A Saudi Arabia-led coalition in Yemen said Monday it had struck "military targets" belonging to the Houthis in Hodeida on the Red Sea coast.

Coalition spokesman Turki Al-Malki said on X that its naval forces had "destroyed weapons depots, facilities storing booby-trapped boats and naval mines" and had "thwarted a planned attack" targeting waterways in the southern Red Sea.

The Yemeni military said it carried out more than 1,000 strikes and began an offensive against the Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, while the Saudi-led coalition supporting the internationally recognized government said 100 warplanes flew sorties at dawn.

The government had announced on Sunday the lofty goal of retaking all Houthi territory — home to most of Yemen's population, and much of it held for more than a decade.

Last month, the Iran-backed group seized swathes of coastline along the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, a chokepoint for oil and cargo shipping, in Yemen's deadliest fighting in years.

Turkey and Pakistan will undertake a "rapid deployment" of troops to Saudi Arabia as part of a new mutual defense alliance, the three countries said Monday, as the Gulf kingdom faces escalating attacks from Yemen's Houthis.

Following a meeting in Riyadh, the trio agreed "to move immediately to the practical implementation of the collective defense commitments and to take the necessary measures to provide the agreed military forces and capabilities and ensure their rapid deployment in the Kingdom," according to a joint statement.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said negotiations with the U.S. were "meaningless" and only resulted in renewed attacks, state media reported, with progress on ending the Middle East war stalled for months.

"So far, they have attacked us three times after talks, and this shows that they are not seeking dialogue; rather, their goal is to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran," Pezeshkian was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA on Monday.

"With an enemy that every day resorts to assassination, sanctions, pressure and threats, and that breaks its commitments, negotiations are meaningless."

Negotiations have effectively been at an impasse since Iranian attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz prompted the U.S. to resume military operations, and recent indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly failed to produce a breakthrough.

After the U.S. scaled back military operations in September, favoring economic pressure instead, Iran's top diplomat said Sunday that the war would not be resolved through military action or new sanctions.

Vowing that Iran would respond with a stronger defense if attacks resumed, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that "only negotiations based on justice and fairness could end the conflict."

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Iraqi Airways will resume direct flights to Iran starting Thursday, the airline announced Monday, according to Iraq's Ministry of Transport.

The airline said its "new operating plan will include regular daily flights" between Najaf International Airport, in central Iraq, and major Iranian airports in Mashhad, Tehran and Isfahan.

The move comes as part of efforts by Iraq's Ministry of Transport to "reactivate air transport" and strengthen air connectivity between Iraq and regional destinations.

According to the ministry's statement, the move to restore flights to Iran aims to "enhance the smooth flow of passengers" and provide "regular air transport options between Iraq and Iranian cities."

President Trump on Monday blamed Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries for high gas prices, insisting that the Iran war was no longer responsible.

"What's driving up Gasoline is no longer the Strait of Hormuz, because Record Numbers of Barrels are coming out now on an almost daily basis, but the word, 'Refineries,' where Russia's are being blown up by Ukraine," Mr. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

Mr. Trump also blamed what he said was the closing of oil refineries in California, led by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, with whom the president has a longstanding political rivalry. His comments came as the Republican Party potentially faces losing control of Congress after the November midterm elections.

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Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni traveled to Doha on Monday, where he'd been invited by his Qatari counterpart to meet with senior Qatari officials. 

Momeni was scheduled to meet and hold talks with Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Qatar's interior minister, according to Iran's Interior Ministry's Information Center. The center said Momeni would also meet with several other Qatari officials during the visit, joined by a delegation of Iranian Interior Ministry officials and governors who accompanied him.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday that he is concerned about the "sharp escalation" of conflict in Yemen, amid fighting between Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed government forces.

"The Secretary-General is deeply concerned by the sharp escalation in fighting, which has intensified markedly in recent days," Guterres' spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said.

"He condemns the continued Houthi cross-border attacks against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." 

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U.S. soldiers wounded in the Iran war's deadliest strike yet on American troops are raising concerns publicly, many for the first time, about whether commanders underestimated the threat. Some of those wounded also said the military medical system failed them. 

The Pentagon has so far released few details about the Iranian drone strike on Port Shuaiba in Kuwait that killed six soldiers on March 1, the day after the U.S. and Israel started the war against Iran.

The Associated Press spoke with 13 soldiers, primarily officers, serving in key positions of responsibility there or familiar with high-level briefings. Many said the Pentagon did not take Iranian threats seriously enough as it launched Operation Epic Fury. Some of the wounded soldiers said they've faced inadequate medical care and bureaucratic barriers since then.

Several soldiers spoke on the record — rare for troops still in the Army — others on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

The U.S. on Monday announced the approval of a $1 billion sale to the United Arab Emirates of up to 10,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System guidance sections for rockets.

"The proposed sale will improve the United Arab Emirates' capability to meet current and future threats by developing and maintaining a strong and ready self-defense capability and improving interoperability with U.S. forces," the State Department said in a statement.

It "will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major defense partner," the statement added.

The Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System converts unguided rockets into precision munitions that can be employed for purposes including shooting down drones, thereby avoiding the use of costly missiles to shoot down comparatively cheap aircraft.

The UAE and other U.S.-allied Gulf countries – many of which are home to American bases – have been hard hit by the Iran war, during which Tehran's forces have repeatedly targeted them with both drones and missiles.

The State Department also announced on Monday the approval of a $400 million sale to Kuwait – another Gulf state – of "repair and return services" for Patriot missiles, which have played a key role in countering Iranian attacks in the region.

"Kuwait will use the enhanced capability to strengthen its homeland defense" and "will have no difficulty absorbing these articles and services into its armed forces," the department said in a statement.

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Three tankers were hit by unknown projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, according to the U.K. Navy's Maritime Trade Operations Center (UKMTO). The attackers are unknown.

Two of the vessels were crude oil carriers; one was a liquid natural gas carrier, according to UKMTO.

The monitor reported earlier that another tanker transiting the strait on Monday was instructed to turn around by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps "or the vessel would be targeted."

"The master of the tanker has confirmed that they have complied with the instruction," UKMTO wrote in its update.

Iranian officials said Sunday that a U.S. response to Tehran's proposed conditions for reopening the strait was being reviewed Sunday and it was preparing one of its own. President Trump had rejected Tehran's proposed conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz while leaving the door open to further talks or renewed military operations.

The Houthis have accused Saudi Arabia of escalating its military campaign and blockade against Yemen, saying Riyadh was returning to a direct role after what the Iran-backed rebel group described as its previous failures.

In a statement shared on social media, Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdel Salam, who is based in Muscat, Oman, accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out airstrikes targeting civilian areas and residential neighborhoods in several Yemeni provinces.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen's months-old civil war on the side of the internationally-recognized government against the Houthis.

A 2022 ceasefire had largely held until this summer, when the Iran war reignited fighting in Yemen. That fighting escalated Monday, with both sides claiming to have control over the crucial Bab el-Mandeb Strait energy chokepoint. 

Saudi-backed government forces announced a new operation, meanwhile, aimed at retaking control of Yemen's capital city Sanaa, which has been under Houthi control for more than a decade.

In his statement, Salam accused Saudi Arabia of being "at the forefront of the aggression against Yemen, committing dozens of massacres, as happened today in more than one province." 

Iran's judiciary said two men were executed Monday for involvement in the deaths of four police officers during anti-government protests in January. Authorities accused them of murdering the officers in the central city of Isfahan during protests that began in the capital Tehran in December over economic grievances before spreading nationwide.

"Alireza Sepahi and Alireza Raissi were hanged this morning after the Supreme Court upheld the verdict," the judiciary's Mizan Online website said, without specifying the dates of their arrest or any details of their trials.

The court had sentenced the two men, whose ages were not given, to death "for membership in an armed group and undermining national security," Mizan added.

The number of executions in Iran has risen since the start of the war with the U.S., which was triggered in late February by joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

In 2025, Iran more than doubled its number of executions, according to Amnesty International.

On Saturday, Iran announced the execution of another man convicted of numerous charges including firing a military-grade weapon at police officers during the protests.

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A Houthi-affiliated group on Monday warned airlines against operating in Saudi Arabian airspace, indicating the Iran-backed rebels could threaten civil aviation over Saudi Arabia as long as the kingdom's support for Yemen's government forces continues.

"For the safety of civil aviation, we warn airlines operating in the skies of Saudi Arabia that they are unsafe as long as the Saudi aggression against our country continues," the center said.

The statement from the Houthis' Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (NOCC) said "the skies of Saudi Arabia will be a theater for operations by our armed forces," declaring that the rebel group would accept "no responsibility after this announcement" for anything that happens to aircraft.

Yemen's Saudi-backed government claimed Monday to have launched an assault on the country's Houthi-held capital of Sanaa, as fighting against the Iran-backed rebels continued to convulse the country.

"Our armed forces have begun implementing a strategic offensive operation on Sanaa," Majed Al-Nazili, spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, said Monday in a post on X.

The Houthis said government strikes on Sanaa had killed a female student.

"A student was killed and two others were wounded in a Saudi attack" on the Bani Hashish area, the Houthi-affiliated TV channel Al-Masirah reported, adding that strikes also targeted Saada, a region known as a stronghold.

The Houthis seized Sanaa more than a decade ago, at the outset of Yemen's grinding civil war, which has now become intertwined with the wider war in the region sparked by the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran at the end of February. 

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A tanker turned back after being threatened by Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, according to the U.K. navy's Maritime Trade Operations center (UKMTO).

"A tanker transiting the Strait of Hormuz inbound was hailed by the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] and instructed to turn back or the vessel would be targeted," UKMTO said, adding that the "master of the tanker has confirmed that they have complied with the instruction." 

The ship was entering the strait near Oman's coastline, the agency added, using a route touted repeatedly by the U.S. government as safe and open.

On Sunday, UKMTO said it received a report of a possible attack on another tanker in the region's other vital shipping chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which is the southern gateway to the Red Sea.

Multiple explosions detonated close to a tanker south of Al-Mukha, Yemen, in the Bab el-Mandeb, the monitor said, adding that the crew were reported safe.

Hormuz, through which about one fifth of the world's oil and gas transited before the war, remains a key sticking point in negotiations between Iran and the U.S. to end their conflict.

While attacks on ships blamed on Iran have continued, the U.S. has not announced strikes against the Islamic Republic since Sept. 1.

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Global oil stockpiles are "scarily thin" owing to the U.S.-Iran war, Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said Monday, days after G7 nations agreed to release more of their inventories to ease supply concerns.

"The system is already straining," Nasser told the Energy Intelligence Forum in London. "And with precious little else the world can turn to, the supply resilience cushion is scarily thin."

His remarks came hours after the news that oil flows from the Middle East surpassed pre-war levels last week. That welcome news for markets has been tempered, however, by furious fighting between Saudi-backed forces and Iran's Houthi rebel allies in Yemen over control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another key energy chokepoint and the southern gateway to the Red Sea.

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Saudi Arabia's East-West Crude Oil Pipeline was struck again Sunday, a source working in the kingdom's energy sector told French news agency AFP on Monday, adding that the flow of oil through the pipeline had stopped.

"The East-West pipeline was attacked again yesterday," the source told AFP. "A pumping station east of Riyadh in Khurais. It wasn't targeted before. There was big damage and the pipeline stopped again."

The Reuters news agency reported Monday, however, that oil was still flowing through the pipeline, also citing an unnamed source. Bloomberg also reported that oil was still flowing, citing people familiar with the matter.

News of the strike came a day after the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen said they had targeted sites in Saudi Arabia belonging to state oil giant Aramco, including infrastructure in Khurais.

The East-West pipeline has been targeted multiple times since war erupted across the Middle East, following the U.S. and Israel launching joint strikes on Iran at the end of February.

Last month, Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, shut the East-West pipeline, which runs about 700 miles between its main oil fields in the east and the Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea.

The pipeline was shut down from Sept. 11 to 22, according to commodity-tracking platform Kpler.

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The Yemeni military announced a broad set of strikes against Houthi targets on Monday after the government declared a new campaign to retake all territory from the rebels, even as the Iran-backed group made fresh gains on the ground.

The declared offensive sets a lofty goal for the beleaguered Saudi-backed government a month after it lost swathes of the country's Red Sea coastline, including key territory around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — a key choke point for international shipping.

Hours after the Yemeni government's announcement, Yemen's military spokesman said its forces launched over 1,000 "strikes against artillery and rocket launcher positions, defensive fortifications, approach and reinforcement routes, supply lines and logistics assets, combat reinforcements" belonging to the Houthis.

He later said the military had taken back control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Houthi-aligned media earlier denied government forces had retaken territory in the area, the Reuters news agency reported.

The government strikes appear to have had little immediate impact on the Houthis' ongoing advances on the ground. On Sunday, the group effectively encircled the key city of Taiz after cutting the main supply route linking it to the interim government capital of Aden.

Fighting between the two sides in and around Taiz province killed more than 70 people in a single day, sources from both sides of the conflict told the French news agency AFP on Sunday. The agency previously reported that 80 combatants had been killed on Friday.

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Iran's foreign minister insisted on Sunday that there would be no military solution to the United States' war against the Islamic republic, with talks on ending the conflict apparently at an impasse.

A campaign of heavy U.S. bombardment failed to bring a decisive close to the war as it began, and Washington has dialed back military operations in recent weeks in favor of economic pressure.

The main point of contention remains Iran's continuing attempt to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for Gulf oil and gas where a U.K. maritime agency reported on Sunday that another tanker had been struck by an unknown projectile.

"If our enemies again choose the path of military confrontation, our response will be stronger than before, and we will defend ourselves with even more force," Abbas Araghchi said at a gathering of his counterparts.

"There is no military solution, nor any solution based on new sanctions," he continued, adding "only negotiations based on justice and fairness" could end the conflict.

Civilians receive training on the use of long-barreled firearms, multiple rocket launchers and air defense systems during drills held in Tehran, Iran, Oct. 4, 2026.  Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/Getty

The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding in June that spelled out a framework for a permanent resolution, but Iranian attacks on vessels in the strait prompted the U.S. to resume military operations.

Iran has sought to impose its control over the vital shipping lane since the start of the war, striking vessels that try to transit without its authorization.

The U.S. has imposed a counterblockade of Iranian ports and has struck vessels it accuses of violating the countermeasure.

Middle East oil exports, excluding those from Iran, surpassed their pre-war levels last week, despite attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, according to data from the maritime tracking firm Kpler.

For the first time since the U.S. and Israel launched their offensive against Iran at the end of February, the weekly average of shipments rose for several days above the pre-conflict average of 18 million barrels per day.

Crude oil exports reached pre-war levels in September, with at least 16.5 million barrels leaving the region excluding Iran, Kpler said.

"Forty percent now bypass Hormuz, and most crude crossing the strait changes tankers offshore," Kpler said, adding that most of the oil flowed through Saudi and United Arab Emirates pipelines.

Those figures include flows via the Red Sea, a route increasingly used to bypass the blockade Iran is attempting to impose on the strait, through which around a fifth of the world's petroleum supplies crossed before the conflict.

Iran still claims control over the strait, and ships without its authorization risk coming under attack, but more and more are making it out, and alternative routes meant to bypass the waterway are operating at full capacity.

Despite the rebound, experts stressed that the situation is far from normal, and Iran is still being deprived of a large share of its own exports by a U.S. counterblockade of Iranian ports. 

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that President Trump was "well aware of the risks to energy flows" before launching the war in Iran earlier this year, but argued "the world cannot sustain a nuclear-armed Iran."

"He knew it was going to elevate energy prices in the short run, he said, 'I'm going to take a hit there, but I got to do the right thing,'" Wright said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

Americans have been feeling the financial squeeze of soaring gas and diesel prices in recent months. But the Trump administration has pointed to the potential threat a nuclear-armed Iran could pose, and how it could represent a long-term threat to energy prices. Wright defended the president on Sunday, arguing that Mr. Trump has taken a "strong stand that Iran, the world's greatest terrorist regime, cannot and will not have nuclear weapons." 

Wright expressed confidence that prices will fall, pointing to increasing supplies coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. gasoline production, the summer driving season slowing, among other factors. Asked whether he expects prices to go down over the next four weeks — as Republicans eye a tough environment in the lead-up to the midterm elections — Wright said, "absolutely." 

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After President Trump rejected Tehran's proposed conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz — while leaving the door open to further talks or renewed military operations — Iranian officials said the U.S. response was being reviewed, and it was preparing one of its own.

"The Americans, through intermediaries, have also conveyed their views on this proposal, and these views are currently being examined inside the country through the relevant channels and procedures," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told reporters on Sunday, according to the Iranian state news agency IRNA.

"Whenever the final position of the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready, appropriate steps will be taken accordingly," he said. "At the same time, the Islamic Republic of Iran is also preparing itself for any other possible scenario."

Meanwhile, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei characterized the latest U.S. counterproposal as being "in line with their previous proposals concerning nuclear issues."

"We have clearly indicated that we are focusing on the issue of the Strait of Hormuz," he said Sunday, adding that reopening the waterway required "an end to the disruptions to Iranian commercial maritime traffic and the lifting of sanctions."

The U.S. and Israel have said the war is necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, though the focus soon shifted to reopening the Strait of Hormuz after its closure sent shockwaves through world energy markets.

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