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Friday, November 13, 2026
[Salon] War Comes to Riyadh - ArabDigest.org. Guest Post
War Comes to Riyadh
Summary: cross-border Huthi missile and drone strikes on Riyadh and vital oil installations have shattered Saudi Arabia’s aura of invulnerability, bringing the Yemen war into the heart of the kingdom's financial district.
Missile salvos over Riyadh have pierced Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s image of regional dominance and exposed the Kingdom’s strategic vulnerability in the ongoing war against Ansar Allah. Riyadh’s response to the bombardment has been to swing between administrative stopgaps, such as abruptly closing schools for one afternoon, and petitioning foreign forces and Western security guarantors to shore up the Kingdom’s crumbling defences. Unable to recognise his strategic deficit, Ibn Salman is still operating under the assumption financial liquidity and borrowing will allow him to win the conflict, pouring in funds to contract Egyptian, Syrian, Pakistani, or Turkish personnel. US and Israeli strikes last year were unable to neutralise the Huthis and Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear he is not proffering assistance now. Meanwhile the latest request for Syrian forces, recently made public for the first time, has highlighted the Crown Prince’s inability to win the war he so foolishly started.
On Sunday, the physical vulnerability of Saudi Arabia’s financial nerve centre was laid bare when cruise missiles and drones struck the Kingdom’s commercial and political heart in Riyadh, in full view of the public. The missile and drone strike directly hit the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD), damaging the offices of state oil titan Saudi Aramco. The attack occurred during the morning rush hour, as students returned to classes and people were heading to work. KAFD was still under remote-work orders, limiting the immediate fallout but KAFD management was forced to abruptly rescind return-to-office guidance and reinstate mandatory remote work until further notice.
Deputy Emir of the Riyadh Region Prince Mohammed bin Abdulrahman looks up at the gouged facade of the Saudi Aramco tower in Riyadh on Monday, following Sunday's Huthi missile and drone strike that forced the capital's financial district back into remote-work orders. Deputy Emir of the Riyadh Region Prince Mohammed bin Abdulrahman looks up at the gouged facade of the Saudi Aramco tower in Riyadh on Monday, following Sunday's Huthi missile and drone strike that forced the capital's financial district back into remote-work orders.
KAFD houses not only the core organs of state finance, including the US$900 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) and the Tadawul stock exchange, but also global financial heavyweights like Goldman Sachs and Brookfield. This direct hit on the capital’s financial centre came on the heels of a devastating strike on King Khalid International Airport last month that killed more than a dozen people, wounded hundreds, and paralysed aviation corridors. Commercial flight operations to Saudi Arabia remain heavily constrained.
Simultaneously, the systematic targeting of core energy infrastructure continues unabated. Vital installations across the country including Aramco’s corporate headquarters in Dhahran, the massive export terminal at Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf and the East-West pipeline running to the Red Sea have faced repeated strikes since the US and Israel launched their ill-conceived and illegal war in February. The disruption has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz to normal tanker traffic, forcing the regime to scramble for emergency capacity, pumping crude west across the desert to the port of Yanbu, and to lease expensive foreign storage facilities simply to keep exports from drying up altogether.
The escalating war has dealt a heavy blow to the kingdom’s balance sheet. In the third quarter of 2026, Saudi Arabia’s fiscal deficit surged by approximately 145% quarter-on-quarter to reach a staggering 84 billion riyals (roughly US$22.4billion). Across the first nine months of the year, the cumulative budget deficit breached US$65 billion, already obliterating the government’s original full-year target of US$44 billion. This translates to a deficit run-rate of roughly US$180 million every day. And the structural shortfall has emerged even as international crude prices have traded near or above US$100perbarrel, with Brent currently hovering around US$94. One might wonder how the world’s preeminent oil exporter can run short of money during an energy bull market.
But high prices mean little when actual production collapses and export chokeholds strangle deliveries. In Q3 2026, state oil receipts fell nearly 40% quarter-on-quarter to 116 billion riyals, a low not seen since the pandemic, dragged down by export bottlenecks, discounted sales and a 20.4% plunge in oil activities that shrank real GDP by 3.8%. Aramco profits fell, choking off the royalties and taxes fed into the royal treasury, precisely when the cost of replenishing air-defence missiles and financing wartime logistics soared through the roof. Consequently, public debt is climbing past 1.5 trillion riyals toward 2 trillion riyals, a 40-fold leap since 2014.
With the deficit projected to reach 5.6% to 6.0% of GDP, the finance ministry now openly admits the state will operate in chronic deficit until at least 2029. Under this strain, the Public Investment Fund is finding its pockets emptying; with annualised returns slipping to a dismal 5.8% since 2017, it can no longer freely inject equity into its pampered creations. The remedy? Desperate financial acrobatics: pawning future corporate cash streams, begging foreign buyers to purchase pieces of domestic enterprises, and taking on foreign loans, such as the $3 billion credit line secured from Italy’s state export agency, SACE.
The domestic financial ecosystem is seizing up. Commercial banks face a liquidity squeeze, while local venture capital deployment plummeted 29% to US$1 billion in the first nine months of 2026, forcing cash-strapped founders into venture debt and debt-crowdfunding platforms to survive. Public markets provide no relief: the Capital Market Authority, terrified of bankruptcies and fraudulent valuations, imposed Draconian listing rules requiring underwriters to absorb unsold shares, which immediately froze new share offerings in their tracks.
Nowhere is the strain clearer than in the collapse of the regime’s vanity projects. The LIV Golf enterprise into which MbS directed US$5 billion of state assets to underwrite an extravagant sports-washing project has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Heading toward complete liquidation, it is a costly monument to authoritarian hubris.
Yet the ruling clique seems blind to the fiscal warning signs. Even while scaling back desert megacities at home and cutting capital to domestic projects, the Crown Prince’s sovereign fund has - absurdly - been in recent negotiations for a US$25 billion buyout of an American video game engine company, Unity. Throwing billions at foreign financiers for electronic playthings while domestic refineries burn and working people are threatened with new taxes to service the state’s ballooning debts is symptomatic of an insular leadership profoundly detached from the struggles of ordinary citizens.
Despite the compounding military, geopolitical, and economic headwinds, the regime continues to demand uncritical, total loyalty. Co-opted religious institutions including senior scholars and the leadership of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice function as vital instruments of state control, wielding religious authority to suppress public debate and legitimise royal miscalculations. A media blackout has left the public no choice but to credit Huthi reports on the war over official state narratives.
This is a farce. Historically, total obedience and extensive personality cults were extracted by figures such as Joseph Stalin or Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who fundamentally smashed old feudal structures, mobilised millions and built powerful national states amidst genuine existential transformations. In exchange for his absolute veneration Ibn Salman is offering defeat in Yemen, missiles in Riyadh and an emptying treasury.
This dynamic reflects the regime’s entrenched architecture of domestic subjugation, wherein the public is conditioned to accept policy failures as necessary sacrifices. Yet, with national debt climbing toward 2 trillion riyals, a ballooning fiscal deficit and core infrastructure remaining vulnerable to cross-border airstrikes, rhetoric and religious endorsement cannot indefinitely substitute for material stability. As fiscal pressures threaten to cascade through the public sector, the disconnect between regime-mandated adoration and everyday economic realities will pose an unprecedented test to MbS’s hold on power.
Thursday, November 12, 2026
Fr. Bob's Reflection for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time - Guest Post
We have the familiar story of the ten bridesmaids. It is a somewhat complicated story, but its message is simple: they were unprepared. They lacked foresight.
They were waiting for the groom to arrive. He was late, which was not uncommon in those days. There were no clocks or watches; time was measured by the sun, and after dark, it was anyone’s guess how much time had passed. Eventually, their lamps ran out of oil.
It was a mistake that could easily have been avoided. They should have known better. And when they finally realized they needed oil and went out to buy it, it was too late. By the time they returned, the door was closed, and they had missed the wedding.
I think most of us can see ourselves in that story. We have all missed opportunities that could or should have been seized. We have made mistakes that, looking back, we realize could have been avoided.
A mother once told me, “I wish I had spent more time with my children when they were young. I wish I’d had the foresight to pay more attention. Now they are grown and gone from home.”
How many of us can relate to that? We look back and think, “If only I had thought ahead. If only I had done things differently. How different life might have been.”
Sometimes our choices have serious consequences for ourselves or for others. We may look back with regret and recognize that our actions caused pain or grief. We repent on the basis of hindsight, wishing we could go back and change what happened.
So often, we are like those in the bridal party, trying to buy oil when it is too late. And yet, my friends, life is not a blind alley.
All the sins human beings can commit have already been committed. We have seen them throughout history, from the pages of Scripture to the evening news. It is painful when people hurt one another, and it can seem as though we never learn from our mistakes.
The bridesmaids in the Gospel could not reopen the door once it was closed. There are moments in our own lives that we cannot recover, and opportunities that, once lost, will not return. We may even look back on our school days, our relationships or our family life and wish we had made better use of the time we were given.
But we do not have to live in the past.
We are here. We are alive today. Some opportunities are gone, but others are still waiting for us.
Let us learn from the past without becoming trapped by it. Let us recognize the opportunities before us now – to love, to forgive, to help, to listen, to make amends and to do what is right.
The door to the wedding is not yet closed for us. It is still wide open.
We may look back on our lives and remember the opportunities we missed. But we do not need to miss the next one – if only we use a little foresight.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Robert Warren, S.A.
Spiritual Director
Wednesday, November 11, 2026
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Monday, November 9, 2026
DAILY DIGEST, 11/9: Monstrous El Niño has arrived; Crews finish new $307M outlet tunnel at Anderson Dam; This El Niño could test the limits of the Los Angeles River; Super El Niño may bring more problems than relief to Colorado River Basin; and more ... ~ MAVEN'S NOTEBOOK | California Water News Central
Sunday, November 8, 2026
Saturday, November 7, 2026
[Salon] The bipartisan card - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
The bipartisan card
Summary: in the wake of the historic drubbing the Republican Party suffered in Tuesday’s mid-term elections the Democrats hold within their grasp the way to pull the United States out of the war quagmire Trump dragged the country into but to do so they will have to play a smart hand.
Much has been made of US Vice President J.D Vance’s X text in which he unequivocally blames the Republican mid-term disaster on the Iran war. He didn’t blame his president, the man who launched the war nor did he do an ‘I told you so’ tempting though it may have been. Vance was a lone cabinet voice opposed to the war when it was first bruited by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and enthusiastically embraced by Trump’s Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth as a quick hit victory: regime overthrown, in and out in two to three weeks, job done. Another Venezuela. The vice president fell into line but he was less and less enamoured of Donald Trump’s “excursion” as the war ground on. He bided his time, though, waiting for the moment to distance himself from the president’s decision to go to war. The mid-term rout was his moment. He, along with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, have broken from the pack early in staking claims to the 2028 GOP presidential nomination.
What has been little commented on is the poll that Vance cited in his text. According to the vice president the unnamed pollster - “one of the smartest people I know in politics” - told him that “we’d lose the generic vote by 13 points.” Vance wrote he was shocked by this and proceeded to ask the pollster why previous Trump supporters were switching their votes to the Democrats. The pollster asked those voters what would cause them to get back onside. They gave four reasons:
End the war
Focus on cost of living/inflation
Put America first
Change our relationship to Israel.
Following the Republican Party's historic mid-term defeat - driven by conservative voter backlash against the war with Iran, economic distress, and uncritical backing of Israel - figures like J.D. Vance and dissident Republicans are openly breaking ranks, while efforts mount to impeach Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
As Vance noted: “our voters showed up and the above four reasons are why they voted for the Democrats.” He chose to jump on number 1 but number 4, in tandem with the others, played a big role in what looks like a mass defection of GOP voters. And while Republicans in Congress were not as seriously fractured as were the Democrats over Israel they were apparently unaware of how fractured their own voters were and how badly Netanyahu’s war of genocide was playing with MAGA and the American Firsters.
The former Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who had been chased by Trump out of Congress for the lese majeste sin of calling out Israel’s brutal war was not shy in blaming the president for Tuesday’s debacle. “He told people to vote like he was on the ballot and they did,” was her opening jibe. She accused him of multiple sins including the coverup of the Epstein files and “putting his rich elite donors before the struggling Americans who put him in office.” She noted that “Trump ran me and Thomas Massie out of the Congress and our Republican colleagues stayed silent.”
Massie is now seeking the scalp of Hegseth the self-proclaimed ‘Secretary of War’ and he was talking about an approach that is - post November 3 - no longer a dirty word in DC: bipartisanship. He has said he will trigger an impeachment vote as early as next week that will see Republicans join the Democrats in ousting a Secretary of Defence who is seen on both sides of the House as grossly incompetent. It is a convenient way for Republicans still frightened of Trump to express their anger at the mid-term results by defenestrating the hapless Hegseth.
And bipartisanship might, just might, provide a path for Trump to get himself out of the Iran war and out of the deathly embrace of Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby in the US led by AIPAC. If the Democrats play a smart hand they will hold off going down the vengeance path. They will say to the president ‘we offer a way for you to salvage your legacy. We won’t bang on about the fact that you started the war. Heck we will applaud you for ending it. And as for Israel and how it has massively damaged your base and with it your reputation don’t just virtue signal. Tell whoever emerges from the political dustup now engaged there - be it Eisenkot or Netanyahu - that enough is enough. America is through funding your war against the Palestinian people. It must stop.’
Playing to Trump’s ego, giving him off ramps for Iran and Israel, may work. Or it may not. But those Republicans who survived the November 3 rout are looking to 2028. Bipartisanship may be the only card they have left to play.
Members can leave comments about this newsletter on the Arab Digest website.
Friday, November 6, 2026
Thursday, November 5, 2026
Wednesday, November 4, 2026
[Salon] Sisi’s phoney war - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Sisi’s phoney war
Summary: Egyptian President Sisi’s precipitous rush to back Saudi Arabia in its war with Yemen’s Huthis has been met with stiff resistance from his military and security elites.
We thank our regular contributor Maged Mandour for today’s newsletter. Maged is a political analyst who also contributes to Middle East Eye and Open Democracy. He is a writer for Sada, the Carnegie Endowment online journal and the author of Egypt under El-Sisi (I.B.Tauris) which examines social and political developments since the coup of 2013. You will find his most recent Arab Digest podcast The encirclement of Sisi here.
In a speech on 17 October, President Sisi called for an urgent parliamentary session to authorise sending Egyptian troops to support Saudi Arabia in its ongoing war with the Huthis. The language used in the speech implied a large deployment, with Sisi stating his willingness to act according to the “directive of King Salman and the Crown Prince.” It took parliament a week to deliberate and approve the deployment, authorising Sisi to take all necessary measures, granting him a blank cheque to proceed as he wished. This strong gesture, however, seems to be only just that, with the deployment most likely remaining limited and defensive in nature. That is a fact not lost on the Saudis who are yet to issue any official comment on the Egyptian offer, a clear diplomatic cold shoulder. At play are a number of factors placing real limits on the ability of the regime to project power, even if Sisi wants to.
Perhaps the most surprising of these limits is elite dissent against the move, with reports appearing that claim the decision announced by Sisi triggered dissent within the National Security Council headed by the president, which approved the deployment on the 18 October. The dissent seems to have revolved around the nature of the deployment and its scope, as well as critiques of Sisi's choice of words i.e. “according to the directive of King Salman and the Crown Prince” which was considered demeaning to the Egyptian military. This dissent seems to have been effective, with the Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and intelligence chief, Major General Hassan Mahmoud Rashad, travelling to Riyadh to deliver a message that the role of Egyptian troops would be limited to protecting Saudi territory rather than attacking Yemen, thus greatly diminishing the utility to the Saudis of the troop deployment. Dissent was also reflected in the delay in the parliamentary approval to send troops, which took a week of deliberation, an eternity for Sisi's rubber-stamp parliament. Whether this is an indication of genuine dissent or a delaying tactic to buy some time for the military elites to agree to the troop deployment remains unclear but it is an obvious sign of tension within the regime around the issue. It is worth noting that this is not the first time the president has faced dissent. For example, as the Israeli genocide in Gaza intensified Sisi was inclined to accept the mass exodus of the Palestinians, a prospect that was vetoed by the military on national security grounds, showing the real limit the elites can choose to place on his power.
On 29 July a drone attack caused a fire aboard two vessels off the Mediterranean port of Damietta, the first such attack on Egyptian territory since the Iran war erupted in late February. Ansar Allah (the Huthis) denied any responsibility for the attack.
The other clear limit on the regime's ability to project power is the fragility of the Egyptian economy and the immense damage that the Huthis can inflict if they decide to strike the Suez Canal and other Egyptian infrastructure. The Huthis have already warned that Egypt’s involvement will be considered an act of war with the Suez Canal as a highly likely primary target. This comes at a time when the Egyptian economy is under immense pressure to keep hot money - short-term highly liquid and speculative financial capital - flowing into the country when energy prices remain high and structural imbalances are deepening. For example, the current account balance deficit has widened to reach US$22.5 billion in the fiscal year 2025/26 that ended in June of this year, up from US$15.4 billion the previous year, an increase of 46%. The balance of trade deficit hit a record US$65 billion, driven by an increase in the price of oil and gas which contributed a whopping US$18.3 billion to the deficit. The increased pressure is reflected in the value of the Egyptian pound, trading at more than 56 to the dollar, an historic low. This places a premium on the ability of the regime to attract capital inflows to Egyptian debt instruments, which explains the decision of the central bank to raise interest rates by 100 basis points, the first increase since March 2024. The increase, however, will only act to pile pressure onto the already strained state budget. That in turn will increase the need to borrow more. It is a vicious circle which will be worsened by the now widely expected attack on Iran and the increase in energy prices that are bound to follow, as well as the anticipated increase in interest rates by the Fed, all applying pressure on an already fragile economy.
Hence, Sisi’s decision to deploy troops is facing real constraints and might have significant blowback. If the goal was to placate Saudi Arabia in the hope that it would provide much-needed funds, that does not seem to have worked. On top of Riyadh not issuing an official statement welcoming the deployment of troops, underlining Sisi's increasingly marginalised situation, Egypt was missing from the talks between Türkiye, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran that took place in Tehran. If the Huthis carried out their threat and start to attack the Suez Canal and other crucial infrastructure, it would have a disastrous effect on the Egyptian economy, particularly if it is followed by a mass exodus of hot money. In a war of attrition, this scenario is not unlikely, especially if the Saudi-Huthi conflict drags on. Finally, if Trump launches a major attack on Iran causing energy prices to spike while Egyptian ports and the Suez Canal are under Huthi attack, an already deep fiscal crisis will only get that much deeper. A steep price to pay for Sisi’s act of verbal bravado.
Fr. Bob's Reflection for All Saints Day - Guest Post
Today the Church celebrates the Feast of All Saints: a day when the Church invites us to look beyond the saints we know by name and consider what it truly means to be a saint.
But who are the saints? I once heard someone describe them as “Heaven’s football team.”
We might think so when we read the letters of St. Paul, as he describes the saints as those who have run the race, fought the good fight and pressed on to win the crown. But not all saints were athletes – and sainthood is about much more than winning a race or achieving something extraordinary.
The standard answer is to say that the saints are the heroes and heroines of Christian life –people for whom we name our churches and our children. They are the people who are close to God.
When we think of the saints, we may picture a rare and extraordinary group, people like Francis of Assisi, Anthony of Padua and Teresa of Calcutta. Their holiness can seem so far beyond our own reach that sainthood feels like something reserved only for a select few.
But sanctity is much closer than we realize.
Being a saint means living the two great commandments Jesus gave us: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. If we strive to do that, we, too, can become saints. Perhaps it isn’t as difficult as we might think.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus does not say, “Blessed are those who strive mightily to be righteous.” Instead, He says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” In other words, blessed are those who recognize that they cannot become righteous without God’s grace.
Jesus does not say, “Blessed are the makers of masterpieces.” He says, “Blessed are the meek.” He doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who thrill us with their brilliance.” Instead, He says, “Blessed are those who mourn” – those who do not turn away from the sorrow of a wounded world.
You see, we do not need heroic holiness to become saints. The opportunity for sanctity is already before us. When we offer a listening ear to a struggling friend, help someone in need or feed the hungry, aren’t we becoming the people God calls us to be? Because of something you have done, someone’s life may be a little different.
Sometimes we become so caught up in our sins and shortcomings that we forget the good we have done and how hard we try to do what is right.
St. Augustine once wrote, “People go out to wonder at the mountain peaks, and the boundless waves of the sea, the long courses of the rivers and the motions of the stars, and yet they leave themselves unnoticed. They do not marvel at themselves.”
My friends, take time to marvel – not at ourselves in pride, but at the goodness God has placed within us and at the good works of those around us.
And perhaps, one day, All Saints Day will be your feast day.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Robert Warren, S.A.
Spiritual Director
Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Monday, November 2, 2026
Sunday, November 1, 2026
Saturday, October 31, 2026
(2) Facebook - Something Big is Happening at Lake Powell
(2) Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1149671667571013
Friday, October 30, 2026
Thursday, October 29, 2026
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