What you need to know

Al-Qaeda at 25: Weaker core, stronger network

Twenty-five years after 9/11, al-Qaeda has failed at every stated goal: no U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East, no collapsed alliances, no global caliphate. Osama bin Laden is dead, so is his successor Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the group's original Afghan sanctuary is gone.

But the network bin Laden built has outlived the organization he ran. Some affiliates now field thousands of fighters, tax civilians, and control territory more effectively than al-Qaeda's central leadership ever did.

The core shrank. The franchise grew.

From command post to holding company

The pre-9/11 al-Qaeda was centralized: Bin Laden's inner circle picked targets, moved money, and ran training camps. That model is gone.

Current leader Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian long based in Iran, is widely seen as al-Qaeda's de facto chief, though the United Nations says his actual authority remains unclear. U.N. assessments describe the central leadership as marginalized, with limited ability to direct attacks abroad. Affiliates now raise their own money, pick their own fights, and adapt ideology to local politics.

Africa is the new front line

The Sahel coalition JNIM (Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin) is al-Qaeda's strongest theater. It has expanded across Mali and Burkina Faso and is pushing into Niger and coastal West Africa.

In Somalia, al-Shabaab has survived nearly two decades of Somali, African Union, and U.S. pressure. It taxes territory, runs intelligence networks, and still threatens Mogadishu, functioning as insurgency, shadow government, and criminal economy at once.

Yemen and Afghanistan: latent risk, not restored base

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is weaker than its peak during Yemen's civil war but is regaining financial strength through smuggling, extortion, and maritime crime between Yemen and the Horn of Africa. It remains the affiliate historically most interested in hitting Western targets.

Afghanistan under the Taliban is a permissive environment, and Zawahiri's 2022 death in Kabul proved old ties endure. But the large training-camp infrastructure of the 1990s hasn't reappeared publicly; the most active current threats from Afghan soil come from the Pakistani Taliban and ISIS-Khorasan, not al-Qaeda directly.

Patience beat spectacle

Islamic State's post-2013 rise, with its caliphate and mass foreign-fighter recruitment, briefly eclipsed al-Qaeda. But ISIS's visibility made it a target for systematic destruction. Al-Qaeda's affiliates instead embedded in local insurgencies and avoided provoking major intervention, a slower model that proved more durable.

Western homelands are safer, but intent hasn't faded

No attack has come close to matching 9/11's scale, thanks to intelligence sharing, financial tracking, and leadership strikes that make centrally directed, multi-operative plots far harder to organize. The U.N. says al-Qaeda still wants external attacks and its propaganda still pushes self-initiated violence, even as centralized capability has eroded. Small-scale or inspired attacks remain the more realistic threat.

The scenario to watch

The likelier danger isn't a repeat of 9/11, but the emergence of jihadist-controlled zones inside failing states.

Territorial control of that kind would generate money, recruits, and training ground, potentially reviving the external-operations capability the network has largely lost since 2001.

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Al-Qaeda revives bin Laden name in new propaganda

Al-Qaeda's media arm, As-Sahab, has released previously unseen footage of Hamza bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden. The release is fueling speculation about his fate and about the group's messaging strategy, but it offers no proof he's alive.

The footage appears archival, not newly recorded, and contains no verifiable reference to events after 2019. The U.S. announced that year that Hamza bin Laden had been killed in a counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. No authenticated video or audio has surfaced from him since.

Why it matters

Al-Qaeda is deliberately putting the bin Laden name and image back into circulation. That choice likely serves one of three purposes: reinforcing ties to the group's founding generation, shoring up ideological cohesion across a decentralized network, or sowing deliberate ambiguity about Hamza bin Laden's fate.

Unverified claims that Hamza survived the 2019 operation and later resurfaced in Afghanistan have circulated for years. Absent footage with a clear, contemporary reference point, this release should be read as a propaganda move, not evidence he's alive.

It’s the U.S. vs China, everyone needs to pick a side

BRICS summit tests India's balancing act

The BRICS summit in New Delhi brings together leaders whose countries are reshaping the global order, but whose interests increasingly diverge. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian are expected to join Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other bloc leaders.

Members share an interest in diluting Western dominance, but the wars involving Iran and Ukraine are likely to expose real splits over security and foreign policy within the group.

India is caught in the middle

New Delhi is trying to hold three relationships at once: longstanding ties with Russia, deepening links with Iran, and closer strategic and economic cooperation with the U.S. and Europe, all while working to improve relations with China. The summit is a direct test of whether India's "strategic autonomy" policy can survive sharpening geopolitical divisions.

A Modi-Xi thaw, not the communique, is the real story

Xi's expected trip would be his first to India in seven years, marking another step in the gradual Sino-Indian thaw since deadly clashes on their disputed Himalayan border. Relations remain cautious, weighed down by strategic suspicion, economic restrictions, and unresolved border disputes.

A substantive Modi-Xi meeting could matter more than the summit's formal communique, especially if it yields concrete steps toward normalizing political or economic ties.

The bigger question for the bloc

The summit will show whether BRICS is becoming a more coherent geopolitical bloc or remains a loose forum for members pursuing separate, sometimes conflicting, national interests.

Birthplace of civilization

Houthis push toward Bab el-Mandeb, threatening Saudi oil route

Yemen's Houthis have sharply widened their campaign against Saudi Arabia, pairing a ground offensive along the Red Sea coast with sustained missile and drone strikes on Saudi energy and military sites. The combination threatens one of the world's key alternative oil-export corridors.

Mocha falls, Bab el-Mandeb is next

Houthi forces captured the Red Sea port of Mocha on September 10 and have pushed south toward Dhubab and the approaches to Bab el-Mandeb, with fighting also underway on strategic islands near the strait. Consolidating these positions would significantly boost the Houthis' ability to threaten shipping transiting between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Saudi Arabia has responded with airstrikes and stepped-up support for Yemeni government forces, and is reportedly seeking greater U.S. military assistance amid concern that Mocha's fall could reshape the balance of power around the strait.

Missile campaign hits Saudi infrastructure directly

Starting September 8, the Houthis launched coordinated ballistic-missile and drone strikes on targets around Jizan, Abha, Najran, and Khamis Mushait, with further attacks on September 9.

Saudi Arabia's Hormuz workaround is now under threat too

The East-West Pipeline and Yanbu export route have taken on outsized strategic weight because of separate disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia can move oil west to bypass Hormuz, but tankers loading at Yanbu still must transit the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb, the same waters the Houthis are now advancing toward.

That leaves Saudi Arabia's primary alternative export corridor exposed at both ends: missiles and drones can hit pipelines, pumping stations, and refineries inside the kingdom, while the ground advance threatens tankers once they enter the Red Sea. The Houthis say their maritime campaign targets Saudi shipping specifically, but past strikes show they've struggled to reliably distinguish vessels, a track record that could raise insurance costs and deter shippers regardless of stated intent.

A two-strait crisis in the making

The offensive increasingly reads as part of the broader Iran-U.S. regional confrontation: Iran can pressure traffic through Hormuz while the Houthis pressure Saudi Arabia's Red Sea workaround. Simultaneous disruption of both waterways would carry substantial consequences for global oil supply and shipping costs.

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Mecca Accords face their first real test

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on August 7, 2026, a NATO-style collective defense pact under which an attack on one signatory is treated as an attack on all.

A meeting in Turkey later created formal institutions, including a permanent secretariat based in Saudi Arabia, with a mechanism for other countries to join reportedly already underway. 

Houthi strikes are the pact's first trigger

The Houthis' September 8-9 missile and drone strikes on Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan, and Najran, which wounded at least 73 people and forced a temporary shutdown at a Saudi Aramco facility in Jazan, mark the first serious challenge to the alliance's collective-defense clause. Pakistan's government has sent mixed signals. 

Turkey and Pakistan are hedging, not mobilizing

Both governments remain wary of direct confrontation with Iran, the Houthis' backer. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has said the nature of any assistance depends on the specific crisis and an explicit request from the attacked nation, a qualification that rules out automatic troop deployment and points Ankara's contribution toward drones, radar, and surveillance technology instead. 

The alliance's credibility, not its firepower, is what's being tested. Continued Houthi attacks could push Turkey and Pakistan toward deeper security involvement alongside Saudi Arabia, widening the circle of states with a direct stake in the kingdom's security. 

What determines whether it holds

Washington may want stronger Saudi defenses while trying to prevent a Houthi attack from triggering a wider war in Yemen, a calculus that doesn't always match how Riyadh, Ankara, and Islamabad want to respond collectively. Whether the Mecca Accords evolve into a functioning deterrent or remain largely symbolic will likely depend on whether the Houthi campaign against Saudi Arabia, now paired with the ground offensive toward Bab el-Mandeb, continues to escalate.

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U.S. tightens the financial noose on Iran's network

The U.S. has widened its financial campaign against Iran's regional proxies, sanctioning individuals and companies accused of bankrolling Kata'ib Hezbollah and Lebanese Hezbollah across Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, and the UAE.

The Treasury Department announced the measures under "Operation Economic Outcast," targeting the financial and commercial networks that move funds to sustain Iran-aligned armed groups.

The bigger shift is in licensing policy

More consequential than the individual designations is a broader change in U.S. licensing policy: a new presumption of denial for most Iran-related requests. That shift points to Washington moving past targeted, case-by-case sanctions toward a more sweeping effort to cut off Iran and the financial infrastructure supporting its regional allies and proxies.

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Iran resumes work at Pickaxe Mountain

The International Atomic Energy Agency is monitoring new construction at Iran's Pickaxe Mountain site near the Natanz nuclear complex, raising concern that Tehran is working to restore or relocate sensitive nuclear capabilities underground. The site houses deeply buried tunnel complexes that survived earlier U.S.-Israeli strikes.

Trump's red line, tested

The activity comes shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened further strikes if Iran resumed work at the site. It's unclear what exactly Iran is building or whether it connects directly to uranium enrichment, but the timing puts Tehran on a collision course with Washington's stated threshold for military action.

The next flashpoint

Any move to push sensitive facilities deeper underground would make Pickaxe Mountain hard to reach militarily and even harder to verify diplomatically. That combination makes the site a likely focal point in the next phase of the Iran conflict.

Europe's center of gravity shifts east, politics moves right, hostility to migrants from the south rises, as ties with the U.S. fray, and fear of Russia increases

ECB hikes again as energy shock bites

The European Central Bank has raised its policy rate for the second time this year, to 2.5%, as a worsening global energy shock revives inflation across the eurozone. Disruption to Middle Eastern energy supplies and shipping is pushing up oil, gas, and transportation costs, threatening to reverse progress on inflation.

A three-way budget squeeze

The rate hike lands as European governments try to do three expensive things at once: raise defense spending, sustain military and financial support for Ukraine, and absorb the economic fallout of the Middle East conflict. Higher rates raise the cost of all three simultaneously.

The room to maneuver is shrinking

Higher energy prices, renewed inflation, and tighter monetary policy are compressing the fiscal space available to European governments at the same time. If the energy shock persists, states will face sharper trade-offs between defense commitments, Ukraine support, and domestic spending as borrowing costs keep climbing.

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Bosnian lawmakers push to internationalize Serbia dispute

Fourteen members of Bosnia and Herzegovina's parliament are seeking international backing to suspend Serbia's "special and parallel relations" agreement with Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity. They've circulated the appeal to hundreds of foreign governments, institutions, and diplomatic missions, an attempt to pull outside powers into a dispute long confined to Bosnia's internal politics.

What's behind it

The special-relations arrangement, permitted under the Dayton Peace Agreement, lets Serbia maintain close political, economic, and cultural ties with Republika Srpska. Bosniak leaders have periodically accused Belgrade of using those ties to fuel separatist sentiment within the entity. The latest push coincides with renewed controversy over Serbia's handling of convicted Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladić's legacy and mounting criticism of Belgrade's nationalist politics.

Why it could escalate

A sustained international campaign against the agreement would put fresh scrutiny on Republika Srpska's ties to Belgrade and could reopen broader arguments over how the Dayton framework should be interpreted. That, in turn, risks deepening political polarization inside Bosnia itself, at a moment when Bosniak-Serb tensions are already elevated.

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