The Persian Gulf monarchies that supply much of the world’s oil spent the summer building ways around Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. This week, the backup routes came under fire, too, and Washington opened its own line to the militia threatening them. Threat Status Correspondent Jacob Wirtschafter examines the situation in a dispatch from the region.

Saudi air defenses shot down a Houthi drone south of Mecca Tuesday night, the Yemeni rebels’ first attempt on Islam’s holiest city since 2017. The city lends its name to the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement that Saudi Arabia signed with Turkey and Pakistan in August. Hours earlier, Qatar warned that losing Bab el-Mandeb — the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea — in addition to Hormuz would be “catastrophic for the entire world.”

The six Gulf states, all American security partners, have come under attack together, and each is answering in its own way. Oman is mediating. Bahrain refuses to talk to Iran. The United Arab Emirates maintains an open channel with Tehran. Saudi Arabia asked Washington for military help and was told the U.S. would stay out of the fighting, according to a report by Reuters. The situation signals new complexity in the more than six-month-old war.

FBI Director Kash Patel testified to Congress this week that Chinese and other adversary intelligence services have increased spying and illegal operations in the U.S. over the past 18 months, with the FBI neutralizing 60 Beijing agents during that period.

China posed the most significant foreign intelligence threat, along with Russia and Iran, and “all are working to erode our institutions, and each is growing bolder and more capable,” Mr. Patel told lawmakers Tuesday. He said that so far during fiscal 2026, which ends Sept. 30, a total of 72 counterintelligence arrests have been made — a 9% increase from the previous period — and that 80 foreign intelligence agents were removed from the country, an increase of 125%.

During the past 18 months, 130 counterintelligence arrests were made and nearly half involved Chinese-related spying or other illegal activity cases. One of the more significant cases featured former Google engineer Ding Linwei, who tried to funnel confidential artificial intelligence technology to China. In January, a federal jury in San Francisco found him guilty of stealing the tech giant’s AI technology.

Japan’s hawkish Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is flexing her domestic political muscles amid pressure from Russia and China, who are seen to be engaging in an expanding campaign of cross-domain hybrid tactics aimed at generating security anxiety and sowing discord in Tokyo, a key U.S. military ally in East Asia.

Asia Editor Andrew Salmon reports from the region that a key development for Ms. Takaichi came last weekend, when Okinawa’s long-serving governor, Denny Tamaki — a man who’d spent years pushing for the downsizing or all-out removal of U.S. bases from the strategically positioned island — lost an election to political newcomer Genta Koja. Mr. Koja, who was backed by Ms. Takaichi, seized a decisive 59% of the vote.

Tension between Japan and China hangs in the backdrop. Beijing was particularly infuriated last year, when Ms. Takaichi announced that any Chinese military attack on the U.S.-aligned island democracy of Taiwan would represent an “existential threat” to Japan — code for activating the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Beijing retaliated by cutting Chinese tourism to Japan, banning Japanese performers and halting Japanese seafood imports.

Intelligence sharing with our allies and partners is “crucial to countering, defending and deterring Iran,” according to Daniel N. Hoffman, who writes in his biweekly column for The Washington Times that the “most impactful” relationship, historically, “has been the Five Eyes alliance, composed of the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” 

Mr. Hoffman, a retired CIA clandestine services officer and regular contributor to Threat Status, notes that the U.S. intelligence community is currently “on the hook to assess the impact of the unprecedented level of U.S.-led economic pressure” tied to an effort to “sever Iran from the global financial system.

“As my former colleague David McCloskey wrote in his recent spy thriller, ‘London Station,’ intelligence sharing helps us ‘look at the world through the same lens,’” Mr. Hoffman writes. “That is how we uncloak Iran’s relationships with its axis-of-dictatorship allies — Russia, China and North Korea.”

The recent Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities “add a new dimension” to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran by “raising global energy prices and further undermining the already depressed confidence in energy supplies,” retired U.S. Navy Capt. Carl O. Schuster writes in an op-ed for The Times.

“Coming within weeks of America’s midterm elections, the attacks create cost pressures that will diminish the Republicans’ election chances and postelection support for the war and the Trump administration,” writes Mr. Schuster.

“More important, the Houthis’ targeting reflects a subtle strategy that balances their need to maintain Iranian support while potentially avoiding American counterstrikes,” he writes. “By not striking U.S. bases, facilities or forces, the Houthis are complying with their May 2025 ceasefire agreement with the U.S. that ended their attacks against U.S. vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.”

• Sept. 20-23 — 2026 Concordia Annual Summit New York City, Concordia

• Sept. 22-23 — Nuclear Energy Policy Summit 2026, Atlantic Council

• Sept. 22-28 — U.N. General Assembly General Debate, United Nations

• Sept. 24 — Ending Self-Imposed Scarcity: Expanding Defense Production with New Technology and Techniques, Hudson Institute

• Sept. 24 — Ensuring Economic and Energy Security: Opportunities for U.S.-Japan Leadership, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Sept. 24 — 2026 Intel Summit, Potomac Officers Club

• Oct. 12-14 — AUSA Annual Meeting and Expo, Association of the U.S. Army

• Nov. 20-22 — Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada, HFX