Iran Strikes LPG Tanker In Strait Of Hormuz, As Houthis Reportedly Mine Bab al-Mandab
Summary
Houthis reportedly mine Bab al-Mandab: Saudi media reports ‘dense’ mining in the strategic Red Sea shipping route, with demining operations underway.
Iran escalates tanker attacks & threats: The IRGC claims it struck an LPG tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, causing a major fire, and threatens further action against violating vessels.
Vessel struck near UAE: UKMTO reports an unknown projectile hit a vessel west of UAE’s Al Jazeera, sparking a fire that has since been extinguished.
Trump signals temporary restraint ahead of midterms: Trump rules out attacking Iran before the November midterms, while diplomatic talks reportedly remain stalled.
Saudi-funded Al Arabiya is reporting a ‘worst fear’ scenario on Friday, saying that Houthi militias have planted a large quantity of mines in the Bab al-Mandab area.
The report says further that Saudi-backed teams of engineers are currently engaged in demining operations in the Red Sea strait. It writes:
Engineering teams continue clearing operations and removing mines and improvised explosive devices in Bab al-Mandab.
If confirmed that such mining operations are widespread in Bab al-Mandab, this would constitute yet another major crisis for global energy shipping. At the moment, Saudi-backed fighters are focusing anti-Houthi operations along the Red Sea coast, with Saudi reports suggesting a rapid retaking of the strategic ground.
As a reminder, the Houthis have thus far signaled the Bab al-Mandab strait is ‘open’ for normal transit, but that only Saudi and Israeli-linked vessels would suffer attack. And so the Al Arabiya report, if accurate, could just be indicating some localized mining immediately near the coast related to the ongoing fight against the Saudi coalition in Yemen.
Iran Ramps Up Tanker Attacks
Things are fast escalating once again in the Strait of Hormuz, after White House officials have lately been gloating that the US Navy has overseen record wartime oil flows through the vital waterway, which each warring side is still claiming to ‘control’.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Friday it targeted a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanker in the Strait of Hormuz (hours ago), with Iranian state media reporting that the vessel was attempting to pass through the narrow waterway “illegally” and suffered a massive fire.
The IRGC Navy also warned that from now on any vessels committing violations outside the Strait of Hormuz would be “punished,” according to a statement carried by Iranian state media. This is served to immediately push oil prices higher…
Separately, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported a new incident involving a vessel approximately 13 nautical miles west of Al Jazeera in the United Arab Emirates.
The vessel was reportedly struck by an unknown projectile, sparking a fire that has since been extinguished, coming after similar incidents earlier this week.
Market Reacts
Oil prices rose following the reports, while futures moved lower, reflecting heightened market sensitivity to escalating tensions and potential further big disruptions to shipping and energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz – even as President Trump has been touting the ultimate ‘success’ of the US mission.
President Trump on Thursday vowed the US would not attack Iran before the November midterm elections, tempering rising oil prices – and seeking to ‘assure’ GOP voters – amid prior reporting in The Atlantic which said the Pentagon has been ordered to prepare ‘options’ for the Commander-in-Chief to launch strikes before the vote.
Trump has also touted “productive conversations” with Iran, even though the Iranians themselves have said talks are stalemated and there’s no progress whatsoever.
Masa Passes The Hat: SoftBank Seeks $100 Billion From The Gulf After Maxing Out Junk Bonds, Margin Loans And Japanese Retail
The scramble for AI cash is on (or rather, accelerating).
Just hours after the FT reported that OpenAI’s annualized revenue is roughly $20 billion lower than the figure that had been making the rounds previously, the same paper reported that Masayoshi Son is trying to raise up to $100 billion from Gulf investors, and has spent recent weeks holding talks with senior figures in the UAE. That would be roughly the size of the original Vision Fund, which is either a sign of ambition or of how much more money the AI trade now needs just to stand still. Clearly, in a world of $1.5 trillion in 2027 capex, the answer is the latter.
SOFTBANK SEEKS TO RAISE UP TO $100B FROM GULF INVESTORS: FT
Regular readers will not be surprised: we have been warning that the AI buildout runs on debt since exactly one year ago today, and SoftBank, which has committed some $65 billion to OpenAI, has spent most of 2026 as the poster child for that thesis. Over the past nine months Son has tapped bridge loans, margin loans on Arm and OpenAI shares, Japanese retail savers and, most recently, the largest junk bond on record. Now that the usual spigots have been opened all the way, it’s time to call the sovereigns.
Below we walk through what Son is pitching to Abu Dhabi, how the money machine got here, why Thursday’s OpenAI revenue “clarification” matters so much for SoftBank’s balance sheet, and why the Gulf has quietly become the AI trade’s lender of last resort.
“What Happened To Abu Dhabi?”
According to the FT, the new money would go into a vehicle that buys companies and then uses AI and other advanced technology to run them more efficiently: a private-equity roll-up with a robotics twist. Roze, SoftBank’s robotics and physical AI unit, which Son hopes to take public at a lofty valuation (press reports have floated $100 billion), is expected to play a central role. The people cautioned that there is no guarantee the talks succeed, and SoftBank declined to comment.
The playbook is familiar. Saudi Arabia’s PIF and the UAE’s Mubadala anchored the first $100 billion Vision Fund in 2017; per the FT, that fund has generated about $29 billion in cumulative investment gains through June, while Vision Fund 2 (backed primarily by SoftBank itself, and home to the OpenAI stake) is up $20.5 billion. Not exactly WeWork, but not exactly the “information revolution” either for a fund that took nearly a decade to get there.
What is new is the timing. Just this week, OpenAI itself was shopping a $30 billion round to a group of UAE sovereign funds led by MGX (alongside BlackRock) at a $1.4 trillion pre-money valuation set by OpenAI itself. Which means that in the span of four days, both the biggest AI lab and its biggest backer have shown up at the same Abu Dhabi door with their hands out. Back in February, when OpenAI’s record $110 billion round closed without a Gulf name on the cap table, we asked the obvious question:
Investors: – Amazon $50BN – SoftBank $30BN – Nvidia $30BN What happened to Abu Dhabi?
It’s not the first time the emirate has come to the rescue of the AI trade, either. Last December, as Oracle CDS blew out and Blue Owl walked away from Oracle, it was Abu Dhabi that may have delivered the Santa Rally when OpenAI went to sovereign wealth funds for up to $100 billion (a dependence we explored at length in “Dollar Supremacy Strategy Or All-Time Grift? American AI Imperialism’s Reliance On The Middle East“). Abu Dhabi, through MGX and G42, has become one of the world’s biggest AI spenders, as the FT notes. The difference this time is that there is now a war next door, Brent is above $100, and Gulf petrodollars are being asked to fund two of the biggest AI fundraises of the year at once.
Masa’s Money Machine
To appreciate why Son needs the Gulf, look at what he has already done this year. The chart below tallies the headline size of every major facility SoftBank has lined up in 2026 to fund its AI ambitions (some refinance others, so this is not a cumulative total, but you get the idea):
In March, days after SoftBank’s CFO warned that its loan-to-value ratio may temporarily exceed the 25% ceiling (to which we responded “chatbots gonna take down masa son”), it lined up a record $40 billion bridge loan for the OpenAI stake. In May, SoftBank had to cut the target for its OpenAI-backed margin loan by 40% to $6 billion,p and by June even the downsized loan had stalled, as lenders balked at taking private OpenAI shares as collateral. Then came a ¥1 trillion bond sold to Japanese retail investors at a 4.75% coupon, an Arm-backed margin loan upsized to $25 billion, a $6.5 billion credit line, an $11.87 billion loan and talks with Apollo to upsize another to $9 billion.
And then, the grand finale: a five-tranche, $11 billion-plus junk bond to fund the next OpenAI check, which the FT says paid yields as high as 9.75%. Goldman’s credit sales desk confirmed in Adam Crook’s latest AI issuance pulsecheck (available to pro subs) that the $11.14 billion deal was the largest non-investment grade bond sale on record, and it single-handedly made the week of Sept 25 the biggest for new HY issuance in Goldman’s chart, which goes back to late July (chart source PitchBook LCD via Goldman):
Naturally, we called this one back in January, when the WSJ first reported that Son was in talks to pour another $30 billion into OpenAI:
SOFTBANK IN TALKS TO INVEST UP TO $30B MORE IN OPENAI: WSJ More money it doesn’t have. What’s next: downgrade to junk after the debt spree
Nine months later, SoftBank is the biggest junk issuer in history, so we’ll allow ourselves a modest victory lap. The credit market got the message too: within a week of the jumbo deal, SoftBank’s 5Y CDS had blown out to the widest levels since the Iran war began, as we flagged in real time:
CDS of SoftBank – the biggest OpenAI backer – which last week issued a record $11BN junk bond to fund its ever bigger investment, just took out the post-Iran war wides. OpenAI is also raising $30BN in new equity to fund an ever greater funding hole ($1.5TN in commitments) https://t.co/KbPYVrXpbu
Put differently, when you have already pledged your crown jewel (Arm), your largest asset (OpenAI), Japanese retail savers and the high-yield market’s patience, the only pocket left is a sovereign one.
The $20 Billion Hole
Which brings us to why the timing of the Gulf push is so delicate. On Thursday afternoon the FT reported that OpenAI had told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, far short of the ~$70 billion figure that had been circulating since Dev Day. Nasdaq promptly tumbled more than 1%, Oracle slid 5-6%, and SoftBank’s Tokyo-listed shares fell 5% on Friday. They are still up 25% this year, but have now dropped more than 30% from their June peak, when SoftBank briefly became Japan’s most valuable company.
According to Goldman’s TMT specialist sales team (available to pro subs), the gap is mostly a matter of accounting rather than collapsing demand: OpenAI reports revenue net of what flows through its cloud partners, while Anthropic reports something closer to gross. Investors who “grossed up” OpenAI to compare the two arrived at roughly $40 billion in August and $70 billion in September; on OpenAI’s own net basis, the progression was more like $30 billion to $50 billion. That is still around 70% growth, Goldman notes, just not the growth everyone had priced in. Goldman’s desk said it caught a heavy wave of long-only and hedge fund supply in megacap tech after the headline, over $1 billion in net selling of semis, AI and megacaps.
On Friday morning, right on schedule, came the spin: Bloomberg reported that OpenAI now expects to hit or top $70 billion of annualized revenue by year-end, and blamed the confusion on differences in how OpenAI and Anthropic calculate revenue. Futures bounced, and Goldman’s TMT desk filed it under the whiplash sentiment swings that have become a defining feature of AI investing this year. So the $70 billion number didn’t disappear; it was just moved three months into the future. Which, considering OpenAI is on the hook for some $1.5 trillion in compute commitments, is not quite the reassurance it was meant to be.
The credit market, for its part, did not bounce. Per the same Goldman TMT note, Oracle’s 5Y CDS closed at a record 261bp on Thursday (up 36% in a month) and Broadcom’s printed a record 136bp, as nearly $500 billion of 2026 AI-related borrowing gets repriced (more on that in this morning’s “The Crowding Out Effect Is Immense“). Goldman’s credit sales desk also tracks the gap between HY AI data center bonds and the broader HY market, which was already near 80bp by late September:
Collateral Damage
Why does a $20 billion gap in a private company’s revenue matter so much to SoftBank? Because the private company is the collateral. The FT notes that SoftBank’s capacity to borrow is tied to the valuations on its balance sheet: net asset value stood at ¥72.3 trillion at the end of June, and its loan-to-value ratio was a comfortable-looking 13%, well below the 25% ceiling it targets in normal operations. Senior SoftBank people insist that short-term swings in OpenAI’s valuation will not change investment plans.
Maybe. But consider the math from the Goldman desk. Back in September, when SoftBank was ripping on AGI hopes, Goldman’s Asia/EMEA desk argued that SoftBank’s discount to NAV was too wide, noting that OpenAI, marked at the $852 billion valuation of its last priced round, accounts for roughly 20% of SoftBank’s NAV and the vast majority of its unlisted assets. The desk’s bull case rested on two things: OpenAI being re-marked closer to Anthropic’s valuation, and SoftBank monetizing its “other” assets, such as Roze (at a mooted $100 billion) and SB Energy. The desk added that SoftBank was trading at a discount that, by its math, was “much wilder than it looks.”
A month later, the scorecard is not encouraging. SB Energy delayed its IPO amid an investor revolt, OpenAI’s own IPO has been pushed into 2027, and instead of a re-rating toward Anthropic, OpenAI just had to explain why its revenue was a fifth smaller than everyone thought (or, depending on which day you ask, or which bullish spin master is explaining, exactly as big as everyone thought). The two catalysts for closing the NAV discount have turned into the two reasons it might widen. As one Asia-based analyst warned the FT, if OpenAI’s valuation falls, “A contagion effect . . . could get quite bad, quite quickly.”
And that is where the Gulf comes in. A sovereign-funded vehicle that buys real companies and bolts robots onto them gives SoftBank two things it badly needs: fresh equity that does not sit on its own balance sheet (and therefore does not touch the LTV), and a shop window for Roze ahead of any listing. For the Gulf, it is another way to diversify away from oil, which, with Hormuz still a mess, is either brilliant timing or a reminder of how long that diversification is taking.
Bottom Line
Son has always argued that the skeptics will look foolish, and sometimes (well just once, with Alibaba) he has been spectacularly right. But this is what late-cycle financing looks like: the most aggressive investor in the AI trade has worked his way down the capital structure from equity to bridge loans to margin loans to retail bonds to record junk, and is now asking sovereigns for another Vision Fund-sized check, in the same week that OpenAI is asking the same sovereigns for $30 billion and its revenue disclosure is being “clarified” in real time.
The bulls will say Gulf money removes the funding risk. We would counter that it proves it exists. When the marginal buyer of the AI trade is no longer the market but a handful of petro-states (just like German retail banks and Japanese pension funds were the last sources of capital just before Lehman collapsed), the price of AI risk is being set by geopolitics, not cash flows, and with Brent above $100 and Iran next door, that is not the hedge the bulls think it is. If the Gulf says yes, the circle just gets bigger; if it says no, SoftBank’s CDS has a lot further to go.
Either way, here is who now owes whom in the biggest circular financing diagram ever seen, with a new sovereign-sized node about to be added:
“Migrants Join Forces With Antifa” As EU Riots Spread From France To Belgium
Europe is demonstrating that the globalist progressive experiment is crashing and burning, as far-left riots, which we pointed out at the start of the week, were “spreading like cancer” from France to Belgium, continue on Friday. What’s to say the social unrest will stop there?
The chaos and social unrest mimic the US Marxist BLM riots in 2020, when left-wing NGOs and politicians allowed these radicals to mobilize and burn down city blocks. What’s happening in Europe could’ve happened in the US this year if the State Department, Treasury, and other agencies hadn’t cracked down on these far-left NGOs, big family foundations, and foreign subversion networks.
Social media user Visegrád 24 has pointed out that riots in Europe are taking a disastrous turn: “Young second and third-generation migrants have joined forces with Antifa for today’s riots in Brussels.”
BREAKING: The riots are spreading from France to Belgium. Young second and third-generation migrants have joined forces with Antifa for today’s riots in Brussels https://t.co/zySR6266OY
That’s the second issue: far-left groups weaponize migrants to fulfill their sinister goal of overthrowing capitalism and the West, similar to what far-left radicals in the US, such as the Democratic Socialists of America, have in mind when they say, in their own words, that they want to “bring down America from within.”
“The most important thing we can do is take that (American) empire down from within” DSA members make it clear what their goal is: destroying America. https://t.co/Txy5Na21UG
You’re starting to get the picture, if readers don’t already understand: the West has a radical-left problem. It’s being showcased on a grand stage in Europe, where radicalization is infecting not just migrants but youth at younger and younger ages. This is an embarrassing dilemma for European liberals, as it only supercharges right-wing candidates to gain power, as Nomura analysts expect the EU “lurches” right in the 18-month election cycle already underway.
This was the problem high-level State Department officials discussed with their European counterparts this past summer: the troubling far-left radicalization impacting younger and younger people.
More footage from Belgium:
🔴 🇧🇪 #BELGIUM Clashes ongoing at the Central Station in #Brussels . The march was supposed to start around 10:30 a.m. Still major tensions: mortars and water cannon on protestors🇧🇪🚨 https://t.co/A4CqN9wY87
#France #LFI Je vous propose une petite immersion à Liège en Belgique . Comme en France , les casseurs ont la même origine , ils ne se cachent plus . Trop de laxisme , le même discours victimaire de la gauche et de l’extrême gauche , le culte de l’excuse . Jean Luc Mélenchon embrase la France avec la récupération du mouvement lycéen , ses hordes de barbares ( sa nouvelle France ) sèment le chaos , ils comptent sur l’abstention de la majorité silencieuse pour les élections présidentielles de 2027 . Ces images doivent nous inciter à voter contre Jean luc Mélenchon , après il sera trop tard !!!
If it weren’t for DOGE cutting USAID funding by 85% and the US multi-agency task force cracking down on billionaire-funded lefty NGOs and subversion networks, who’s to say these riots wouldn’t be spreading to the US by now?
But massive foundations, such as possibly the Gates Foundation, and many other lefty billionaires are too scared about the potential loss of their prized nonprofit status. That is likely one reason riots in America didn’t materialize this past summer.
Turkey will not send troops to Saudi Arabia to launch attacks on Yemen under the Mecca defense pact, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Thursday.
“This is not an offensive agreement. Turkey will not send troops to another country’s territory to launch an attack there,” he said during a live press conference in Ankara. Fidan added that possible Turkish deployments to Saudi Arabia would be only defensive in nature.
via AP
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan agreed this week to jointly deploy forces and military equipment in a show of solidarity with Riyadh in the face of Houthi attacks from Yemen.
Fidan said military delegations would assess Saudi Arabia’s operational defense needs and determine what contributions Turkey and Pakistan could make.
“The necessary work to submit the Mecca agreement to the Turkish parliament has been concluded,” he said. “We have decided to forward it to parliament as soon as possible. We have essentially completed our own preparations.”
Middle East Eye reported on Tuesday that Turkey would send additional personnel, pilots and aircraft to help protect Saudi infrastructure in the coming weeks, with further deployments subject to parliamentary approval.
Officials told MEE that Turkey had maintained technical teams, air defense systems and electronic warfare equipment in the kingdom since last year to protect critical infrastructure, including energy facilities.
One senior Turkish official said Ankara would send additional equipment, technicians, emergency response teams and accompanying combat forces.
The official said a 2010 military training agreement between Saudi Arabia and Turkey allows Ankara to deploy limited forces to the kingdom for technical purposes. Further deployments, however, would require parliamentary authorisation under the Turkish constitution.
A second Turkish official said Ankara planned to station forces at one or more command bases solely to provide defensive support to Saudi Arabia.
The officials said a limited number of Turkish special forces could be deployed to the kingdom once the Turkish parliament grants formal authorization, which is expected later this month.
Saudi Arabia calling on Turkey and Pakistan to join its war against Ansar Allah is not a good look. Riyadh is one of the richest states in the region, armed with some of the most advanced military hardware money can buy. Sanaa is one of the poorest.
Separate sources familiar with the planning told MEE that, following parliamentary approval, Turkey would deploy an undisclosed number of experienced pilots and aircraft to Saudi Arabia to counter drones and ballistic missiles launched by the Houthis in Yemen.
“We don’t plan to send a large group of soldiers and have no plans to directly intervene in Yemen,” the senior Turkish official said. “Ankara still believes diplomatic efforts might bear fruit in coming months.”
Two Latvians Arrested After Breach At US Intel Hub Deepens UK Sabotage Concerns
Days after the US pulled all its Rockwell B-1 Lancer supersonic bombers from Britain’s RAF Fairford air base over mounting security concerns following a suspected terrorist plot against the base late last month, another incident has occurred, this time at a critical US and NATO intelligence hub.
Bloomberg reports that British police arrested two Latvian nationals on suspicion of trespassing and national security offenses at RAF Molesworth, located in Cambridgeshire, in eastern England.
More color from the outlet:
Officers found a “small breach” of the perimeter fence, counterterror police said in a statement.
The men, both in their 30s, were arrested late Wednesday after security patrols near the air base, which houses the Joint Intelligence Operations Center Europe Analytic Center and supports US European Command, AFRICOM and NATO coordination.
🚨 BREAKING: Counter Terror Police have launched an investigation after two Latvian nationals aged 36 and 32 were arrested for trespassing offences inside RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire RAF Molesworth is home to the US’s Joint Intelligence Operations Centre for Europe
“The incursion will deepen scrutiny of the security at airbases in Britain that are used by US forces, as the UK warns of an escalation in sabotage plots involving so-called proxies directed by Iran and Russia,” Bloomberg noted.
So far, British police have found no connection between the incident at RAF Molesworth and the one at RAF Fairford. Police have not established or officially released a motive.
The outlet quoted Richard Knighton, the head of Britain’s armed forces, who said earlier today that all of the country’s bases were safe.
“We take the security of all of our bases in Europe enormously seriously,” Knighton said, calling the US move an “operational decision.” He added that the UK has “enormously close relationships from an intelligence perspective and operationally with the US, and that’s what gives me confidence around the safety and security of our bases here.”
Grzegorz Braun, leader of the Confederation of the Polish Crown, spoke in favor of restarting the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines during a meeting Wednesday with politicians from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Lubmin. He said Poland should be a shareholder in the German-Russian project.
Grzegorz Braun (first from the left) spoke together with AfD politicians in Lubmin, where the Nord Stream infrastructure is located. (Source: X /Confederation of the Polish Crown)
“Nord Stream 1, and probably Nord Stream 2 as well, will be relaunched. Russian gas will flow to the West,” Braun said. He said Europe needs Russian raw materials and that their absence could have serious consequences for the economy.
Braun argued that Poland should not be excluded from future energy projects concerning Russian gas supplies. “Poland should participate, not boycott. Poland should be the initiator,” he said. He also proposed that Warsaw become a shareholder in Nord Stream.
Podczas roboczej wizyty w #Lubmin w Niemczech poseł do Parlamentu Europejskiego @GrzegorzBraun_, poseł na Sejm RP @Roman_Korona i dr @Slawomir_Ozdyk (Konfederacja @KoronyPolskiej) spotkali się z posłem do Bundestagu @SteffenKotre (AfD) oraz posłami do Landtagu Meklemburgii-Pomorza Przedniego z ramienia @AfD – Stephanem Reukenem i @Kevin_Kurtze.
— Konfederacja Korony Polskiej (@KoronyPolskiej) October 7, 2026
He also said that if Russian gas returns to Europe, Poland could lose economically if the supplies bypass its territory. In his view, Warsaw should seek participation in such energy projects rather than remain outside them.
Braun also spoke of the need to “normalize” and “de-escalate” relations and economic cooperation among Poland, Germany and Russia. He advocated a return to wider use of coal and the ability to buy oil and gas from suppliers offering favorable terms.
The speech took place in Lubmin, the site of the German terminal and infrastructure linked to the Nord Stream pipelines.
Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 were damaged in September 2022 by explosions on the Baltic Sea floor. Nord Stream 1 had been the main route for Russian gas to Germany. Nord Stream 2, though completed, was never launched because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly urged the German government to start supplies through the sole Nord Stream 2 line that survived the blasts. He has said that if the line operates, 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas “will immediately reach Europe.”
“Why don’t they do it? I just can’t understand it. They can receive gas through Ukrainian territory, through TurkStream, but they cannot through the pipeline running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea,” Putin said.
“In my opinion, it’s crazy, just nonsense. Why? But if they don’t want to, fine,” Putin said in 2024 at the Vladivostok Economic Forum.
According to U.S. media reports, a group of Ukrainian officers conceived the operation to blow up Nord Stream in May 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky initially approved the plan before he allegedly unsuccessfully tried to cancel it at the CIA’s request. Polish connections also appear in press accounts of the Baltic Sea sabotage.
U.S. President Donald Trump said last May that “many people know” who blew up Nord Stream. He added that he was the first to thwart the project.
Trump imposed sanctions on Nord Stream 2 in his first term, significantly slowing construction. President Joe Biden repealed them in 2021 and reimposed them after Russia invaded Ukraine. Germany withheld permission to start the pipeline because of the war.
These Are The World’s Biggest Military Drone Exporters
The U.S. and Iran supplied 86% of the 16,822 military drones exported worldwide from 2022 to 2025, according to SIPRI’s arms-transfer data: 7,593 from the U.S. and 6,800 from Iran, out of 14 exporting countries.
U.S. exports climbed from 1,010 in 2022 to 3,219 in 2024, then fell to 402 in 2025, while Iran kept delivering about 2,000 a year. Türkiye exported only 381 drones but sold to 28 countries, more than any other supplier.
SIPRI counts drone aircraft weighing at least 150 kg, plus one-way attack drones and loitering munitions, which are built to strike once and be destroyed. The figures include drones sent as aid or built in the buyer’s country under license, but largely exclude small FPV and commercial drones.
U.S. and Iran Supply 86% of All Exported Military Drones
The U.S. exported 7,593 military drones and Iran 6,800, each more than six times as many as third-ranked Germany (1,000). Nearly all went to a single war: 95% of U.S. drones went to Ukraine, while 99% of Iran’s went to Russia.
The table below shows how many military drones each country exported from 2022 to 2025, along with its share of the global total:
Rank
Exporter
Drones Supplied (2022-2025)
Share of Global Total (%)
1
U.S.
7,593
45.1
2
Iran
6,800
40.4
3
Germany
1,000
5.9
4
Poland
690
4.1
5
Türkiye
381
2.3
6
Israel
205
1.2
7
China
64
0.4
8
Czechia
32
0.2
9
Belarus
20
0.1
9
UK
20
0.1
11
Portugal
7
12
Austria
5
13
Italy
3
14
Sweden
2
Global Total
16,822
100.0
Almost all of these drones were built for a single use. One-way attack drones and loitering munitions make up 97% of the global total, which helps explain how a few wartime transfers can add up to thousands of units. Every drone the U.S. sent to Ukraine during this period was of this type.
Nearly all of Iran’s exports were Shahed-136 drones that Russia also assembled and produced under license, which SIPRI still counts as Iranian exports. Iran built up its drone industry in response to a UN arms embargo that tightened over time before expiring in 2020.
Below the top two, exports drop off quickly. Only Germany (1,000) and Poland (690) delivered more than 500 drones, while the bottom seven exporters, from Czechia to Sweden, delivered 89 combined.
U.S. Military Drone Exports Fell Sharply in 2025
Drone export patterns for the two largest suppliers shifted sharply in 2025. U.S. exports climbed from 1,010 in 2022 to 3,219 in 2024, then fell to 402 in 2025, the same year new U.S. military aid to Ukraine came to a halt.
Iran, meanwhile, continued delivering about 2,000 drones a year from 2023 through 2025, making it the largest exporter in 2025 by a wide margin.
The table below shows how many military drones the U.S. and Iran exported each year from 2022 to 2025:
Country (Military Drones Exported)
2022
2023
2024
2025
U.S.
1,010
2,962
3,219
402
Iran
735
2,031
2,032
2,002
Most U.S. drones shipped in 2025 went to Taiwan, which received 291 loitering munitions and ranks third among all military drone importers from 2022 to 2025. Ukraine received 100 U.S.-made loitering munitions that year, paid for by the UK.
Europe partly filled the gap left by the U.S. in Ukraine. All 1,000 of Germany’s drone exports, consisting of loitering munitions sent to Ukraine as aid, were delivered in 2025.
Türkiye Sells Military Drones to More Countries Than Anyone Else
Türkiye ranks fifth by number of drones exported, but no country has more customers. It supplied 28 countries from 2022 to 2025, more than half of the 54 countries that imported military drones and nearly three times as many as the U.S. or China, with 10 each.
Those buyers are spread across the globe. Twelve are in Africa, while the rest range from NATO members such as Poland and Romania to Pakistan, Kuwait, and Ukraine.
Türkiye also sells a different kind of drone. About three-quarters of its exports were larger aircraft such as the Bayraktar TB2, which can fly mission after mission. It supplied 281 of the 486 larger drone aircraft exported worldwide, or 58%.
That difference is why SIPRI also measures arms transfers using a second metric, the trend-indicator value (TIV). Instead of counting units, it assigns each weapon a standardized value based on the production cost of comparable weapons, so one large armed drone counts for far more than a single-use one. TIV reflects the military capability transferred rather than the price paid, and by this measure Türkiye was the largest drone exporter of the period.
Three words in a video that did the rounds last month made my skin crawl: ‘Don’t be deceived.’
They might sound perfectly innocent at first pass, but in context, they are chilling. The footage in question comes from a recorded session apparently run by the Aberdeen-based Mamacita Foundation, a charity that works with asylum seekers. The subject in question is sexual consent – more specifically, the age of consent.
In the footage, the seminar leader, herself an immigrant, asks the men present what age someone must be before they can approach them for ‘anything sexual, intimacy’. At one point, she even seems to admit surprise that the age of consent is 16 throughout the UK – she herself had believed up until that very moment, apparently, that it was 18. She establishes the correct answer there and then, while reading from her notes.
Can we not admit that this is already quite a strange spectacle? Adult men are sitting in Britain, being taught the legal age at which they can have sex with British teenagers. But then it gets quite a lot worse.
‘Please, this is very, very essential’, the seminar leader says (trying to make herself heard over the chatter of the bored participants). ‘Because we’ve had young men fall for these things that could be preventable.’ Fall for these things. She then goes on to advise the men to ask young people their age and even request identification, before coming in with the extraordinary warning: ‘Don’t be deceived, we have young persons growing bigger than their age.’ Twelve and 14-year-olds, she explains, can be taller than she is.
A consent session for migrants in Aberdeen reportedly took a bizarre turn when the facilitator got England’s age of consent wrong & an attendee suggested it was 14. They said it was important because young men “fall for these things” I can’t believe this https://t.co/Td5yWUOZaN
It should really go without saying, but a 13-year-old girl who happens to look older than 13 (as many do) is not deceiving anybody. She is simply existing in the body she happens to have, as it has naturally developed. A child (for that is what she is) does not trick a grown man by being tall for her age or developing early. She should also be able to dress and do her makeup how she likes, or how her parents agree for her to, without fear of advances or attack. Nor does a grown man who has sexual contact with a child ‘fall for’ her supposed wiles.
The language employed here is very revealing. It shows us quite plainly the assumptions underpinning the consent seminar. The men are accorded less moral agency than their potential victims. They are seemingly seen as being at risk of an unfortunate misunderstanding, or worse still, of being sexually manipulated by children. What they are not seen as is adults with clear legal and moral responsibilities.
It’s absurd and grotesque. But perhaps most disturbing is the reduction of the whole question to the age of consent.
There is nothing inherently objectionable about teaching newcomers the laws, including the age of the consent, of the country in which they now live (though the fact that it’s deemed necessary should be a bit of a red flag). Yet the law represents the minimum standard of conduct enforced by the state. It does not exhaust our moral expectations of one another. Far from it.
If the principal lesson an adult man can take from training courses like this is that 16 is the magic number, something (or plenty) has gone badly wrong. Most Western adults understand that legality is not the only consideration governing relations between adults and teenagers. A middle-aged man propositioning a girl who turned 16 two months ago will not escape moral opprobrium by claiming he was following the rules. There are norms beyond the letter of the law, and norms that cannot be taught so quickly in a simple seminar (especially one in which none of the attendees seems to be listening).
The Mamacita footage is particularly unsettling because its language is so protective of the men in the room. Be careful, check ID, don’t be deceived. Where is the corresponding concern for the girls? Imagine being a 14-year-old girl hearing a grown woman telling grown men that girls your age ‘sometimes grow bigger than their age’, and that men should therefore avoid being ‘deceived’. You would think that you and your behavior are the problem.
We have spent decades trying to drive precisely this thinking out of discussions about sexual misconduct. We were so close to doing away with victim-blaming and slut-shaming – with asking whether she led him on or looked older. We recognize these as ways of shifting responsibility from aggressor to victim, from the adult who acts to the girl who is acted on. This principle should not disappear simply because immigration enters the conversation.
I’m not smearing migrants when I say this. I’m talking about who should hold individual responsibility in any given situation, and saying that, generally speaking, it should be the adult. He is the moral actor responsible for obeying the moral norms in the society in which he lives. If someone comes to Britain, he should be treated as a moral adult. That means granting him the dignity of agency – and demanding the responsibility accompanying it. If he commits a sexual offense, responsibility belongs to him, not to licentious Western culture (because nobody is ever asking for it), and certainly not to a teenage girl who has the misfortune to look older than her years in a man’s eyes.
Girls do not ‘deceive’ grown men simply by growing up.
James Dixon is a Glasgow-based novelist, poet and playwright.
While Russia officially has no problem with the Islamic NATO and even hopes that it’ll one day include Iran to fulfill Russia’s regional collective security vision, it would be inaccurate to claim that Russia is naïve about the latent threat that this bloc could pose as a result of Turkiye’s rivalry with Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov opined in early September on his country’s position towards the Islamic NATO in response to a question about the role that Russia could play in restoring stability to West Asia. He began by referencing Russia’s over-two-decade-old collective security vision for the Gulf, which he also brought up earlier this spring during the Third Gulf War, since it’s an enduring part of its regional policy. Lavrov then said that the latest conflict imbued this concept with a fresh sense of urgency.
It was in this context that he mentioned the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement and added that “Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye, which formulated that concept of collective security and a defence alliance, have pointed out that it is also open to other countries.” He then declared that “At some stage, provided this structure also coordinates conditions on which Iran could be involved in this process, it could become the best concrete step in the direction of the concept we formulated.“
Seeing as how Lavrov earlier said that “Russia’s role in any part of the world…has always been in supporting what the concerned countries are ready to coordinate”, it can be assessed that his country’s position towards the Islamic NATO is officially positive. This is especially so as regards the possibility of Iran joining the bloc, though observers should remember that its three founding states are all tied to NATO, with Turkiye being a member while Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are “Major Non-NATO Allies”.
Even if one argues that stability in Afghanistan isn’t integral to Russia’s security and Saudi Arabia doesn’t bankroll anything anti-Russian, it’s veritably the case that “Turkiye Geostrategically Challenges Russia Independently Of NATO“. Russian expert Farhad Ibragimov, who earlier argued that Turkiye doesn’t do the US’ bidding against Russia, commendably adjusted his assessment in light of its US-approved large-scale arms deal with Ukraine that surprised Lavrov’s spokeswoman. Lavrov is therefore aware of this.
To be sure, he might not share the same threat assessment of the Islamic NATO’s members that was described above, but he at minimum knows that Turkiye continues to geostrategically challenge Russia despite also pragmatically cooperating with it on certain issues. It’s not only a member of the Islamic NATO, but also the one geographically closest to Russia and already in a position to challenge it even more in Central Asia, which might arguably influence his and his ministry’s private views about the bloc.
With that in mind, while Russia officially has no problem with the Islamic NATO and even hopes that it’ll one day include Iran to fulfill Russia’s regional collective security vision, it would be inaccurate to claim that Russia is naïve about the latent threat that this bloc could pose as a result of Turkiye’s rivalry with Russia. Be that as it may, Russian officials are expected to remain diplomatic by not openly talking about this, but Russian experts, media, and their country’s foreign supporters might be more critical.
Customs & Border Protection Has Scanned More Than 1 Billion Travelers With Facial Biometrics
Customs and Border Protection says it has now verified the identity of more than 1 billion travelers with facial biometrics, announcing the milestone in an Oct. 5 statement. The agency says the system runs at entry in every U.S. airport with international arrivals, at exit in 66 airports, at 42 seaports, and in all pedestrian lanes at the northern and southwest border crossings, with some vehicle lanes covered as well.
A passenger walks toward the airbridge as another walks up to use biometric boarding for an international flight United Airlines flight at IAH George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, on July 21, 2020. Adrees Latif/Reuters
CBP also says it received $673 million under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to expand the system across all U.S. ports of entry, and it has struck data-sharing deals with cruise lines. By its own count, the program has biometrically identified more than 600,000 overstayers and more than 2,300 impostors since 2018.
CBP says it discards photos of American citizens within 12 hours of identity verification. Citizens who prefer to opt out can simply notify an officer or airline representative and have their passport inspected manually, the agency says.
As the Epoch Times notes further, the need for speeding up the implementation of an automatic biometric entry/exit data system came into focus following the 9/11 attacks, when several pieces of legislation, along with the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, emphasized the need for it.
In 2013, Congress mandated identifying noncitizens who enter and leave the United States.
The CBP developed the Traveler Verification Service as part of the effort – a facial biometrics matching service that automates the process.
Facial biometrics enable CBP to identify criminals, including suspected terrorists; identify people overstaying in the United States; prevent visa fraud; and block individuals already removed from the United States from reentering illegally.
“Although U.S. citizens are not covered by this rule, they may continue to voluntarily participate in the facial biometrics process at entry and exit,” CBP said.
“U.S. citizens who prefer to opt out of the facial biometrics process may simply notify a CBP officer or airline representative and undergo manual inspection of their passport, as required for international travel.”
Identification Systems
The United States has various identity verification and storage mechanisms, including biometrics.
The Automated Biometric Identification System holds more than 320 million unique identities, processing 400,000 biometric transactions daily.
The system is owned by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which uses biometrics for various purposes, including facilitating legitimate travel, as well as identifying and preventing illegal entry into the country.
CBP, which comes under DHS, operates the Automated Targeting System, which is a tool that compares traveler, conveyance, and cargo information against law enforcement and intelligence data.
U.S. law also requires air carriers operating in the United States to provide DHS and the CBP with certain passenger reservation details.
“This information is transmitted to CBP before departure and used primarily for purposes of preventing, detecting, investigating, and prosecuting terrorist offenses and related crimes and certain other crimes that are transnational in nature,” according to CBP.
