Pepe Escobar

Iran and Oman still effectively control transit through the Strait of Hormuz, with sanctions-busting exports running overland via Pakistan, Central Asia and China regardless of any US naval posture. But Pakistani mediation between Washington and Tehran has now collapsed entirely, leaving only what he calls an escalation ladder ahead. That ladder is already climbing: the Houthis have seized the Yemeni Red Sea coast and the Bab al-Mandab strait from Saudi- and UAE-backed forces, tightening the squeeze on US-aligned shipping lanes. Now says Taiz falls within days and Marib is a done deal in time, while Iran and the Gulf states meeting in Muscat will agree a deliberately temporary system of navigation across Hormuz before turning to the final arrangement. Now says Ansarallah will not be talked down and has messaged Washington via Oman that its fight is with Riyadh rather than the United States, and that Pakistan has too much invested in its mediator credibility with Iran to endorse the Saudi and Israeli line on Yemen.

Ukraine has already lost militarily; Russia keeps advancing to close the gaps while Europe’s welfare states collapse funding a lost war. Now says Moscow’s national consensus has hardened to no more velvet gloves, hitting Kiev and NATO hard and demanding total capitulation from Kiev with no plan B and no faith in the Trump administration framework, with Russia already at escape velocity militarily.

Israel remains the region’s major spoiler, refusing to withdraw from Lebanon or Syria and answering only to force, never persuasion. Escobar now adds a harder charge: the UAE warned Netanyahu of a coming Gaza earthquake before October 7, and Israel let the attack happen because it needed the pretext for the war that followed. He casts the Emirates as essentially a "Zionist branch," fully aligned with Israel and increasingly isolated from a hostile Arab street.

Iran is a national-security matter for China given their strategic energy and infrastructure partnership; Beijing will do anything to prevent Iran’s collapse.

The SCO and Vladivostok summits are concrete proof Washington can no longer dictate outcomes in Eurasia, displaced by a Chinese-led multipolar model of global governance. Escobar traces the roots of that overreach back to 9/11 itself, which he calls the Pearl Harbor moment PNAC needed to justify remaking the Middle East, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, in the US and Israeli image. Twenty-five years on, he argues that project has failed and the unipolar order it was meant to entrench is the one now being dismantled. Now says Pakistan and Turkey have both told Riyadh this is not their war, and that the Iranian plan is simply to let the Trump administration flounder and collapse within two months, "the whole house of cards collapsing has already started."

The SCO’s planned development bank and energy consortium are explicitly built to bypass the IMF, World Bank, and dollar-based financial system, with Iran fully subscribed. Now adds that the BRICS New Delhi declaration branding unilateral and secondary sanctions illegal is the political cover for it, and expects BRICS Pay to be operational by next year even if not this one. Now says Mohammed bin Salman is self-blocked, because Saudi deposits in New York, Paris and London depend on supporting the dollar system, which gives Washington leverage over Riyadh regardless of Saudi military ambitions in Yemen.