The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 16th October 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 16th October 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Houthi troops continued their advance on Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city as the northern Yemeni forces continue to hit targets in Saudi Arabia, including a string of devastating missile strikes on the international airport in the capital Riyadh. The imperialist-backed south Yemeni administration is reeling as the Saudis appeal for more Pakistani and Turkish military assistance to stave off the imminent collapse of their puppet regime. The Russians are calling for an immediate cease-fire and the launch of an inclusive negotiation process, stressing the need for dialogue among all parties involved in the crisis. And the Iranians say they won’t re-open the Strait of Hormuz until the USA accepts the Islamic Republic’s seven-point peace plan.
“The Strait of Hormuz will not open until Iran’s seven conditions are met” Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday. “The Americans tried to communicate with us through three channels – Iraq, Pakistan and Qatar. The US responded to our conditions and accepted some of them, but their response to the remaining conditions was vague,” Rezaei told the Iranian Press TV broadcaster. Every time Iran sat at the negotiating table with the USA, the Pentagon launched an attack on the Islamic Republic, which Tehran considers to be a “clear betrayal” by Washington, he added.
Seventeen people were killed and over 300 injured in waves of Houthi drone and missile strikes on Riyadh airport last week – pay-back for continued Saudi aggression in support of the puppet regime in Aden that claims to be the legitimate government of all Yemen. Taiz, the puppet regime’s last foot-hold in northern Yemen, is now surrounded by the northern Yemeni army who are calling on the Saudi-backed militias to withdraw to spare the city from further bloodshed.
Last month the Houthis launched an offensive that swept through Yemen’s Red Sea coast, liberating the port of Mokha and the strategic Perim Island, which sits in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and inflicting heavy casualties on the Saudi-backed puppet regime’s forces. Now they’re striking at the heart of the south, rocketing the presidential palace compound in the southern city of Aden, where the West ern recognised Saudi-backed puppet regime is located. The Saudi’s puppet prime minister and his cabinet members were in the compound at the time but they escaped unscathed. Five guards were killed and 16 others wounded in the attack.
The Saudis begged the Americans for help but Trump is keeping his head down in the run-up to the mid-term elections in the USA. Soaring petrol and diesel prices and the other knock-on effects of the closure of the Persian Gulf have fired anti-war sentiment in America and on the street there is no appetite for another war in the Middle East. Britain and France are giving logistical support to the Saudi armed forces but what the Saudis want is boots on the ground. Their ‘Mecca Pact’ allies, Pakistan and Turkey, are more forthcoming but their price, in political and economic terms, may be too high for even the House of Saud to pay…