Last month, I argued in these pages that the Houthis had handed President Donald Trump leverage over China. Here is what it bought.
The Houthis did not close the Bab el Mandeb to the world. They closed it to one country. In July, they declared a blockade of Saudi shipping. In September, they seized the Yemeni port of Mokha. On Sept. 11, after a drone attack, Saudi Arabia shut the pipeline it used to carry oil around the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea.
On the day Mokha fell, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump twice, urging him to strike the Houthis. Trump said no. According to Axios, Washington offered intelligence and targeting data instead of bombs. Israel stayed out. A senior Yemeni military official told the Associated Press he believed Riyadh lacked an American green light. The blow landed on Saudi tankers, Chinese supply lines, and European fuel bills. It did not land on American ships.
Then came the summits. Two days after seeing Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations, Trump hosted Xi Jinping at the White House on Sept. 24. What Beijing promised in private, no one outside the room knows. What happened next, everyone can see.
Days later, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan was in Washington to discuss Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. On Oct. 2, Vice President JD Vance chaired an unannounced meeting at Camp David on Iran and Yemen, according to Axios. On Oct. 5, Saudi-backed Yemeni forces retook Mokha with 100 coalition jets in support, and Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan agreed to activate “deterrence measures” under their Mecca defense pact. The Houthis deny losing the port. Meanwhile, Hormuz reopened, for almost everyone. Iran’s exports are drying up under an American naval blockade.
That is controlled chaos, and its method is aikido: You do not block the blow, you let it travel and steer where it lands. Controlled chaos does not mean every event is scripted from one desk. The Houthis did not take Mokha on Washington’s orders. They did not have to. Before Xi arrived, their blow landed on Riyadh, Beijing, and Brussels. After the summit, the counterpunch came, and Iran’s proxies lost the port they had won. The force was Iran’s. The direction was Washington’s.
The second half of the method is the operational pause. On Oct. 1, Trump told Time that renewed strikes on Iran after the Nov. 3 midterm elections were “possible” if no deal is reached, and the Wall Street Journal reports a third carrier strike group is heading to the region. Until the vote, every lever Trump pulls lowers the price of fuel. On Oct. 2, under his pressure, the G-7 agreed to release up to 100 million barrels of crude and diesel from emergency reserves after Washington threatened to ban diesel exports. After U.S. diesel passed $6 a gallon, he pressed Ukraine to stop hitting what he called diesel refineries. His critics said he had sold out Ukraine. There is no refinery that makes only diesel. And if Trump sold Ukraine, nobody told Ukraine: its Defense Ministry claims 51% of Russia’s refining capacity is out of action.
Which brings us to Russia. Vladimir Putin turned 74 on Oct. 7 and spent the evening at home with Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor who launched Nord Stream with him. Russian missiles and drones marked the day by killing at least 30 people across Ukraine, 22 of them in a single apartment block in Pryluky. Ukraine answered with drone strikes on refineries in Omsk and far-northern Ukhta. On Oct. 8, the Kremlin said no birthday telegram had come from Trump, and that a call with Trump still had no date.
Putin’s real problem is arithmetic. Urals crude roughly doubled after the war on Iran began, to above $92 at the end of September, against $59 in his budget. Yet oil and gas revenue for the first nine months fell 17% year over year. The only thing propping up Russia’s oil budget is a war Russia is not fighting.
On Oct. 9, the call came. It was supposed to be about a suspected plague death. It turned out to be about diesel. Trump announced that Russia would “immediately” supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel to the American and global market, then 500,000 tons in November, a million after that, and later 3 million, “based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries.” There is still no refinery that makes only diesel. The Trump Treasury Department issued a temporary license for Russian diesel the same day, and the Kremlin confirmed Russia was ready to supply oil and fuel to world markets. Zelensky, who a day earlier told Washington to stop feeding Russia’s economy, called it a gift to Putin.
It is a dilemma, not a gift. At the Valdai forum on Oct. 1, Putin acknowledged that the refinery strikes had cost Russia about 1% of GDP, yet said Russia had enough diesel, which sanctions kept off world markets. Washington has now removed its share of that excuse. But Russia has banned most of its own diesel exports since July, after Ukrainian strikes cut its available refining capacity by as much as 60% over the summer, according to Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas researchers. If Putin delivers, he sells scarce diesel into a market his own promise is already pushing down, and Trump collects the credit before Nov. 3. If he stalls, he can no longer blame American sanctions, and Trump has his reason to fire the Graham Act, which authorizes tariffs of up to 100% on the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas. The license is temporary. The Graham Act is not.
Zelensky also offered Washington a trade: Ukraine will stop setting Russian refineries on fire if Russia stops destroying Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The strikes Trump asked Kyiv to halt are now a bargaining chip.
In my assessment, the most nervous readers of Trump’s post were not American truckers. They were in Tehran, Beijing, and Pyongyang. A day earlier, Putin had told Iran’s president that the war broke out “through no fault of Iran’s.” Now, by Trump’s account, he agreed to help Washington lower the fuel prices that war drove up. Trump also had a line for Tehran: Iran “will not have a Nuclear Weapon!”
China is the hinge. Beijing entered this crisis holding about 1.4 billion barrels of crude, roughly 120 days of imports. In my assessment, holding the Graham tariffs in reserve gives Beijing time to stop needing Russian barrels before Washington has to punish it for buying them. Whether Beijing takes that exit is the question Oct. 18 begins to answer.
So write down four dates. Oct. 18: the Graham Act’s first deadline. Oct. 27: Israel votes. Oct. 29: Cyrus the Great Day, a date Iran’s rulers have spent years discouraging. Nov. 3: America votes.
THE MEDIA LIED TO YOU, AGAIN. TRUMP DID NOT SAY IRAN SHOULD ‘TAKE OUT’ LOS ANGELES AND SAN DIEGO
The chaos bought the leverage. The pause protects the vote. After Nov. 3, watch which lever moves first, and watch the price of Urals.
Putin turned 74 without a telegram from Washington. Two days later, he got a call and an order for diesel. The dates that will decide his 75th are on Washington’s calendar.
Emzari Gelashvili is a San Francisco–based geopolitical analyst and columnist who monitors Russian-language media. From 1996 to 2008, he held senior positions in Georgia’s Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Defense, and Ministry of Internal Affairs, with a counterintelligence career focused on Russian and Iranian intelligence operations, and he was a member of the Georgian Parliament from 2008 to 2012. His work appears in Newsweek, the Hill, the Washington Examiner, RealClearDefense, and RealClearWorld, and at emzargelashvili.substack.com.