Saudi-Israeli-U.S. war on Yemen heats up, U.N. cutting Gaza food

• The UN’s World Food Program says it will cut monthly food assistance to 500,000 people in Gaza due to funding shortages.

• The IRGC Spokesman stated on Twitter that 'Seven Strategic Undersea Cables' located beneath the Strait of Hormuz will be destroyed during the next war. “All Internet and financial traffic in the region passes through these cables”.

• Ahmed Eldin: I worked at Al Jazeera on and off for a long time. I’ve sat in its newsrooms, logged onto its networks, and flew to Doha for the Al Jazeera Forum and dozens of other work events. I learned that Israeli spyware had been sitting inside 45 of the network’s computers, having arrived through banner ads for phones and earbuds, bought on the open market and shown on everyday websites. Nobody had to click. The ad loaded and the computer was taken. Every newsroom security training teaches people to avoid strange links, and that training was useless here. The infections ran through 2024 and 2025. Those were also the years Israel killed at least a dozen of Al Jazeera’s journalists in Gaza. In the same period an Israeli military intelligence unit, which +972 Magazine called the Legitimization Cell, built files casting Gaza reporters as Hamas operatives. Anas al-Sharif was named in those files. The army’s Arabic spokesman attacked him by video. Then Israel killed him in a tent outside al-Shifa hospital, along with his colleagues. While Israel hunted Al Jazeera’s reporters in the field, someone was reading over the shoulders of the people at their desks.  

• Several delegations including the delegation representing the Islamic Republic of Iran, walked out of the summit venue in Baku, "Republic of Azerbaijan", on Oct 15 during the speech by Isaac Herzog, the president of the Zionist regime, at the 7th summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). In addition to Iran, 12 other delegations out of the total 28 left the hall in protest. The delegations from Iran, Palestine, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh among those that walked out. 

• World Socialist Web: Ukraine attacked Russia with more than 1,000 drones overnight last Saturday, in the largest bombardment of St. Petersburg since WW2. The attack, in which Russia’s Defense Ministry counted 1,015 drones across 15 regions, Crimea and the Black Sea, was one of the heaviest bombardments of Russian territory since the war began. These strikes are directly funded by the NATO powers, which have provided Ukraine with over $100 billion in weapons, and are carried out on the basis of targeting data provided directly by their militaries. Since 2022, these wars have merged into a single global conflagration. It includes the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine; the Israeli genocide in Palestine and Lebanon, armed and defended by Washington; the bombing of Iran in June 2025; and the war against Iran launched on February 28 of this year. The objective is the redivision of the world among the old imperialist powers. This violent and ongoing project includes the breakup of the existing Russian state, which will open up the vast Eurasian landmass to unfettered capitalist exploitation. For the oligarchs of finance capital, the loss of a few hundred million lives would be a small price to pay for this rich prize. In 2014, the US funded, armed and supported the coup that overthrew the pro-Russian government of Ukrainian President Yanukovych and installed the present regime, a dictatorship ruling under martial law. Since then the US and NATO surged money and weapons to Ukraine, turning it into a frontline state for war against Russia.  

• The Department of War has created the US Prayer Force, a new joint military initiative designed to integrate battlefield prayer, strategic supplication, and faith-based force multiplication into America’s national defense posture. The Prayer Force, informally known inside the Pentagon as “the Kneeling Eagles,” will operate under the newly created Office of Spiritual Superiority and will coordinate with combatant commands, chaplain corps personnel, defense contractors, and selected congressional faith-leadership caucuses. 

• Two US-based activists have been ordered by the Department of Justice to testify in mysterious grand jury proceedings, even after they served two months in jail for impeding production of one of Israel’s biggest arms suppliers. They’re not the only ones, they say — and are urging anyone slapped with a similar subpoena to seek free legal counsel. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun quietly subpoenaing American activists who disrupted operations at an Israeli weapons manufacturing facility in New Hampshire responsible for arming the Israeli army amid its ongoing ethnic cleansing campaigns in Gaza and southern Lebanon, according to documents reviewed by The Grayzone. Prosecutors originally sought to jail both of the young women and a third activist, Calla Walsh, for 37 years each, for helping deface the exterior of Israel’s Elbit Systems weapons manufacturing facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and using bike locks to temporarily impede access to the main entrance. The subpoenas insist that Ross and Shergalis appear before a grand jury in New Hampshire on October 21. Though the subpoenas are dated October 5, they were only issued to the young women on October 16, just five days before the date on which the US government is compelling them to appear — an unusually brief window which Ross and Shergalis say was likely intended to coerce their testimony and jeopardize their civil liberties.

• Egyptian President El-Sisi on October 17 called for an emergency parliamentary session to authorise a possible Egyptian intervention to defend Saudi Arabia if requested by the kingdom. Egypt is the latest country to publicly signal support for Saudi Arabia as the kingdom faces escalating missile and drone attacks by the Houthis, who control much of Yemen. El-Sisi said Cairo would take the necessary measures to protect Saudi Arabia, adding that it was “absolutely unacceptable” for the kingdom’s security and stability to be undermined. Saudi Arabia has secured defensive military support from Pakistan and Turkey through the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, which the three countries agreed to activate on October 5. More recently, the kingdom also received defensive support from the United Kingdom and France.  Egypt confirms it will support Saudi Arabia and deploy troops to help them fight against Yemen. Sisi is about to drag his country into a war for Saudi Arabia.

• Brian Berletic: 'Mecca Alliance' quickly and predictably reveals itself as more US 'Burden Sharing'. The 'Mecca Alliance' has recently announced mobilization against Ansarallah in Yemen as part of wider US proxy war on Iran. While Western media (and some alt media) presented the 'Mecca Alliance' as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey 'distancing' themselves from the US, the alliance/pact was obviously the US extending its 'Burden Sharing Network' over these nations as part of waging war on Iran and its alliance network; Ansarallah in Yemen is part of Iran’s strategic depth across West Asia and US proxy war on the group has played out for years as the US seeks to isolate and topple Iran itself; Ansarallah’s actions are a direct, defensive response to this US aggression, simply laundered through Saudi Arabia; The only question now is to what extent the 'Mecca Alliance' mobilizes – while nations may be captured or influenced by the US, there is the possibility of commitments being more symbolic than substantive – as was/is the case with Egypt vs Ansarallah amid US pressure to expand its proxy war on Yemen; Finally, the US admits hundreds of its advisers have been involved in facilitating the war on Yemen as Saudi Arabia itself lacks the capabilities to wage such a war. It is a US war in all but name. The US is an over-extended empire increasingly draining its own proxies to compensate for its own growing limitations. This recent development is just another symptom of this process. 
• The US used 19 years worth of Patriot missile stockpiles in just 7 months in the war against Iran.
• Slovakia refused to participate in financing a new €70 billion loan for Ukraine for 2027, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico announced after the EU summit in Brussels. Fico stated that Hungary took a similar position. Fico reported that Ukraine requested an additional €70 billion from the European Union. Meanwhile, the EU had previously already agreed to a €90 billion loan to Kiev for 2026-2027.

• Air Force Maj. Jason Watson was arrested July 1 on the steps of the US Capitol after calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump. According to his lawyer, he’s now being held in solitary confinement 24 hours a day in what some legal experts say could amount to illegal pretrial punishment. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) contains provisions barring officers from engaging in public political activities that are typically protected for civilians, including criticizing the president and other elected officials. Before he was charged, Watson gave a CNN interview on August 17 in which he continued to criticize Trump, accusing him of “flagrantly violating the Constitution” and “breaking the law.” Rachel Van Landingham, a former Air Force judge advocate and professor of law at Southwestern Law School, told Common Dreams that this “seems to be a blatant case of illegal pretrial punishment given that the nature of his pretrial restraint does not seem necessary to either ensure his presence at trial or to prevent foreseeable serious criminal misconduct.”

• Pete Hegseth is facing an internal party rebellion as Republican Representative Thomas Massie has publicly called on Donald Trump to fire him. Massie first introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth in September 2026, accusing him of waging an unauthorized, illegal war in Iran and overstepping his authority. The friction escalated on October 15, following reports that Trump is considering removing Hegseth after the upcoming midterm elections due to the unpopularity of the conflict. Massie responded publicly via social media, stating that Trump firing Hegseth immediately to avoid a formal House impeachment would be "the honorable thing to do."

• Israel & the CIA are helping Saudi Arabia by sending them military assistance (Uganda mercenaries and/or military equipment) to fight the Yemenis. A transport aircraft, owned by Israeli businessman and arms dealer Barak Orland, flew from Uganda to Sharorah Airport in southern Saudi Arabia near the Yemeni border. Ukraine seems to be assisting Saudi Arabia to counter Yemen’s drones. Ukraine had previously assisted the Persian Gulf Arab countries as well against Iranian drones during the 40-day war.