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The Houthi offensive launched on Thursday aims to cut off the government-held port of Mokha and reach the districts bordering Bab al-Mandab. A government military official told AFP the rebels succeeded on Saturday evening in “cutting off the road linking Taiz to Mokha”; government forces say they established positions north of Hays, less than 30 kilometres from the coast, while the Houthis advanced west of Taiz and south of Hays. Saudi Arabia carried out three air strikes on recently captured Houthi positions, a military official told AFP on Friday. The Houthis, who declared a maritime blockade of the Kingdom in July and have struck Saudi tankers and Red Sea facilities, claimed on Sunday to have hit Saudi-linked vehicles with ballistic missiles and to have downed a Saudi CH-4 drone over al-Jawf; neither claim is confirmed by Riyadh. Chatham House’s Farea Al-Muslimi: “If they have a chance to fully take over Bab Al-Mandab, they won’t hesitate for a second.”

In Berlin on Sunday Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Johann Wadephul signed a memorandum of understanding establishing a strategic dialogue “at the level of foreign ministers”, attended by the ministry’s Director-General for Europe Abdulrahman Al-Ahmad and adviser Mohammed Al-Yahya. The Saudi Press Agency text says the two “stressed the need to restore the Strait of Hormuz to its normal status” and discussed the volume of bilateral trade. By phone the same day the minister spoke to Bahrain’s Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, to British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, with whom he discussed “the security and safety of waterways”, to Pakistan’s Ishaq Dar on “efforts to contain the crisis and advance peaceful solutions through dialogue”, and to Abbas Araghchi. Arab News also reports a call with Australia’s Penny Wong on the Gaza ceasefire. Separately, Ambassador Ghazi Al-Anzi presented his credentials to Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus on September 6, per SPA.

The Pakistani call is the follow-up Edition 4 flagged: Islamabad says Dar and Prince Faisal reviewed implementation of the Makkah defence agreement after its first Strategic Political and Defence Committee meeting in Istanbul on August 31. No date or venue for the second committee has been published. The Ben-Gvir file that eight foreign ministers condemned on Saturday drew no State Department comment that could be found in session.

The State Department’s notification, dated September 4, approves a possible Foreign Military Sale of Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range kits and bombs to Saudi Arabia at an estimated $5.0 billion: 5,004 KMU-572 and 5,000 KMU-556 guidance kits, 5,004 BLU-111 500-pound and 5,000 BLU-117 2,000-pound general-purpose bombs, plus FMU-139 fuzes, DSU-38 and DSU-40 target detectors and support. The text says the sale “will improve Saudi Arabia’s airborne defense capability to counter current and future regional threats”, that the Kingdom “will have no difficulty absorbing” the items, and that it “will not alter the military balance in the region”. RFE/RL, citing AFP, notes the sale still passes through Congress and that some supporters of Israel could oppose it.

The other Washington file is quieter. The Washington Examiner’s editorial board wrote on Saturday that the US-Saudi civil nuclear agreement announced by the White House on July 22 “needs improvement”, citing its classified status and what it calls weakened safeguards on enrichment. No public text of the agreement, and no Section 123 transmittal to Congress, could be found in session; that remains not established.

The seven OPEC+ producers carrying the 2023 voluntary cuts, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman, met by video on September 6 and “decided to maintain September 2026 required production for October 2026”, reiterated “full conformity” and set the next meeting for October 4. The statement says nothing beyond October. Rystad’s Jorge Leon put the situation plainly to CNBC: the group “can change production targets on paper, but it cannot guarantee that those barrels will be produced or actually reach the market”, and the consequential debate is the 2027 baselines, which require the capacity audits Edition 4 flagged. Brent closed Friday at $96.28, up nearly 8 percent on the week, and opened Monday at $96.80.

The physical picture comes from TankerTrackers’ August tally, published Sunday: exports from the seven Gulf producers were 39 percent below the pre-war baseline of 18.5 million barrels a day, a shortfall of 7.2 million, down from the May peak of 12.4 million when exports were 67 percent short. Iran’s share of that baseline, 1.68 million b/d, is now estimated at zero and may stay there “for the foreseeable future”. On the same day Tehran doubled the price of third-tier petrol to 10,000 tomans a litre from September 8, with the rial above 2.2 million to the dollar on the open market, up from 1.7 million before February 28.

CEDA met by video on September 6 and reviewed the Ministry of Economy and Planning’s quarterly report, which the SPA account says highlighted “the resilience of the Saudi economy”, annual inflation of 1.8 percent in July for a third consecutive month, and a private-sector PMI of 53.1 for a fourth month in expansion. The Council also took the Strategic Management Office’s first-quarter report on Vision 2030 programmes, the National Center for Privatization’s first-half report, which the account says showed “notable progress” in the number of privatisation and PPP projects without giving a figure, the draft regulation of a Global Tourism Academy, the 65th annual report of the General Auditing Bureau, and the monthly report on hosting the headquarters of international organisations in the Kingdom. The Tadawul All Share Index closed Sunday at 11,068.65, up 35.74 points, on SR2.96 billion of trades; SABIC disclosed that Saudi Methanol received Energy Ministry feedstock approval on September 3 for a 1.8 million tonne a year plant in Jubail.

AGBI reports from Big 5 Construct Saudi in Riyadh that the Kingdom awarded SR111 billion ($29.6 billion) of construction contracts between January and July, up almost 60 percent year on year, while the wider Gulf’s monthly award values fell by nearly half between February and May. Mace Consult’s Chris Seymour says the cost at source “hasn’t fluctuated much”; the cost is “bringing it in”, with cargo once landed at Khor Fakkan now trucked overland. Saudi Contractors Authority data show imported, copper-dependent wire and cable up as much as 22 and 26 percent year on year in July while cement fell slightly. Timelines have been reordered rather than blown out, fixed-price contractors have eaten some of the cost, and clients are accepting local substitutes. Seymour says Expo 2030 and the 2034 World Cup have enough runway; the $120 billion water pipeline and the rail programme are unchanged, and rail “has gained priority” as the Gulf builds overland freight links. The PIF’s August strategy, he notes, dropped The Line and Trojena by name.