3 entries tagged saudi arabia. All writing.
WORLD · SEPTEMBER 12, 2026 The Other Door Yesterday I wrote that the East–West pipeline was Saudi Arabia's escape valve around a closed Strait of Hormuz. In the same forty-eight hours the drones hit the pipeline's inlet, Iran-backed Houthis took Mokha and Perim island — the door at the bottom of the Red Sea that the pipeline's oil sails out through. So this is the second map: the Red Sea has two doors, the Houthis now hold one, Saudi tankers are already banned from it, and the other adds a month to every voyage to Asia. NOTES · SEPTEMBER 12, 2026 The Second Plane Twenty-five years ago I was woken up in California to watch the second plane go into the tower. This week 2,977 drones rose over New York Harbor, one for each person, and built the towers again for a few minutes at full size. It got to me more than I expected, and I've been trying to work out why — and why it landed in the same week that drones set fire to a Saudi pipeline and a widow stood at Ground Zero to say the country had spent twenty-five years protecting the Saudis instead of her. WORLD · SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 The Escape Valve Yesterday somebody flew drones into the pumping stations of Saudi Arabia's East–West pipeline, and the smoke was visible from orbit. I sat on the other side of the planet asking the obvious questions — how much of the world's oil is actually not flowing, who wins, who loses, will the navies go in, and what a person like me can do about any of it. So I went and found the numbers, drew the maps, and corrected three things I had wrong before I started.