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Something very strange is going on. Iran is negotiating its surrender. The war is over and Iran has lost.. I have been assured that the United States has destroyed Iran's ability of their proxies to project power in the Middle East.
Yet somehow, despite this war goal being accomplished and the war being over, Saudi Arabia is still being attacked by Iran's Proxies..
At least 12 people were killed and over 300 injured in a Houthi missile attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday, October 10, 2026. This marks the third strike on the facility in one week and the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February.
In response, President Donald Trump stated the U.S. is considering joining Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against the Houthis, while the U.S. Embassy issued a security alert urging American citizens to avoid the Riyadh airport.
So to summarize, it looks like the war is expanding, Iran's proxies continue to be able to strike US allies, and Iran's proxies are escalating the conflict instead of backing down.
With early voting opening up soon for many states, what are the chances Iran has an October surprise in store for Trump? Trump has stated that the U.S. will not resume military strikes on Iran before the November 3, 2026 (midterm election). The U.S. military is deploying roughly 9,000 to 10,000 additional troops to the Middle East, including the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the USS Makin Island amphibious readiness group, which departed San Diego on October 4–5, 2026. This surge brings the total U.S. military presence in the region to over 60,000 personnel and establishes three aircraft carrier strike groups in the theater for the first time since April 2026.
So Iran knows that Trump wants the Iran War to quiet down before the Midterms, but he is preparing to escalate once it is over. Why would they play along with this? I believe there is a good chance they will escalate and cause Trump and Republicans political embarrassment soon. But maybe this doesn't matter, because for some reason, the Houthis don't count. So I guess everything is going according to plan. So this all could just be nothing.
I have to ask- how competently do you believe this characterizes the situation?
The Saudi-Huthi conflict was in a pause during the recent year, and was a non-factor for the US-Iran conflict which both Saudis and Huthis largely stayed out of. It re-ignited post-MOU when the Saudis tried to block an Iranian flight from landing in Huthi-controlled territory by bombing an airstrip, which was either responded to or provoked to justify a retaliation depending on who you ask. In the last week(s), the Huthis and Saudis have had dueling offensives, with significant increases in missile and airstrikes as the southern front shifts to and fro.
Saudi Arabia and the Huthis have a separate conflict independent not only of the US-Iran war, but predating the Huthi-Iran alliance. Saudi is not 'still' being attacked by Iran's Huthi proxy as a continuation of the US-Iran war because Saudi was not attacked by the Huthis during the US-Iran war in the first place. And also calling the Huthi's an Iranian proxy is wildly misleading of the dynamic. The American war goals in the US-Iran war are orthogonal to the resumption of the Saudi-Huthi conflict, because the war-ending effort of the MOU had nothing in particular too say about the Saudi-Huthi conflict, unlike other Iranian proxies active at the time, and the Huthi-Saudi conflict predates the US-Iran war by a decade.
I get that Shakes' Trumpian triumphalism can be annoying, but this is the sort of pretty bad reading of regional dynamics that gives him more than a bit of a leg to stand. By trying to conflate a separate (and pre-existing) conflict into a rhetorical cudgel regarding the conflict you want to contest the characterization off, you're just giving Shakes a lot to (correctly) reject, and in the process letting him use (well justified) rebuttals to paint the counter-picture that annoys you.
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