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‘A coin flip’: on Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign trail as Brazil’s far right edges back to power

A giant banner of Brazil’s incarcerated former president Jair Bolsonaro fluttered in the morning breeze as his eldest son, Flávio, touched down at an airfield on the fringe of a city that will soon help decide the future of one of the biggest democracies on earth. “Brazil is rudderless. Brazil has no president and Brazil needs a president – and that president is Flávio Bolsonaro,” the far-right senator declared as he waded into the flock of supporters who had gathered to welcome him to Juiz de Fora, one of the largest cities in the battleground state of Minas Gerais. With less than a month before nearly 159 million Brazilians choose their next leader on 4 October, the election appears on a knife-edge, with the incumbent leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, neck-and-neck in the polls. Bolsonaro’s campaign appears to have seized the momentum in recent weeks amid a slew of corruption scandals involving Lula’s son and the supreme court. That has prompted despair among progressives who fear their country could fall back into the hands of a radical rightwing movement that tried to grab power after the then-president, Jair Bolsonaro, lost the 2022 election to Lula. Last September, Jair Bolsonaro received a 27-year jail sentence for spearheading that botched coup – a verdict supporters insist was unjust. But the ex-president and his accomplices are likely to be freed if his son wins power – a prospect that delights the hardcore Bolsonaristas who turned out to greet Flávio Bolsonaro wearing yellow football shirts and headbands reading: “Lula out!” “Today is a moment of joy,” said Ulisses Lima, 50, a cybersecurity specialist with a Jesus Christ pendant around his neck. “Flávio represents change. He represents Brazil’s rescue from this socialist abyss we’ve spent so long warning about,” Lima added as supporters waited for the former president’s heir to arrive. Nearby, another devotee, José Caldeira, fell to his knees and begged for divine intervention to get Bolsonaro out of house arrest. “God, free this nation! Amnesty and freedom for Bolsonaro!” Caldeira bellowed, raising his hands towards the sky. A third man, Davi Frederico, held a banner celebrating Donald Trump, who has been accused of trying to swing the election in Bolsonaro’s favour through economic and diplomatic pressure. “Make Liberals Cry Again,” it said. Juiz de Fora, an industrial and university city traditionally associated with the left, is also a key location for Brazil’s hard right. The city’s army headquarters was the launchpad for the 1964 coup that plunged Brazil into two decades of military rule. And it was in Juiz de Fora, on the eve of the 2018 election, that Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed in the gut while campaigning – an attack widely believed to have helped the former paratrooper seal his victory. Bolsonaro’s shock win ushered in what, from a progressive perspective, were four abysmal years. Destruction of the Amazon rainforest and gun ownership skyrocketed, hundreds of thousands died during a Covid outbreak Bolsonaro was accused of mishandling, and the president’s authoritarian rhetoric and attacks on Brazil’s electronic voting system culminated in the 8 January 2023 riots in Brasília. The supreme court later called those disturbances part of a plot to “annihilate” the country’s democracy. But the Bolsonaros still enjoy abundant support, and that devotion was visible as Flávio Bolsonaro’s motorcade crept towards the high street where his father was ambushed eight years ago. “Let’s get the left out! Let’s get these motherfuckers out!” one elderly woman shrieked as the senator passed by on top of a sound truck stamped with the word: “Jesus”. Other fans, many senior citizens, waved Brazil flags from windows or stood on the sidewalk flashing victory signs with their hands. “Barring some kind of leftwing trickery, Flávio Bolsonaro can already be considered president. All you have to do is take a look at the streets and social media,” claimed Nikolas Ferreira, an influential far-right congressman from Minas Gerais who has more than 9 million TikTok followers. Alongside the enthusiasm, there were glimpses of the revulsion many Brazilians feel for the former president. One leftwinger took to his balcony with a loudhailer to taunt the Bolsonaristas as they paraded through town. “Trump! Trump! Get my daddy out of jail!” the dissenter jeered in reference to the US president’s attempts to help Bolsonaro escape punishment. Minas Gerais, a mountainous mining and agricultural region that is larger than France and has 21 million inhabitants, is Brazil’s bellwether state. Since democracy returned in the 1980s, no candidate has won the presidency without triumphing here. In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro beat Lula’s candidate in Minas by more than 1.7m votes. Four years later, Lula reclaimed the state by fewer than 50,000. After landing in Minas last week, Flávio Bolsonaro said he was confident of clawing back the swing state, with one recent poll putting him ahead there. “[Lula] is a president who you look at and see the past,” the 45-year-old senator said of his 80-year-old adversary. “With Flávio you can be sure that when people look at him, they see a modern government and a government of the future.” Thomas Traumann, a political analyst who has written a book about his polarised country, said the election was too close to call. “It’s a coin flip,” said Traumann, who believed an unexpected scandal or last-minute “black swan” event could swing the election either way. On Friday, it emerged that Flávio Bolsonaro had been placed under police investigation over suspicions of corruption involving the funding of a big-budget biopic telling the story of the assassination attempt against his father in Juiz de Fora. For progressive voters, the vision for a Flávio Bolsonaro administration laid out during his visit to Minas is the stuff of nightmares. “I think Flávio Bolsonaro’s presidency is going to be Jair Bolsonaro 2.0,” said Bruno Engler, a Bolsonarista lawmaker from Minas’ capital, Belo Horizonte. Engler believed a top priority would be zero-tolerance policing, with the younger Bolsonaro pledging an iron-fisted crackdown on criminals his father has compared to cockroaches. “Thugs who don’t surrender will be arrested or neutralised,” Engler vowed, predicting gun laws would be loosened. Speaking on the street corner where his father was knifed, Flávio Bolsonaro vowed to pack Brazil’s 11-member supreme court with five conservative judges “who are against abortion [and] against drugs”. “We’re going to give the streets back to the Brazilian people … We’re going to lower the age of criminal responsibility. We are going to introduce chemical castration for rapists,” shouted the candidate, who wore a bullet-proof vest. Those pledges prompted whoops of excitement from the crush of supporters below Bolsonaro’s truck. Dozens ofmobile phones captured the candidate’s every word. But amid the rightwing rejoicing there was fear and trepidation, too. Lennon César, a law student and leftwing activist who had come to confront Bolsonaro’s fans, voiced incredulity that less than four years after Jair Bolsonaro’s failed power grab, tens of millions of Brazilians seemed poised to vote for his son. “We were the victims of an attempted coup – and his father was the perpetrator,” recalled César, 28. “It’s terrifying. And the thing that worries me most is that the general public doesn’t really seem to get what’s happening. Brazilians have short memories when it comes to the past.” As a black, gay man, César felt particular dread at the prospect of a second Bolsonaro presidency, given the patriarch’s hostility to minorities. César vowed to vote for Lula, Brazil’s first working-class president, calling him the only leader who paid attention to the poor. “If today I’m studying for a law degree it’s because one of Lula’s government programmes allowed me to achieve that,” he said, warning: “These people … might destroy it all.” A few blocks away, a graffiti artist had spray painted their own message of disapproval on to the facade of Bolsonaro’s Juiz de Fora HQ. “Facists [sic],” it read.

Ukraine and Russia have agreed not to hit energy targets, Trump claims – as it happened

Donald Trump has said Ukraine and Russia have agreed not to hit one another’s energy targets. In a post on his own Truth Social platform, the US president claimed that the world’s diesel price rise is “mostly caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, not Iran”. Ukraine is ready ⁠to halt strikes on Russia if its ⁠partners ensure ⁠that Moscow will refrain from hitting Ukrainian energy ⁠facilities, infrastructure and food supply routes, president Volodymyr ⁠Zelenskyy said. “The war must be brought to an end. And ⁠a de-escalatory step regarding critical infrastructure could be the first step toward peace. We expect ‌specifics from our partners,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram app. A train carrying Boris Johnson and the former CIA chief David Petraeus may have been the target of a Russian drone strike that hit a train engine near the Poland-Ukraine border, according to Ukrainian Railways. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, described the attack as “Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato”. The European Union needs icebreakers to bolster its presence in the Arctic, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said, as global warming makes the region more attractive to global superpowers. The EU’s top diplomat made the remarks at a press conference at an EU-Arctic summit in Rovaniemi in northern Finland. Sweden‘s next government remained uncertain on Monday as the national election inched toward a final result, with a thin lead for the left-wing opposition and an underwhelming performance by a hard-right anti-immigration party. Preliminary results showed a narrow advantage for the opposition and former prime minister Magdalena Andersson’s bid to return to office at the head of a left-wing coalition, although her own center-left Social Democrats lost support. European Union ⁠envoys have pushed back the ⁠expiry of ⁠EU Russia sanctions listings by seven days ⁠until 22 September, a spokesperson ⁠for the EU’s Irish presidency ‌said on ‌Monday, after failing ‌to agree on a six-month renewal. The designations, which target nearly 3,000 companies ‌and individuals with asset freezes and travel bans, had been due to expire on 15 September. ⁠ Russia launched a barrage of strikes on western Ukraine in the early hours of Sunday, hitting the engine of a passenger train near the border with Poland, according to Ukrainian Railways. Ukrainian and Polish authorities said a separate drone attack caused two lorries to catch fire less than 1km (0.6 miles) from the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border crossing. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Finland ⁠joined France’s initiative to extend the reach of its nuclear deterrent through collaboration with partner ⁠European countries, Reuters reported. In response to US president Donald Trump’s expressions of concern ⁠about the US security commitment to Europe and to the security implications of the Ukraine war, ⁠France in March announced the Forward Nuclear Deterrence Initiative.

Sweden’s political parties launch coalition talks as both blocs try to secure power

Sweden’s political parties have launched coalition negotiations as the Social Democrats leader, Magdalena Andersson, started the long and difficult process of trying to form a new government. Full results from Sunday’s election are not expected until after overseas votes are counted on Wednesday, but with 95% of the votes counted, the Social Democrats and the centre-left bloc had a narrow but growing lead of 176 seats to the right-leaning parties’ 173. After losing support for the first time since they were founded, the far-right Sweden Democrats, who were hoping to enter government for the first time, appear to be out of the picture. But many of its policy ideas – on immigration laws, integration and crime – have become mainstream, including in the centre-left. Both Andersson and the outgoing centre-right prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, of the Moderates have each said they want to explore possible coalition options to secure power. After a long election night during which there was just one seat between the two blocs, Social Democrat leaders met Andersson on Monday morning at the party’s Stockholm headquarters. Questions remain as to whether the bloc is willing to work with the Left party (Vänsterpartiet), which the Centre party has previously ruled out. The Social Democrats press secretary, Tobias Baudin, said he had been in contact with colleagues from opposition parties and called for the resignation of Kristersson, who led the rightwing Tidö coalition government with the support of the Sweden Democrats. “Now the voters have had their say and they have given him a failing grade for himself and his government,” Baudin told the Swedish broadcaster SVT, adding: “He should resign himself. In fact it doesn’t matter, if he doesn’t resign he will be removed. How he does it is up to him. The Centre party said that in talks with the Social Democrats it would be seeking a government with a “desire for political stability” and a “clear centre-right character” with no “fringe politics”. The Social Democrat Morgan Johansson, who under the last Social Democrat-led government was deputy prime minister, said the Centre party’s announcement was a positive development and that overall there were “good prospects”. All of the left-leaning parties want a change of government, he said. “That is the starting point. I don’t think anyone wants us to end up in a situation where blockages lead to a new election.” Meanwhile, Kristersson appears to be keeping his options open. On Sunday night he said the result could lead to a “complicated government formation, where it ends remains to be seen”. On Monday, before a meeting with his fellow Tidö coalition leaders, he declined to elaborate, saying he would wait for a full result before having conversations. “If all the red lines remain then Sweden won’t have a government at all,” he added. “I plan to pursue a number of possibilities that may exist.” The Liberals and Christian Democrats have both said they will not work with the Social Democrats. After the overseas votes are counted on Wednesday, the final election results are not expected until the weekend. The new parliament will meet for the first time on 28 September and the earliest date that the speaker can suggest a prime minister is 29 September, but talks could take considerably longer. If, when parliament votes for a prime minister candidate, more than half say no, then the speaker must find a new candidate. If there are four failed votes there will automatically be a new election. After the 2022 election, it took 37 days to form a government; in 2018 it took 134 days to form a new coalition. Fredrik Furtenbach, the senior political correspondent at Sveriges Radio (Radio Sweden), said: “I think it will end with either the Left or Centre party having to give way. It might take several failed prime minister votes first.” But he does not believe the Social Democrats and Moderates, who he describes as “traditional archenemies”, will end up working together. “You cannot share the position of prime minister.”

Robin Morgan obituary

The poet, novelist and political theorist Robin Morgan, who has died aged 85, was a key figure of second-wave feminism. From 1976, she was a contributing editor of the influential Ms magazine, founded by her friend and close collaborator Gloria Steinem, and served as its editor in chief from 1989 until 1994. In 1967, she co-founded the radical activist group New York Radical Women, and the following year, the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (Witch), which used street theatre and other actions to protest against cultural sexism. In 1970, she edited the anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful, now considered a foundational text of second-wave feminism, and, with the royalties received, founded the Sisterhood Is Powerful Fund to support women’s organisations. In all, she published 22 books, including three landmark anthologies. Morgan was one of the first feminists of her generation to point out the misogyny within male leftist counterculture. Her 1970 essay Goodbye to All That, published in Rat, a leftist newsletter, scorned both the so-called “sexual revolution” and the male radicals who expected women to type out their manifestos and share their beds while denying them political voice. She coined some of the feminist movement’s most effective and enduring slogans, including “Porn is the theory; rape is the practice”, a line that captured her lifelong opposition to pornography. On the anti-feminism backlash, which characterised the women’s movement as dangerous, she observed: “We are the women that men have warned us about.” She came up with the term “herstory”, for history written from a female perspective. It was a direct action with New York Radical Women that first put Morgan in the spotlight: in 1968, she helped organise a protest against the Miss America pageant in New Jersey during which women tossed bras, girdles and cleaning equipment into a “Freedom Trash Can” – although it was not set on fire, this gave rise to the derogatory put-down of feminists as “bra burners”. Born in Lake Worth, Florida, Robin was the daughter of Faith Berkley, a shop assistant, and Mordechai Morgenstern, a gynaecologist. The couple were not married, and Faith had moved to Florida from New York to hide her pregnancy. Robin was 20 when she first met her father. Pushed by an aunt into child modelling, she was a performer from the age of five, with her own programme, The Little Robin Morgan Show, on the New York radio station WOR and a starring role on the popular TV show Mama between 1950 and 1956. In her teens she rebelled, leaving acting to become a writer, and at 16 began studying literature informally at Columbia University in New York. She joined a writing workshop, where she met the poet Kenneth Pitchford, a founder of the Gay Liberation Front. Married from 1962 until their divorce in 1990, they had a son, Blake, in 1969. As a former leftist revolutionary, when Morgan joined a newly formed women’s group in the 1960s, it was her intention to convert them to Marxism; instead, they converted her to radical feminism. She never lost her taste for coalition work, but her politics were now unambiguously her own. In The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism (1989), she made connections between violence and misogyny by men on both left and right. “It is the common denominator of strutting machismo,” she wrote, “that links the random killings of the street terrorist with murderous state terrorism.” Her Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right (2006) took on Christian fundamentalism with equal force. Alongside Steinem and Jane Fonda, she was a co-founder of the Women’s Media Center in 2005. Its aim was to improve both representation and the positive participation of women and girls in the media. In 2008, she published Goodbye To All That #2 – an essay on the misogyny aimed at Hillary Clinton during her run to become the Democratic presidential candidate. Mass-forwarded by Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, it went viral. “Me, I’m voting for Hillary,” Morgan wrote, “not because she’s a woman, but because I am.” In 2015, she organised a conference on the sexual exploitation of women in the sex industry, hosted by the Carter Center, Atlanta, the organisation founded by the former US president Jimmy Carter to promote human rights. As a result of her friendship with Carter, an indictment of pornography appeared on his website – a first for a former president. Carter was also the first male guest on Morgan’s weekly radio programme, WMC Live. I first met her in 1997 at a meeting in a Manhattan cafe, where Andrea Dworkin had gathered a group together to talk about how to call rapists to account through the criminal justice system. Softly spoken, she wore her feminist notoriety lightly. There was nothing egotistical about her; she once told me that her most important work was mentoring later generations of political activists. Close to her heart was the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, a feminist thinktank founded in 1984 with Simone de Beauvoir, which raises money for organisations improving the lives of women and girls globally. The anti-pornography scholar and activist Gail Dines said that Morgan “saw porn as front and centre of radical feminist theory and politics … she talked about the disgrace of the third wave, and how missing porn as the material and ideological mouthpiece of patriarchy would destroy feminism.” Asked in a 2007 interview for the Humanist magazine what it meant to be a radical feminist, she replied: “It means daring to be uncompromising, daring to be angry.” Her poetry collection Dark Matters (2018) explored ageing, mortality and resilience. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2010, and, according to her son, feared decline, not death. On the question of generational handover, she was unyielding. “It’s only natural for people to want to stay in charge of the movement they poured their life energies into,” she once said. “Get your own damned torch,” she told a young woman who intimated that it was time to pass hers on. “I’m still using mine.” She is survived by her son, Blake. • Robin Evonne Morgan, poet, writer and feminist activist, born 29 January 1941; died 5 September 2026

Uganda reverses Invictus Games withdrawal after reassurance from King Charles

Uganda has U-turned on its decision to withdraw from the Duke of Sussex’s Invictus Games after the country’s military chief said he had been reassured by King Charles that there was “no problem” with its participation. Last week, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the eldest son of the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, made the surprise announcement the country would not participate in the games in a post on X. He said he was motivated by his respect for the king amid division over the “Harry-Meghan nonsense”. However, a post on Monday from the spokesperson of the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF), Chris Magezi, announced that Kainerugaba had reinstated Uganda’s participation in the 2027 Invictus Games, which will be held in Birmingham. Magezi wrote that the shift was prompted by a telephone conversation between Kainerugaba and the principal private secretary to the king and queen, Clive Alderton. Alderton had “revealed that King Charles III was moved by Gen Kainerugaba’s sensitive consideration of the king’s opinion on the upcoming Invictus Games organised by Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex”. He added that Charles “has no problem with Uganda’s participation in the Invictus Games, and encouraged the [Chief of Defence Forces] CDF to proceed with preparations”. Kainerugaba “appreciated the king’s message and clarity provided by Buckingham Palace on the subject, promising that the UPDF would resume preparations to participate in the upcoming games”. In the earlier post, Kainerugaba shared concerns that Uganda’s participation would be “construed as being opposed to his majesty King Charles III of the United Kingdom, whom we deeply revere”, adding that the country would “not participate in anything that does not have his majesty’s approval”. The timing of the post led to speculation it was in response to an official letter to UK senior government and military officials on behalf of Charles that reiterated the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were not working royals and would not use their HRH styles. The recent post stated instead that the withdrawal had followed a statement issued by Buckingham Palace indicating the Invictus Games were a private charity organisation. The king appeared at the 2014 launch of the Invictus Games, but the palace has not confirmed his attendance next year. When asked by the Times about what had motivated the move, Kainerugaba is reported to have said: “I have factions in the Ministry of Defence that support that Harry-Meghan nonsense. I had to quash it straight away. I support the monarch. Period.” Two months earlier, Harry had stood alongside Uganda’s defence minister, Kiryowa Kiwanuka, at an Invictus Games event in London to announce that the east African country would be the 26th country to enter the multisport event for wounded service personnel. Kainerugaba, who, like Harry, is a graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, was appointed army chief in 2024 and is widely seen as his 81-year-old father’s successor to the presidency. He has made several provocative posts on X, including threats to invade neighbouring Kenya, demands that Jay-Z hand over his wife, Beyoncé, so he could marry her, and threats against Bobi Wine, Museveni’s main political rival. Rob Owen, the CEO of the Invictus Games Foundation, said: “We welcome the news that Uganda has confirmed it will continue to be part of the Invictus community and participate in the Invictus Games Birmingham 2027, now less than 300 days away. “Uganda became our 26th nation earlier this year, joining a growing movement that provides year-round recovery opportunities for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans across the world.”

Africa’s richest man aiming to make $23bn from continent’s biggest-ever IPO

The fortune of Africa’s richest person could swell by two thirds to nearly $60bn (£44bn) after his refinery in Nigeria listed publicly in the continent’s biggest-ever initial public offering. If Monday’s flotation of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals on the Nigerian exchange goes to plan, then Aliko Dangote will add a further $23bn (£17bn) to his $35bn net worth. Dangote, who has framed the offering as “an IPO for the people”, hopes it will draw in a broad mix of institutional and retail investors with a minimum subscription of just 10 shares at a cost of 5,250 naira (£2.94). The share purchases have a month to complete, with the process finishing on 13 October. The IPO has been marketed to young Nigerians in particular, through banking platforms and fintech ventures, as a way of building wealth and growing the economy. If completely subscribed, the refinery’s value is expected to rise to about 65.22tn naira (£36.5bn). That would be a big win for Dangote, who has financed several successful presidential campaigns in Nigeria, where policymakers have granted him a near monopoly in his chosen sectors. Responding last year to criticism of his political influence, he said: “We have chosen to build here, to employ here, to produce here. Let us not use the cry of monopoly to stall growth. No one is prevented from investing.” Dangote, 69, made his fortune in cement and sugar. He started his company in the late 1970s with a loan from his maternal grandfather, who was a member of one of west Africa’s all-time richest families, the Dantatas. His recent move into the petroleum sector led to Nigeria becoming a net exporter of refined fuel for the first time. Prior to the opening of the $20bn Dangote refinery on the outskirts of Lagos in January 2024, the country had relied on exporting crude and importing refined petroleum for domestic use, while expending billions to subsidise fuel costs and inject life into its colonial-era refineries. The Dangote refinery now has a capacity of 700,000 barrels a day and is expected to double that by the end of the decade. This year, it has benefited from disruptions in supply across the globe as a result of the war in Iran. The Brent crude benchmark touched $108 a barrel on Monday, after attacks on Saudi Arabia’s east-west pipeline. Dangote has said he will use profits from his Lagos oil refinery to spur continental growth and curb Africa’s reliance on foreign goods. His ambitious plan is to build a $100bn industrial empire centred on heavy manufacturing and regional infrastructure. Key to this is a planned $17bn energy complex in the Kenyan island town of Lamu with an oil-refining capacity of 700,000 barrels a day, to boost the region’s energy security. “We, as Nigerians and Africans, must be bold and lead the change to develop our economies,” Dangote said at an IPO signing ceremony in Lagos on 7 September. “Only then will the others take us very seriously, only then we’ll be in a position to negotiate and walk away with terms we deserve, not those terms that are given to us.” After the ceremony, Dangote’s fellow Nigerian billionaire, the banker Tony Elumelu, called the IPO “a landmark moment for Nigeria and a huge milestone for Africa”.

Gulf states postpone strait of Hormuz talks with Iran as Yemen conflict intensifies

Gulf states have postponed a critical meeting with Iran on the future of the strait of Hormuz owing to a lack of Arab consensus and growing Saudi Arabian anger with Tehran for helping the Houthis loosen Riyadh’s grip in Yemen. The stalemate over the vital waterway came as Houthi rebels launched a fresh barrage of missile and drone attacks on Saudi military targets. A Houthi military spokesperson claimed its forces had attacked the King Khalid airbase in Khamis Mushait, hitting fighter-jet hangars, radar systems, runways and landing strips, ammunition depots and additional targets. Last week, Tehran-backed militias in Iraq forced Saudi Arabia to close a critical east-west pipeline that had been acting as a means for Riyadh to export oil after Iran effectively closed the strait of Hormuz. The closure of the pipeline, the postponement of the Hormuz meeting, and the Houthis’ seizure last week of Yemen’s Red Sea coast – which gave the group control over another vital waterway, the Bab al-Mandab strait – combined to drive up oil prices above $108 a barrel on Monday. Also on Monday, the Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, held urgent discussions with the US ⁠Central Command chief ⁠Adm Brad Cooper in Jeddah to discuss “the latest developments in the region”, according to Saudi media. Sources told US media last week that the Saudi de facto ruler had sought military assistance ‌from Donald Trump to help fight the Houthis. So far the US has provided only logistical and intelligence backing, The Gulf Cooperation Council-Iran meeting was postponed at the last minute, deferring a proposed agreement on a new temporary route for commercial shipping when the strait of Hormuz is reopened. In a statement, Oman’s foreign minister, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, said the meeting had been delayed in the interests of consensus. “We remain committed to fostering dialogue that supports stability and lasting co-operation in our region,” he wrote on X. He gave no further details. The meeting would not have led to the immediate opening of the strait, since Tehran has set a series of other preconditions: including requiring the US to lift a blockade of Iran’s oil ports, the handing over of many frozen Iranian assets and a ceasefire in Lebanon. But it would have been the first meeting between Iran and the main GCC member countries for two years. The planned agreement on a temporary route for ships to use would have formalised Iran’s control of the strait, since the entry route would have been entirely in Iranian waters. Washington has not expressed publicly an opinion over the proposed deal, and some of Trump’s recent social media posts – claiming full US control of the strait – seemed to bear little relationship with what shipping companies have been reporting. The atmosphere surrounding the meeting, in preparation for weeks, had been rapidly souring because of the advance by the Houthis in Yemen and the drone attack on the Saudi pipeline by an Iran-backed Shia militia in Iraq. Vantor Technologies released high-resolution satellite images showing the damage to the east-west pipeline pumping station near Al Mesba’ah, Saudi Arabia. The station appears to be almost completely destroyed. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson denied any Iranian involvement in the pipeline attack, or on events in Yemen. US military bases throughout the Gulf have been attacked by Iran in response to the Iran war. Saudi Arabia, which backs the UN-recognised Yemeni government based in Aden, is trying to regain the initiative after Houthi forces swept down the west coast of Yemen from the port of Hodeidah last week and seized the Bab al-Mandab strait, a narrow waterway that links the Red Sea with Asia and is viewed as second in strategic importance to the strait of Hormuz. It was claimed that a Saudi air bombardment was making it difficult for the Houthis to gain full control of the Yemen waterway or the strategic islands in the Red Sea. The Houthi leadership says is not seeking to block all commercial shipping in the Red Sea but only Saudi-linked ships. It is also offering cut-price fees in the ports it controls on the west coast of Yemen in an effort to lure traffic away from the ports controlled by the Aden-based government in the south. It is widely accepted that Iran backs the Houthis, but the group also operates independently of Tehran. The rebels ultimate aim is to oust Saudi Arabia from the country, and take full control of the territory. Saudi Arabia has tried different tactics in handling the Houthis during the decade-long civil war in Yemen, including making concessions in the hope the highly ideological group would reach a power-sharing deal. The Yemen government said preliminary tolls indicated that 150 civilians had been killed and 200 others injured in the course of the recent Houthi advance. About 85,000 people have been displaced, according to the UN.