---
title: 'Houthi Red Sea Threat, Iran War Outlook, and Oil Risks'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=DCg2JQEfL4k'
video_id: 'DCg2JQEfL4k'
date: 2026-09-10
duration_sec: 1229
channel: 'Meet Kevin'
---

# Houthi Red Sea Threat, Iran War Outlook, and Oil Risks

> Source: [Houthi Red Sea Threat, Iran War Outlook, and Oil Risks](https://youtube.com/watch?v=DCg2JQEfL4k)

## Summary

The video analyzes escalating Middle East tensions, focusing on the Houthi capture of Yemen's Mocha port and its threat to Red Sea shipping and Saudi oil. It also covers the possibility of a prolonged US-Iran conflict, with rising oil prices, nuclear activity at Iran's Fordow facility, and their inflationary impact on global markets.

### Key Points

- **IMF Inflation Warning** [[00:43]] — IMF says global inflation expectations have risen but remain anchored, noting energy shock from the Middle East war isn't over and disinflation progress has stalled.
- **Iran War Duration** [[01:53]] — Trump's advisors privately warn the Iran war could last until the end of his term, extended past Inauguration Day into 2029, despite earlier claims of a short operation.
- **Escalation with Iran** [[04:57]] — Seven tankers attacked in a week, and rockets targeted US ships, increasing the risk of a strike on a US carrier and worsening the conflict, making peace unlikely.
- **Houthi Port Capture** [[06:42]] — The Houthis took control of the Mocha port in Yemen, which can be used to launch attacks against shipping in the Red Sea, potentially locking up trade for the Saudis.
- **Saudi Oil Output Falls** [[09:35]] — Saudi oil production dropped to its lowest level this year after Houthi threats, with attacks on facilities and a maritime embargo against Saudi ports.
- **Global Food Crisis** [[11:19]] — Three regions (Black Sea, Hormuz, Red Sea) struggle with fertilizer and food shortages, with UN and World Bank warning of long-term pressure on global food inflation.
- **Fordow (Pickaxe Mountain)** [[12:22]] — IAEA confirmed increased activity at Fordow, with CSIS reporting accelerated excavation, hardened access, and construction possibly for nuclear enrichment, potentially moving 440kg of 60% enriched uranium.
- **Oil Prices and US Waivers** [[18:36]] — Report by Bloomberg alleges a firm Corvus influenced Oval Office to relax sanctions on Iranian/Russian oil, while Brent crude sits at $105.58, with region showing sustained escalation.
- **Drone Attack Attempt** [[19:04]] — A drone came close to Ukraine's president's plane on Tuesday, showcasing increased tensions in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

## Transcript

Endless updates today out of the Middle East, including what's going on with the Houthis taking over a major port on the edge of the Red Sea. I'm going to break down exactly what's at risk here because they've made it very clear what their target is, what's safe and what's not safe.
We've got to talk about Pickaxe Mountain. We've got to talk about how Trump says the Iran War, well, his advisors are telling him the Iran War might end up lasting throughout all of Donald Trump's term.
We'll talk about that and what the insiders are talking about. And then we'll also touch on some of these other warnings with oil. For example, the IMS, and this came through just moments ago.
The IMS just released a statement. I'm going to read it to you the way it's coming across the newswire services. The IMF says global inflation expectations have risen, but still remain anchored. Heard that for a while. How long can that last?
They say the energy shock from the war in the Middle East is not over, and that global debt pressures are melting, and progress on disinflation has stalled. They say that liquidity problems are building in developing countries, such as in parts of Africa,
partly due to a reduction in bilateral assistance, as referenced to USAID, and that the IMF is advising central bankers to remain focused on price stability.
So, the ECB today raised interest rates 25 basis points. The Bank of Japan is expected to set up multiple interest rate hikes. The Bank of England and the United States is kind of holding on for a little bit,
but how much longer can we hold on when there's the potential that Trump's top advisors are now, quote-unquote, confronting the possibility that the Iran war lasts through the end of Trump's term?
Let's take a look at a little bit of this. Private discussions inside of the Trump cabinet and Oval Office or otherwise suggest that insiders are warning the war could last until the end of his term,
that Tehran, so the capital of Iran, could continue to resist U.S. pressure under the blockade or other military tactics. Extending past Inauguration Day into 2029,
Trump told reporters Wednesday that the war will end immediately after midterm elections, which before was it's going to be a short, less than 60-day or six-week operation. That then turned into its seven months,
which then turned into it's going to end right after midterm elections, which a lot of people are nervous that that's just another promise, just like I'm going to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.
We'll see. But anyway, Donald Trump says this is because they can't hold out any longer. And it is true. The economy in Iran is shrinking substantially. It's expected to shrink to the tune of about 5.4% this year.
The individual Iranians are suffering massive inflation. inflation, their wages aren't keeping up, food's getting more expensive, but the regime is actually getting more powerful. The regime isn't facing upcoming elections like the Trump administration is, or even
folks in Israel like Bibi are facing elections. The regime is strengthening its hold on power in Iran, at least that's my impression, especially with their focus on building up Pickaxe Mountain more, which is what we expect to be the next
nuclear enrichment hub too deep for our bunker buster bombs to reach. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But let's take a look here. We've got Trump, who promised not to return us to forever wars,
still privately seeks a quick resolution. However, he's being told from the inside that an economic siege via his naval blockade and sanctions program will take much more time
than potentially a diplomatic solution. And so, in other words, we're not really, solely through a naval blockade, going to be able to force them into some form of capitulation. Over the last week, seven tankers have been attacked, which obviously helped send oil prices up.
And this is in response to three attempts by the Iranians to strike U.S. warships. In fact, here you can see close calls with U.S. warships. Iran shows new appetite for escalation.
Obviously, a devastating risk would be that one of these now maneuverable munitions that Iran is using against U.S. ships ends up striking something like a U.S. aircraft carrier, which would not only be devastating from the ability of the United States to launch attacks,
but also be devastating for, well, A, embarrassing, but then also the risk that if you strike an aircraft carrier carrying thousands of people, there's a good chance some Americans are going to get injured or worse. and so these strikes have been ramping up just within the last week
indicating the conflict with Iran is getting worse and not better and so far we at this point where the prospects for a peace deal are very very low now hopefully my hope and maybe it delusional but my hope is that you know like can it really get much worse than oh
this war is going to last forever? You know, through 2029? I mean, yeah, I guess it could. So that's where it's so hard or impossible to say when this skyrocketing treasury yield
situation is going to end. And, of course, that pressure on the Federal Reserve to hike rates in response to this oil shock will continue to mount until this war ends. Right now, we're
pricing it at 67.6% chance of a hike next week. A lot of this will be predicated on CPI tomorrow morning. We did get PPI that came out. PPI that came out on a core basis actually came in roughly at expectations, but we did rise up prior readings. The headline
number is just pretty rich, though. The headline year-over-year number coming in at 5.4%, a little over-expectation. This isn't good. It makes it really difficult for central banks to fight the, oh, inflation expectations are stable narrative, which, chart-wise, they
are. The question is, how long can they actually remain stable? They talk here in the article essentially about extending the MEU support, the Expeditionary Unit support, and extending the troop deployment to the region even longer.
But what's problematic here is not just the squeeze on Iran and how this war might last forever, but it's also what's going on in Yemen. So in Yemen, the Houthis have just taken control of the Mocha port.
We don't know how long that control of the Mocha port is going to last. This is Mocha right here. It's a relatively small town. and they do have this port here
that could be used to potentially launch a tax against shipping in the strait right here of the Red Sea. So keep this in mind. You've got a few things going on over here. So this is the Persian Gulf right here.
This is the Strait of Hormuz here. You've got Lark Island. You've got Hormuz Island. Bandar al-Bas is up here. Iran wants ships to go along the Iranian coast. The United States is secretly smuggling ships along the Omani coast.
This is the Strait of Hormuz problem. That's one issue we have. To circumvent this issue, Saudi Arabia is taking a lot of oil from the sand regions here and piping that oil via the east-west pipeline,
which would be going from the east to the west to get to the Red Sea, and then we could either go up through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean right here, or we could go south through the Red Sea and come out of the Bab al-Mandab Strait here.
The issue is the Houthis are making it clear that international trade is more than welcome to transit through the strait. But they are making it exceptionally clear that the ships that are not safe are Saudi ships.
that's because what the Saudis are doing is as the Houthi Iranian-backed terrorist in Yemen where the government is essentially getting overrun and is relatively powerless against these Iranian-funded and backed terrorist cells
what's happening is the Saudis are getting frustrated and so they are launching attacks from Saudi Arabia onto Houthi positions in Yemen to try to help the Yemeni forces
but so far they're failing and the Houthis are advancing. And so we have some reporting here. Yemeni forces reportedly abandoned their military positions and that there are basically multiple different supply issues this creates for the Saudis.
Not only the Saudi oil trade but Saudi military reinforcement trade coming from Saudi Arabia into this region. And so now the concern is, have the Houthis finally made it to Mocha just today, where they can actually now pause a lockup of the Red Sea?
Again, at the moment, just for the Saudis, but the Saudis are already warning that their oil production is suffering. Take a look at this Financial Times piece. Saudi Arabia cuts oil output to lowest level this year on Houthi threats.
And that's because the Houthis have also attacked Saudi facilities in Saudi Arabia. It's not just trying to get control of the Red Sea to screw the Saudis, but they're also attacking the Saudis directly.
Saudi Arabia and their oil production has fallen to its lowest oil production level this year after the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen threatened shipments from the Kingdom's west coast. That's the Red Sea area that we're just talking about.
The Houthis have announced a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabian ports. They announced that in July, but they haven't really had the power to do anything. That changed today where they gotten control of MoCA Now again how long are they actually going to be able to hold that That the question There talk right here coming from the Houthis again that if the Saudis they targeting
and that international trade, quote, remains safe and uninterrupted, but there's concern that if there is disruption for global shipping, that food will become substantially more expensive
as fertilizer and food goes through this region, and you now have three areas that are getting hit with fertilizer and food shortage-related issues. The Black Sea, thanks to Russia and Ukraine, Hormuz, thanks to Iran, United States, Israel,
and now the Houthis and Saudi Arabia warring in the Red Sea. So creating more of this sort of global inflation, which, you know, the United Nations and the World Bank are saying, hey, wait a minute, this is actually a long-term issue
to global inflation for food is just not going to get better anytime soon. So we'll see how this goes. Now, the Houthis are holding out for, ultimately, the blockade against Iran to get ended.
That is unlikely to end at any point soon, because, as we just heard, Donald Trump's insiders are saying this war might go on for another two years or more. On top of this, we are now seeing increased nuclear activity from Iran.
There's so much news today, and all of it sucks. And I don't even have a coupon code for us. I'm sorry. For those of you who want to join the membership, there's no coupon code right now. I guess the best I could do, I haven't pitched this in a while,
is if you're nervous about anything, you can always go to metkevin.com slash life, and you could get life insurance in as little as five minutes. It's a good life insurance. It's been a good plan.
They've done great work for me. That's at metkevin, M-E-T, kevin.com slash life. They've always been a supporter of the channel. But let's focus here for a moment on Pickaxe Mountain. The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed activity at the Ron Pickaxe Mountain.
And so if we go to CSIS, which is the Center for Strategic and International Studies, We can actually see that things are getting substantially worse here. They are arguing that in the summer, this conflict entered a new phase.
And initially, it was Israeli intelligence that argued Pickaxe Mountain, which is too deep for a bunker buster bomb to hit, and it's buried under granite. We don't actually know how deep it is. We don't have as much intelligence on Pickaxe Mountain as we did for Bordeaux or Natanz.
And this might be a facility where we ended up moving highly enriched uranium, too, which is not great, in this case, I just mean Iran. You know, satellites tracked the trucks that moved whatever they were moving from the facilities that got bombed last year to Pickaxe Mountain.
We have not once struck Pickaxe Mountain. Donald Trump warns that Iran should not get cute with Pickaxe Mountain, otherwise he will strike it. But he's been talking about striking Pickaxe Mountain, and he keeps escalating his concern around Pickaxe Mountain,
which to me suggests there's something actually really going on here, and this isn't good. And CSIS argues that there is active excavation that is accelerating. There is more road activity.
They are calling this a clear surge in activity that is occurring at Pickaxe Mountain. They are saying there is a hardening of access to the various different portals that would allow you to get into the facility.
and they're also changing the way the facility is being constructed to make it harder for bunker-buster bombs to penetrate these underground facilities. They do argue that there's no evidence yet of nuclear enrichment occurring at the facilities.
They suggest it's mostly construction equipment that they see at the moment, but that could change soon, and they are seeing a surge of this construction. They think it's possible that there could be centrifuges here.
They think it's possible that research is just being conducted in the facility, like they're putting their scientists underground so they can't get bombed. Or it's possible that the 440 kilograms of 60% highly enriched uranium
has been moved to the facility, along with other centrifugal equipment, to enrich this to weapons-grade uranium so that Iran can rush a bomb. all of this makes sense given that right now
Iran is clearly at war with the United States it's escalating and it might last for a long period of time and so the incentives are obvious that Iran wants to rush a bomb whether they're capable of doing it, who knows
right now CSIS says it's too early and they're not actually building they're not actually actively enriching at this point based on what they could tell from satellite activity but they do provide the satellite imagery
where you're just showing construction progress, construction camps, construction sites and entrances that have been fortified and that areas that were previously visible for example have been hardened See here you can see sort of a visible portal entrance right here although that could have been depending on the sun right here
And here it looks like they've added a lot of concrete to the top of these just to strengthen these facilities against bombs and that we're seeing even more construction activity and development in the area here.
Oh, we've actually got three photos for this one. Here's September 30th, 2025. to July 9th, 26th, until once again, even more progress, August 9th, 2026.
So a continuous hardening, they call. Oh, they have three photos of these. Oh, yeah, wow, look at that. The August photo over here gets even more aggressive. I'll pop over to August. This one has September, July, August.
Both entrance portals reinforced and covered by sand and gravel. So, you know, something sussy is going on here. I think we can all pretty much agree on that. The facility may be between 80 to 100 meters deep,
much deeper than the double-tapping strategy that we utilized for attacking Natanz, Estahan, and Forgo in Operation Midnight Hammer last summer. Destroying Pickaxe Mountain will be a scientific and targeting challenge,
and ultimately this agency argues that if the United States' goal is to prevent Iran from ever developing a nuclear weapon, repeatedly bombing Iran every few months is insufficient and unsustainable.
In addition to this, there is reporting now coming out from Bloomberg that the United States has basically been handing suits plenty of opportunities to make money,
even if they are tied to Iran and Russia oil tycoons. For example, this article, and I'll keep it simple, but this article is essentially alleging that there's this husband and wife team from this company called Corvus,
and they basically peddle influence in Washington. And their goal is anytime they want either, you know, Iranian or Russian-related
or Dubai-related oil benefactors operating shadow fleets for oil transportation or whatever, anytime those companies need help, this Bloomberg article is alleging that Corbis and those two people I just showed you are there to help make it happen.
They give some examples of how this has occurred previously with helping companies change their names or evade some media scrutiny, But they also give examples where the Trump administration got a suggestion from Corvus this year in March that the Trump administration should consider relaxing sanctions on Iranian and Russian oil to help stabilize the oil market.
Within days, the Treasury Department issued those very waivers, allowing the sale and offloading of Russian and Iranian oil stranded on tankers at sea. And these suits are the people benefiting from this direct access to the Oval Office and potential market manipulating factors.
Now, obviously, those are just short-term kind of moves because, as we can see now, oil shortages are escalating, and we are now sitting on Brent crude at $105.58.
This is coming at the same time as apparently a drone almost struck Zelensky's airplane on Tuesday. A jet-powered Shahed, so Iranian-built drone,
nearly, and by nearly I guess it was in the area of, came close enough to Zelensky's plane to suggest that while they were taking off in Moldova, the drone may have actually been targeting Zelensky's plane.
So, so far, what we've got at every front here is escalation between Russia and Ukraine, escalation with Donald Trump and Iran in terms of how long this war could last, escalation with the nuclear build-out at Pekakstam, and escalation by the Houthis in the Red Sea.
I honestly don't know how you could get even more escalatory than what we've had in just the last 12 hours here for both oil prices and inflation, especially in the face of this pitch that now we're going to send thousands of dollars to all adults in America, up to $5,000.
So we'll see. But this is a lot to digest, and it's just frankly shocking. At this point, we need a coupon code, but we don't have a coupon code. We're trying to advertise these things in each other's field.
I feel like nobody else knows about this. We'll try a little advertising in our field. Congratulations, man. You have done so much. People love you. People look up to you. Kevin, pass right there. Finance and Landless and YouTube, meet Kevin. Always great to get your take.