🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 An Iranian airliner carrying Yemen's delegation home from the funeral was on final approach when Saudi jets bombed the runway in front of the waiting news crews
Malcolm Nance spent his morning on that scene, because he thinks it opened a new front.
The plane diverted to a derelict strip at Hudaydah, the Houthis called the strike American-requested, and within hours ballistic missiles were flying at a Saudi airbase, the first Yemeni-Saudi exchange in four years.
Now Houthi-linked media says the Bab el-Mandeb closes like Hormuz.
Malcolm's math on that pairing: shut both straits and you're choking off 30-35 PERCENT of the world's energy, and the Yanbu terminus where Saudi's rerouted oil meets the Red Sea becomes the ripest target on the map.
His deeper alarm was the pattern: Lebanese, Syrian, Kurdish, Yemeni proxies all being spun up at once against Iran's network.
Forty years in the region taught him how that ends, air power can't take land, and proxies who get beaten hand their equipment to the winners.
On the War Powers letter, he was precise: notifying Congress of resumed hostilities on July 7 starts a 60-day clock.
September 7, this is either wrapped or authorized, and the Senate votes aren't there.
His closer on Iran's calculus: they fought Iraq for a decade and lost a million people between them.
Their two weapons are time and patience.
@MalcolmNance
