As pressure mounts on Hezbollah from both inside Lebanon and abroad, the group’s deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem made a striking overture to Riyadh, urging Saudi Arabia to turn the page and rally around a common enemy: the Israeli Occupation.

Amid rising tensions in the Middle East, punctuated by “Israel’s” September 9, 2025 aggression on Qatar, Iran turned toward Saudi Arabia in search of defense cooperation, raising fundamental questions about whether the two sides could move closer.

The Yemeni Maritime Security Partnership conference in Riyadh, which brought together representatives from 40 countries, sparked questions about the reasons behind the initiative, its timing, and what impact it might have on the ground.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have signed a strategic defense pact after a decade of fluctuating ties, raising questions about why Riyadh turned to Islamabad now and whether the Israeli aggression on Qatar accelerated the agreement.

Amid the Israeli aggression on Qatar, urgent questions arose over Washington’s complicity and whether the Gulf states that normalized relations would go so far as to cut ties with the Israeli Occupation in defense of the Gulf system and its much-touted unity.