The GOP’s fortunes in the midterm elections appear increasingly tied to the actions of Iranian-allied militant groups launching attacks on new oil choke points.

An Iranian-backed attack on a key Saudi pipeline has raised fears of $5-per-gallon gas prices in the final six weeks before Election Day.

And another Iranian-backed group’s lightning seizure of Red Sea coastline pushed diesel to record highs on Wednesday.

But President Donald Trump and his aides are downplaying the attacks, and Trump is rebuffing calls for military help from U.S. ally Saudi Arabia to confront Iran’s proxies, which could open yet another front in Trump’s ongoing war against Iran.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spoken about the Iranian proxy attacks only once in recent days, saying “we’re watching those events very closely.”

“We actually feel like we are on top of the situation,” Vice President JD Vance said Monday, adding that the U.S. was in talks with Houthi militants, one of the Iranian proxy groups.

The recent attacks along the Red Sea trade route and inside Saudi Arabia are signs that Iran is finding new ways to use its proxies to pressure the U.S.

On Sept. 11, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq conducted a long-distance drone strike that damaged multiple pumping stations on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, satellite images show.

Saudi Arabia is under pressure to restart the pipeline, which transports 4% of the world’s oil moving to market, before it leads to further disruption in the global oil supply.

Former U.S. officials say a second Iranian proxy group — Houthi rebels in Yemen — have advanced closer to holding critical territory near the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb on the Red Sea and are emerging as Iran’s most powerful regional proxy.

The Bab-el-Mandeb — the narrow exit from the Red Sea for oil shipments leaving Saudi Arabia — has become a major backup route for oil exports since Iran largely shut down the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz at the start of the war.

Nadwa Al-Dawsari, an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, who previously advised the U.S. government on Yemen, said the war had increased the strategic importance of the Houthis to Iran.

“With Iran’s help, they became the most capable nonstate actor in the Middle East” Al-Dawsari said at a terrorism conference last week. “We’ve seen that in real time in the Red Sea and in the region.”

Last Thursday, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump twice and urged him to carry out U.S. strikes on Houthi forces as they closed in on seizing two strategic Red Sea islands.

But Trump told Salman that the U.S. was not planning to widen its military campaign in the region to include the Houthis, according to a person familiar with the conversation granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the conversations.

A senior Trump administration official told MS NOW that the U.S. is focused on “empowering our regional partners to take the lead in managing and resolving regional security challenges.” The official added, “we are in continuous dialogue with Saudi Arabia.”

From Trump’s perspective, Michael Ratney, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told MS NOW, having U.S. forces attack the Houthis sends the wrong political message to the American public as the midterms approach.

“For Trump to provide military support, I think, kind of rebuts Trump’s narrative that this war has wound down, that it’s nearly over,” Ratney said. “For him to recommit to a new front in the military campaign kind of puts the lie to the notion that this war is behind us.”

Ratney said the failure of the U.S. to support the kingdom would likely disappoint Saudi officials, given the “many, many decades” they have invested in “military training, armaments purchases, exercises [and] consultations” with the U.S.

“When you have a major military conflict, you want your partners on side,” Ratney said. “And so I think for them it’s distressing because this is just that moment.”

Al-Dawsari, the Yemen expert, said Houthi forces are disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, manufacturing drones and missiles inside Yemen, and training members of extremist groups in the Horn of Africa and other regions, including Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The artifical intelligence company Anthropic reported last week that users in a part of northern Yemen controlled by the Houthis tried to use its chatbot Claude to develop guidance, control and navigation software for ballistic missiles. Anthropic said it cut off access to the user.

“The Houthis have always been underestimated by the U.S. and by the international community,” Al-Dawsari said. “It’s time to take them seriously.”

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From MS Now.