ANALYSIS · October 22, 2026

What Are the Dark Clouds over the Gulf Telling Us?

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Jesus told the crowds, “Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming’; and so it is” (Luke 12:54). He told the Pharisees they could “discern the face of the sky” but not “the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3). This week the sky over the Gulf turned dark. What is it telling us?

In Will the Fifth Beast Step Off the Middle East Stage? we asked whether America, the unspoken Fifth Beast of Daniel 7, is going home from the Middle East while the lion, the bear and the leopard take their own ground. This week’s clouds in the news may be the Fifth Beast gathering itself to leave, or they may be the Fifth Beast wading in deeper. Here are seven readings from the barometer, and the questions they raise.

1. The barometer drops: diplomats told to go

On Oct. 21 the State Department ordered some diplomats and family members to leave Saudi Arabia, Reuters reported. The order came as the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen kept striking Saudi soil. That same day an attack on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam killed one person and injured eight, and two people died when a drone was intercepted over Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah oilfield.

Some headlines spoke of “embassies” across the Gulf being told to evacuate but the order itself covers Saudi Arabia only. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said it applied to “non-emergency US government employees and their family members in Saudi Arabia only.” Four U.S. officials told Reuters that missions in other Gulf states would also order family members to leave, but Pigott did not address any post outside Saudi Arabia.

Washington had sent some of its people back in recent months, to the region after many were pulled out when the war on Iran began in late February. Now some are packing again. When a household sends the children away first, is it bracing for a storm it expects, or simply closing the shutters out of caution?

2. Lightning on the water: Hormuz

Overnight Oct. 21–22, Iranian state television, quoting the Revolutionary Guard’s navy, claimed that seven oil tankers were damaged in the Strait of Hormuz, the Associated Press reported. Four, it said, were targeted while transferring oil and caught fire; three hit naval mines and were left immobilized. The report named no ships, flags or casualties. The seven-tanker claim is unconfirmed. If it is verified, AP noted, it would be the largest single-day number of vessels damaged in the strait since the war began on Feb. 28.

The same Iranian report warned that the Guard could target U.S. bases in the region if Washington tried to help tankers use other parts of the strait. A day earlier Guard spokesman Hossein Mohebbi had announced a change of doctrine: “If a country attacks us, we will both respond and go on the offensive,” IBTimes reported. The old posture, he said, was defensive. The new one will be asymmetric.

Daniel saw the leopard with four wings and four heads, a beast built for speed in every direction. Is the leopard now promising to spring first?

3. The oil keeps flowing anyway

Here the clouds part a little. Flows of oil through Hormuz and the alternative regional routes averaged more than 24 million barrels a day in the week ending Oct. 18, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing the ship-tracking firm Kpler. That beat the prewar average of 23.3 million, IBTimes reported. Traffic through the strait itself is still lower, about 14 million barrels a day, or 82% of prewar volumes.

How is the oil getting out? Saudi and Emirati pipelines carry it around the chokepoint. In September about 40% of non-Iranian crude leaving the Gulf bypassed Hormuz, against 17% before the war. Tankers run as shuttles, collecting oil inside the Gulf and handing it to other ships near Oman. American air cover gives some protection along the Omani coast, and tankers often switch off their tracking signals for the crossing.

Yet Brent crude still rose 2.91% to \$111.99 a barrel on Thursday morning. The market is nervous even while the barrels move. The region is learning to route around Iran, and Iran’s grip on the strait is loosening. In Doha, analyst Negar Mortazavi put it this way: “Iran’s leverage has diminished but has not disappeared” (Al Jazeera).

If the oil can flow around Iran, who in the Gulf still needs the Fifth Beast standing guard at the gate? Or is it the Fifth Beast’s own air cover that makes the detour work at all?

4. The southern flank: Saudi Arabia cannot stop the Houthis

Iran has spent years arming a proxy on Saudi Arabia’s border, and that proxy has now learned to arm itself.

In the past week the Houthis hit Riyadh’s international airport and the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, Reuters reported in an Oct. 15 analysis. Experts told Reuters that Iran helped the Houthis reach near self-sufficiency in building drones and missiles. “Iran has basically taught the Houthis how to fish,” said Hamid Nikou, a former political adviser to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Andreas Krieg of King’s College London said Tehran “has helped create an indigenous military-industrial learning process that becomes progressively harder to dismantle.” Parts have come from China too: Conflict Armament Research reported that the Houthis were trying to build medium-range ballistic missiles using parts shipped from China.

Meanwhile the war on Iran has drained the interceptors that protect America’s partners. The United States has used large amounts of them defending its bases and allies, “leaving some allies vulnerable, Saudi Arabia in particular.” And Saudi Arabia is simply big. Its “sheer size makes defence against air attacks harder than defending Israel or a US base,” Farzan Sabet of the Geneva Graduate Institute told Reuters. The Riyadh airport strikes earlier this month killed at least 14 people and wounded hundreds, according to Al Jazeera.

5. Riyadh told to choose

On Oct. 22 David Rundell, writing in The Telegraph, argued that Saudi Arabia’s future depends on dropping its commitment to Palestine. He compares revolutionary Iran with revolutionary France and borrows Churchill’s warning about feeding a crocodile in hope that it will not eat you. “You cannot negotiate with a crocodile,” he writes. His remedy is for Riyadh to cooperate openly with Israel, which he sees as willing and able to help defeat the Houthis.

On Oct. 20, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack told the Global Security Forum in Doha that regional countries are recognizing the limits of U.S. involvement: “Everybody is saying: OK, I can’t rely on America to solve all my problems” (Al Jazeera).

When the patron no longer promises to fight every battle, the clients start to find new partners. Is this the regional powers stepping in as the United States steps back? And what does it cost a kingdom to rearrange its oldest commitments under fire?

6. The storm date: after Nov. 3

The darkest cloud sits on the calendar. On Oct. 21 The New York Times reported that the U.S. and Israeli militaries have drawn up specific plans for renewed strikes on Iran after the American midterm elections. Planners describe “a short but intensive operation.” Likely targets include Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal. Some U.S. planners believe “an intensive three-day campaign” could force concessions. The United States is assembling “a massive arsenal that will be fully in place by early November,” including three aircraft carriers, thousands of Marines, fighter jets and Special Operations forces. Even the nights are part of the plan: the military prefers to strike in darkness, and the nights over Iran grow longer in early November.

Nothing is approved. President Trump “has vetoed plans for a return to major combat operations” repeatedly this year, the Times reports, including earlier this month when both militaries were nearly ready to attack. Israel votes on Oct. 27, and a defeated Netanyahu would become a caretaker prime minister who would find it hard to launch a war. Iran says it is ready too. Mahdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Iran’s negotiator, called a 72-hour campaign a “fantasy.” “Our attacks will be more fierce, creative and different,” he said.

Why wait until after Nov. 3? The Times cites “many political reasons,” including the president’s own promise not to strike before the vote. There is another reading. From Nov. 3 to January, a newly elected Congress has not yet been seated, and the outgoing one has the least reason to push back. Is the lame-duck window the real calendar? And if a campaign is timed for when voters can no longer weigh in, what does that say about how ominous we can expect it to be?

7. Then what? Stay or step aside?

Suppose the storm comes. What does the sky look like afterward?

Barrack’s answer in Doha was not quite an exit. “The US no longer wants to own,” he said. “The bargain is not to control, but to not leave. We’re not leaving.” He also questioned decades of intervention: “Every time we try and intervene, change the person or the regime, it seems to have been a mistake” (Al Jazeera).

In Foreign Affairs, MIT’s Barry Posen argues for a less-is-more strategy. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln came home on Oct. 8 after 320 days at sea. Interceptor stocks are draining. The military, he writes, “is not built for the near-constant use it has experienced for decades,” and Washington “should cut its policy coat to fit the available cloth.” He adds that it “simply does not have the will or the resources to provide for both Asia’s and Europe’s defense while fighting protracted conflicts elsewhere, most recently in the Middle East.”

So the endings come into view, and none of them is certain. One big air campaign, then a step back. Or ground forces sent to seize islands or coastline at Hormuz, and the United States in deeper than before. Or a regime that cracks under the weight, or does not. Dana Stroul, the Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy official, told the Times that the campaign so far, with sanctions and a naval blockade, has not “brought the regime back to the negotiating table in a meaningful way.” Bombing alone has a poor record against the Houthis as well. What would a second round settle that the first did not?

Dominion taken, life prolonged

A country can lose its hegemony in a region and still remain on the scene. Is that what the United States is living through in the Gulf? A power that “no longer wants to own” but says “we’re not leaving.” A power whose partners are told to make their own arrangements. A power that may yet launch the largest strikes of the year before it steps back. Trimmed involvement is not the same as departure, and departure is not the same as defeat.

Or we may be reading the sky wrong. Does the strike plans and Barrack’s “We’re not leaving” point the other way? The storm could pull the United States deeper into the Gulf, not off the stage. The clouds are real. We will have to wait and see what they bring. No nation’s cause is God’s cause, and no carrier group moves the calendar of heaven. He “changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings” (Daniel 2:21). Our part is to watch the sky and be clear eyed.

Questions for readers

  • Is pulling diplomats out of Saudi Arabia precaution, or prelude?
  • Why wait until after Nov. 3 unless the action is expected to be unpopular? Is the lame-duck window the real calendar?
  • Can bombing achieve anything lasting against Iran or the Houthis, or does it lead to boots at Hormuz?
  • If the oil flows around Iran, why is the price of oil still going up?
  • Is Saudi Arabia’s realignment the regional powers “stepping in” as the United States steps back?
  • Could we be wrong, and the storm instead brings the United States deeper in?

Tell us what you see in the sky.

Sources

— Revelation Rosetta Stone Staff

Produced by Revelation Rosetta Stone Staff with AI assistance from Grok (xAI).

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