On 12 September 2026, two stories that look separate on a map are tightening around the same problem: who can move oil, goods, and diplomats through a region already in its seventh month of a U.S.–Iran war.
One story is maritime. Yemen’s Houthis have driven down Yemen’s Red Sea coast, taken Mocha and Dhubab, and reached Perim Island (Mayun) in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The other is diplomatic. Israel has ordered Britain to shut its East Jerusalem consulate after London, joined by France and Canada, banned imports from West Bank settlements. Overlay that with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s arrival in New Delhi for a BRICS gathering, and you have the picture Ben Meiselas set out to describe in the MeidasTouch video Iran JUST PULLED IT OFF… before interviewing University of Tehran professor Mohammad Marandi.
What follows is the verified sequence, not the monologue.
How the waterways became the war
Before the 2026 fighting, the Strait of Hormuz was the world’s most important oil choke point and the Red Sea–Suez route was the shortest path between Asia and Europe. Both worked, with the usual insurance premiums and piracy risk, not as closed gates.
That changed when the United States and Israel went to war with Iran. Tehran and the IRGC treated Hormuz as leverage: ships that ignored Iranian permission, AIS rules, or later fee/control arrangements were struck or turned back. Independent reporting this week still describes Hormuz as severely disrupted, with Gulf states and Oman preparing a Monday meeting in Salalah to talk about a temporary shipping arrangement. The IEA has warned the strait may not reopen this year. Brent has been trading around and above $100 a barrel; U.S. diesel has been reported near record levels. That is the inflation channel: fuel into farms, trucks, factories, and household bills far from the Gulf.
Iran’s position is that control, security guarantees, sanctions relief, and compensation are the price of reopening. Washington’s position is freedom of navigation and denial that Tehran “owns” the strait. Markets do not wait for the legal argument. They price the closure.
Yemen: from harassment to holding ground
The Red Sea was already dangerous after earlier Houthi attacks on shipping tied to Israel and the United States. In September 2026 the fight moved from missiles fired from Hodeidah to occupation of the coast that looks at the ships.
Reporting from Reuters, the BBC, the Guardian, and Gulf outlets converges on this sequence:
- Houthis opened a large operation in early September, citing Saudi “aggression.”
- They took Mocha (Mokha), the historic coffee port that sits about 80 km from the strait.
- They took Dhubab, the last major town facing the waterway.
- Government and Saudi-backed forces pulled off Perim. Houthi boats landed; officials said there was little resistance.
- Some Yemeni sources also say nearby islands such as Zuqar/Hanish are in Houthi hands.
Perim sits in the throat of Bab el-Mandeb and splits the passage into two channels. Whoever holds it can watch, mine, board, or shoot at traffic that used to be harassed only at longer range. Ship counts through the strait were reported halved in a day—on the order of 15 crossings versus about 30 the day before—carrying crude, grain, and steel. Houthis say navigation is “safe” except for Saudi vessels. Insurers and captains hear that as a warning, not a welcome.
Saudi Arabia answered with air raids on Mocha and then a larger shock: it shut the East–West pipeline after drones, blamed on launches from Iraq, hit related infrastructure. That pipeline was the workaround when Hormuz or the Red Sea seized up. Closing it removes a safety valve for Saudi crude heading west. Riyadh has sought more U.S. help. Public reporting says Washington is talking to Riyadh and the Yemeni government and has offered intelligence and targeting support more readily than a new ground or large naval campaign. CENTCOM’s commander has been in the Gulf on that file.
Commentators, including Meiselas, say Iran-aligned forces now sit astride two of the arteries that move a large share of seaborne oil—Hormuz in the east, Bab el-Mandeb in the west. That is a strategic claim, not a precise barrel count. What is solid is dual pressure: less oil leaving the Gulf the usual way, and less oil and cargo looping around Africa or through Suez without extra cost and delay.
New Delhi and the diplomatic counter-stage
While tankers slow, Pezeshkian arrived in India ahead of BRICS meetings. MeidasTouch treated the arrival and family-photo placement next to leaders such as Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin as proof that isolation had failed and that dollar-and-petrodollar politics were the real agenda. The narrower fact is simpler: Iran is in the room. India still needs energy. China and Russia have kept commercial and political channels open. Gulf states are talking to Tehran about Hormuz even while hosting U.S. forces. That is not a world in which Washington can dictate terms by press conference.
Marandi, speaking in earlier and related MeidasTouch interviews from Tehran, has described Iranian public mood as more defiant than before the war, more skeptical of U.S. talks, and more open to a harder nuclear posture. That is an Iranian academic close to official narratives. It is useful as a window into Tehran’s talking points, not as a substitute for military or market data.
Israel and Britain: the consulate fight
The user’s line that “Israel [is] still resisting expelling UK consulates from [the] West Bank” gets the direction of the fight backward.Britain (Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband), with France and Canada, banned imports from Israeli settlements and moved against firms that service them. London framed this as a response to settlement expansion and settler violence, including concern over the E1 plan that would deepen the cut between East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. Israel’s government called the measures hostile, economically punitive, and timed to British domestic politics and Israel’s October election. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, coordinating with Benjamin Netanyahu, answered by:
- ordering the British consulate in East Jerusalem—accredited to the Palestinian Authority—to close;
- giving diplomats there about 30 days before accreditation lapses;
- telling British staff on the U.S.-led Gaza coordination mission in Israel and the British training presence in Ramallah to leave on a much shorter clock (reported as seven days);
- barring a list of British politicians and others Israel accuses of antisemitic or anti-Israel activity.
Reuters and others reported that the 30-day closure instruction had been delivered. That is expulsion pressure from Jerusalem, not Israeli hesitation about expulsion. France and Sweden also keep Jerusalem consulates accredited to the PA; Israel said it would consider responses to other sanctioning states. The U.S. ambassador in Israel criticized the trade ban. The consulate is the UK’s main political and consular hinge to Palestinians. Closing it is meant to hurt that channel, not merely to make a speech.
Settlements, annexation politics, and “settler colonialism” are the language critics use. Israel’s government uses “return,” sovereignty, and security. The concrete fight this week is sanctions versus diplomatic eviction.
What Meiselas is arguing, and what holds
The YouTube segment ties these threads into one indictment: a Trump administration war that wrecked U.S. standing; an Israel under Netanyahu doubling down on settlements; Iran and the Houthis turning geography into bargaining power; BRICS as the audience for that power; inflation as the bill sent to people who never voted on Hormuz.
Some of that is commentary. Some of it tracks the wires.
Holds up in mainstream reporting: war in month seven; Hormuz still not a normal waterway; Houthi seizure of Mocha, Dhubab, and Perim; halved Bab el-Mandeb traffic in the first shock window; Saudi pipeline shut after drones from Iraq; oil and diesel prices high enough to feed inflation; Israel moving to close the UK East Jerusalem consulate after settlement sanctions; Pezeshkian in India for BRICS.
Does not hold as simple fact: that Iran “controls 30–40% of world oil” as a legal title; that the United States has “zero control” in every theater; that Red Sea trouble began only with “US–Israel war” (Houthi attacks predated 2026, then widened with it); that Israel is resisting a UK expulsion it is in fact imposing.
The deeper story is mechanical. Two narrow seas carry a disproportionate share of energy and container trade. A war that treats those seas as weapons raises prices everywhere. A second front in Yemen gives Iran a partner on the western gate while talks about the eastern gate crawl through Oman. A third front, quieter but bitter, is Western governments using trade law against settlements and Israel using visas and consulates against those governments.
People in Sanaa, Aden, Tehran, Haifa, London, and a Midwestern truck stop do not live in the same politics. They are now priced off the same map.
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