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CNN’s five-source account of the American role is the most specific yet. More than 100 US military advisers are in the Kingdom inside a newly formed joint forces command, established in recent weeks as Iran stepped up support for Houthi attacks, with one US official putting the total at roughly 200 troops. They are providing intelligence and geospatial targeting support and have helped Saudi officers use a real-time battlefield tool one official compared to the Pentagon’s Maven system. The limits are as explicit as the assistance: the United States is not participating in strikes, not refuelling Saudi aircraft and not providing other operational support, and every source framed the effort as an extension of existing cooperation. A US official told CNN that hundreds of IRGC officers are in Yemen working with the Houthis toward closing Bab al-Mandab, the intelligence Secretary Rubio alluded to earlier in the week. One source’s summary: this is not the old days. The Pentagon declined to comment.

Pakistan drew its own line at a weekly briefing. Asked how Islamabad would meet its obligations after the Houthi attacks on Saudi cities, the foreign ministry spokesperson said the Mecca agreement is a defensive alliance and there are no plans to expand it at the moment. The same day, per the Iranian foreign ministry readout carried by Anadolu, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke by phone with Field Marshal Asim Munir, and the two stressed the need for regional countries to remain vigilant and coordinate. Whether any Pakistani or Turkish asset is now on Saudi soil under the pact, the observable Edition 8 set, is not established in today’s reporting; the Guardian’s reading is that the pact is defensive in design and unlikely to cover Saudi operations inside Yemen. Yanbu, meanwhile, is loading again: Vortexa puts September loadings at 3.7 million barrels a day from an August low of 3.2 million, and Kpler at 2.9 million from 1.5 million.

The Iranian foreign ministry’s readout, as carried by Anadolu, says Abbas Araghchi and Prince Faisal bin Farhan exchanged views on the latest regional developments, noted the escalation of tensions and growing insecurity, and stressed the need to continue cooperation and diplomatic efforts to prevent tensions from spreading and to restore stability. No Saudi readout of the call is established in today’s reporting, and the Iranian text does not mention Yemen, the Houthis or the Pakistani message delivered on Tuesday. It is nonetheless the first direct minister-level Saudi-Iranian contact this desk has recorded since the Houthi campaign against the southern cities began, and it came on the day the Houthis took Mocha, the day after Reuters’ Iranian sources said Tehran had ordered the attacks, and the same evening Araghchi called Pakistan’s army chief.

The Gulf side of the ledger is fuller. Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, condemned the Houthi attacks on civilian and commercial sites in a call with Prince Faisal and discussed Saudi and Qatari efforts to de-escalate, after Doha’s foreign ministry had called the attacks a violation of Saudi sovereignty and declared Saudi security integral to GCC collective security; the Prince also spoke with Oman’s Badr Al Busaidi. On Thursday he was in Paris at the International Space Summit on behalf of the Crown Prince, with a delegation from the Defence Ministry, the Communications, Space and Technology Commission and the Saudi Space Agency. The Chabahar zone coordinates Edition 8 flagged, and any Russian statement on the Hormuz exclusion zone, are not established; what Russia did say, at the Security Council, was to condemn the Saudi strikes.

Brian Mast, who chairs the committee that will review the agreement during the mandatory congressional period, told Jewish Insider he would likely support it: there are still details being ironed out, but from everything he has noticed he is supportive. He said he had reviewed the notifications to Congress, been briefed in private and spoken directly with Energy Secretary Chris Wright. The President’s transmittal letter, as quoted by the outlet, says the agreement would permit the transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to support a joint enrichment and conversion study but would not permit the transfer of restricted data, which the outlet reads as consistent with a US-managed black box enrichment facility on Saudi soil. Darrell Issa framed the enrichment question as national pride, said Riyadh would not have to manage the facility but could own it, and called the Kingdom an open book on concessions.

The Institute for Science and International Security’s analysis, shared Wednesday, is the text the opposition will use. It finds the agreement deliberately structured so that a US-designed, built and operated enrichment facility can be deployed in Saudi Arabia without automatically transferring the centrifuge technology inside it, with Washington retaining control of design, production, assembly, maintenance and physical access; it also finds a potential loophole in language that explicitly permits transfers of centrifuge sensitive nuclear technology under certain circumstances, and notes the text does not address whether Saudi Arabia could pursue enrichment separately. Democrats have voiced proliferation concerns. No committee date, and no text of the parallel safeguards arrangements Rafael Grossi described, is established in today’s reporting; nor is any movement on the $5 billion bomb sale notified on September 5.

The Kingdom told OPEC’s secretariat that it produced 6.238 million barrels a day of crude in August, down 1.9 million on the month and the lowest since 1990, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Kpler’s ship-tracking puts August exports at 3.2 million barrels a day, the lowest in 13 years, and Al-Monitor, citing Kpler data reported by the New York Times, says only two Saudi cargoes passed Bab al-Mandab in the past week. The price did what a 1.9 million barrel cut by the world’s largest exporter does: Brent reached $105.79 intraday on Thursday and was at $104.83 at 8:50 a.m. New York time, NDTV Profit recorded the benchmark around $104, up more than 13 percent this month and nearly 70 percent this year, and WTI passed $100 on Thursday, per AFP. Hormuz transits fell to seven on Wednesday, one of them a VLCC carrying nearly 2 million barrels, with no LNG cargo leaving the Gulf.

The context Al-Monitor supplies is a cartel in flux: the UAE left OPEC in May, Iraq threatened in June to follow before its prime minister said in July it would stay and seek a fair quota, and Venezuela is reported by Bloomberg to be weighing an exit. Edition 8’s test, a Brent settlement above $100, is met on every intraday print in today’s reporting, though Wednesday’s and Thursday’s settlements themselves are not established; the US wholesale inflation release, the diesel crack and the open-market rial are likewise not established today. Yanbu loadings, the other side of the ledger, are up in September on both trackers, from 3.2 to 3.7 million barrels a day per Vortexa and from 1.5 to 2.9 million per Kpler.

Reuters, citing Bloomberg’s people familiar with the matter, reports that PIF is considering merging Electronic Arts with Savvy Games, both of which it controls, into a single group spanning EA Sports FC, Battlefield and The Sims alongside Savvy’s mobile titles Monopoly Go! and Pokemon GO. The fund took EA private last month through a consortium for roughly $55 billion. No final decision has been reached, and a deal is unlikely before Savvy completes its $6 billion acquisition of the Chinese mobile studio Moonton. Savvy’s chief executive Brian Ward stepped down last week after leading the group’s acquisition run. EA and Savvy did not respond to Reuters; PIF declined to comment. Reuters notes that any combination could draw antitrust scrutiny of the kind Microsoft’s Activision purchase attracted.

The timing sits inside the sequence this desk has followed all week: the fund’s New York meetings with Apollo, Blackstone, Brookfield, Carlyle, KKR and Stonepeak, LIV Golf’s Chapter 11 filing, and a 2026 to 2030 plan that promises value realisation and third-party capital. No named financing out of the New York meetings, and no LIV restructuring terms, are established in today’s reporting; nor is the Al Rajhi settlement Edition 5 logged for September 10. A merged EA-Savvy would be the fund’s largest single operating company outside Aramco-linked holdings, and, if the reporting is right, the vehicle through which it would eventually seek outside capital for gaming.

Kpler’s August count of 3.2 million barrels a day is the lowest Saudi export volume in 13 years, and the tracker’s reading of the southern strait, as reported by the New York Times and relayed by Al-Monitor, is two Saudi cargoes through Bab al-Mandab in the past week. The port data cut the other way: Yanbu crude and condensate loadings have rebounded in September from an August that Vortexa calls the lowest since the war began, to 3.7 million barrels a day from 3.2 million on Vortexa’s count and to 2.9 million from 1.5 million on Kpler’s. Loadings are not deliveries, and the two trackers disagree by more than a million barrels a day on the same port, but both agree on direction, and both were measured before Mocha fell on Thursday. Reuters’ description of the Saudi position is that the Kingdom has been loading millions of barrels a day at Yanbu to avoid Hormuz, and that Houthi control of Bab al-Mandab risks further disruption to the flow of Saudi oil to Asia.

The macro frame is unchanged from Edition 8: a final second-quarter GDP contraction of 4.7 percent, oil activities down 24.8 percent, non-oil growth at 0.9 percent. August’s export number belongs to the third quarter, and it is worse than the June figure of 4.65 million barrels a day Edition 7 recorded. Any GASTAT or trade-tracker figure on July and August exports by route, the observable Edition 8 set, is now partly answered by Kpler’s aggregate; a route split between Ras Tanura and Yanbu is not established in today’s reporting.