffic, causing disruptions in energy supplies after the Iranians restricted traffic in retaliation.

Oil prices have crossed USD 100 per barrel several times since then. They again crossed the mark earlier this week due to the renewed escalation and fear of a blockade of oil trade through the Bab-al-Mandeb, after Ansar Allah’s warnings of targeting Saudi ships.

Nearly 12% of global trade in energy happens through the Bab-al-Mandeb. 

On Monday, Iran reiterated that the US is solely responsible for the global impacts caused by the blockade of oil trade in the region.

The US war and naval blockade against Iran are the direct reasons for the closure of the Strait, Ali Bahreini, Iran’s permanent representative at Geneva, said during a UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting asking the international community to acknowledge the fact that such unilateral actions are harmful for the global economy.

Iran assured that it will lift the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz the moment the US announces the end of its war and lifts the naval blockade and economic sanctions on Iran.

The 18th BRICS summit concluded in New Delhi on Sunday, September 13, with the unanimous adoption of the New Delhi declaration condemning wars in West Asia and reiterating calls for a more democratic and multilateral world order. 

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the formation of the grouping with the core objective of democratizing global governance and promoting multilateralism and cooperation among the countries of the Global South.

This years’ summit was held around the theme of “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.”

The summit, hosted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was also attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto among others.

Several heads of international organizations, including the secretary general of the UN, Antonio Guterres also attended the summit.

In the context of ongoing US attempts to outright control the region in complete disregard to the independence of the countries and the international law, the BRICS joint declaration underlined that “the character of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, built on mutual respect, peaceful settlement of disputes, and non-intervention” must be respected.

It particularly expressed “deep concern on the situation relating to Cuba due to the tightening of unilateral [US] blockade measures against the country, their adverse effects on the Cuban economy, energy supplies and the worrying humanitarian impact on the Cuban people,” and demanded the immediate end of all such political and economic measures in accordance with UN General Assembly resolutions.

The 11 members of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Iran, Indonesia, China, Ethiopia, Egypt, UAE, and South Africa with Saudi Arabia yet to formally join) represent over 30% of the global economy and nearly half of the world’s total population. 

Israel and US must respect international law  

Though the joint declaration did not explicitly name the US and mentioned Israel once, it expressed great concern over the wars in Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon, demanding the aggressors respect international law and resolve all standing conflicts through the multilateral forums and diplomacy.

It also expressed serious concerns over “deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities under full safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)” in Iran, calling them a violation of international law. 

The joint US-Israeli aggression, both in June 2025 and since February this year, targeted several civilian infrastructure, assassinated political figures and bombed civilian nuclear facilities in Iran in complete violations of existing laws and norms endangering massive human destruction.

The joint declaration also underlined the need to ensure the smooth flow of “global trade, supply chain and energy” in accordance with international law.

Both Iran and the UAE, which hosts US bases used for attacks on Iran, are full members of BRICS. The UAE has condemned the Iranian retaliation to US bases in the country and recently announced the suspension of all trade and economic relations with Iran. 

The Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheikh Khalid Bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, representing his country at the summit in New Delhi, had a brief conversation with Pezeshkian on the sidelines.

Read more: Iran reverses the asymmetry

The BRICS nations also criticized the continued violations of the ceasefire in Gaza, declared in October last year, by the Israeli forces. It demanded a halt of the plan for “forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza” and asked Israel to fully respect the human rights of Palestinians. 

It reiterated its support for a two-state solution within the 1967 borders and full membership for the Palestinian state in the UN.

BRICS nations also condemned the continued violations of the ceasefire and sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon by Israel, demanding the withdrawal of all its forces from occupied Lebanese territories.

Against unilateralism and attempts to undermine multilateral institutions

BRICS nations reiterated their joint commitment to “reforming and improving global governance” including the UN and global financial and trade institutions by promoting a more just and equitable, representative and accountable international and “multilateral system in the spirit of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits.”

BRICS also condemned the attempts to “unilaterally undermine the work of global multilateral institutions and impair the implementation of their respective mandates” in a likely indication to the recent US attacks on the UN and International Criminal Court (ICC). 

In the context of US attempts to “economically isolate” Iran and threats of secondary sanctions on countries who do not comply with its measures, its sanctions on Cuba and various other countries, the BRICS joint declaration condemned the repeated invocations of all forms of “unilateral coercive measures,” calling them contradictory to international law.

Such measures “have far reaching negative implications for human rights, including the rights to development, health and food security” with disproportionate effects on poor and vulnerable sections of the society, the declaration noted. 

Several leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, called for greater unity and cooperation among the BRICS members and the countries of the Global South to pave the way for the democratization of the international order and greater mutual economic development. 

Xi called the Global South the key driver of world multipolarity, asking them to jointly defend the rule of law in international politics.

The BRICS joint declaration also called for a greater collective push for the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and named the global eradication of poverty as one of its central objectives.