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National Intelligence Agency of Israel (Mossad) director Yossi Cohen visited Bahrain on 30 September, in the wake of their Abraham Accord. In Manama, Cohen held talks with National Intelligence Agency president Lieutenant-General Adel Bin Khalifa Al-Fadhel, and Strategic Security Bureau chairman Sheikh Ahmed Bin Abdelaziz Al-Khalifa.

Developments in recent weeks suggest that local resistance to outside interference has stiffened in Yemen’s Mahra governorate, which borders Oman. It has not reached the point where Mahris wish to secede from Yemen, but there is an insistence that they enjoy a high degree of autonomy in any post-war settlement.  

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government continues to lose ground against the Houthis in Marib province, where the rebels are close to encircling Marib city. Since taking control of the Al-Awadh tribal area in Al-Baydha province’s Radman district, south of Marib governorate, Houthis have advanced into the Qayfah area and have pushed Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Islamic State elements further away from their stronghold in Rada, Al-Baydha.

A joint UK and Qatari Eurofighter Typhoon squadron will be disbanded in 2023, according to defence specialists Jane’s, citing the UK Ministry of Defence. No 12 Squadron’s creation was announced in 2018, located at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire.

On 26 August, the Houthi-owned Al-Masirah website suggested – quoting what an analyst called “dubious sources” – that the UAE was facilitating the establishment of two Israeli signals intelligence (Sigint) sites on Socotra.

The UAE’s commitment to broadcasting its now overt relationship with Israel has seen cabinet ministers holding phone calls with their Israeli counterparts, the formal scrapping of the boycott of Israel on 29 August and an El Al plane landing at Abu Dhabi International Airport on 31 August carrying a delegation including US President Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Israel’s National Security Council leader Meir Ben-Shabbat.

As a result of some effective diplomatic footwork by Cairo and the supine attitude of formerly dominant western powers, the UAE’s attempt to direct the future shape of Libya’s governance is not entirely dead, despite the retreat of its proxy, the warlord Khalifa Haftar, from Tripolitania in early June.

Healthcare crisis: Yemen’s first confirmed case of Covid-19 was only reported on 10 April; since then the official number of cases has risen to almost 1,500, with more than 400 deaths. However, these figures understate the reality by an unknowable amount. The United Nations special envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths told the UN Security Council on 14 May that Covid-19 “is spreading at an unknown rate, given very low levels of testing”.

At least nine major unexplained explosions, fires and similar incidents across Iran in the past three weeks raise the prospect that a well-resourced, co-ordinated attack is under way by regime opponents based inside or outside the Islamic Republic. Alternatively, the wave of incidents could represent an opportunistic series of copycat strikes by a number of different players – or even, in some cases, genuine accidents.

Question marks hang over a massive explosion in the early hours of 26 June at a facility near Tehran operated by the Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group and known to be associated with ballistic missile production. A huge fireball from the blast was seen 20km away; images were posted on social media by Iranians living in the eastern suburbs of the capital.Satellite imagery shows evidence that the site is used for ballistic missile propellant production.

The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) says it is planning to establish a permanent base on the Indian Ocean coast. Until now, the IRGCN’s remit has been focused on the Gulf, while the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (Nedaja) takes the lead on the Caspian Sea and Gulf of Oman coasts. However, IRGCN commander Admiral Alireza Tangsiri was quoted in Iranian media on 22 June saying it would set up its new base during the current Iranian year, which ends in March 2021.

The Bahrain Defence Force (BDF) has suffered the loss of one of its soldiers in Yemen. Few details were given about what happened to Warrant Officer Jumaa Mubarak Salim, whose body was returned to Isa Airbase on 26 June. The official report only said he had lost his life while serving in the BDF taskforce operating as part of the Saudi-led Arab Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen.

A two-thirds scale model of a United States Navy Nimitz class aircraft carrier has been seen in satellite imagery in the harbour at Bandar Abbas, complete with 14 dummy fighter jets on its flight deck. Iran built a similar mock-up aircraft carrier in February 2015, which was attacked during Exercise Payambar-e Azam 9 (Great Prophet 9) by swarms of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) speedboats and jet skis, boarded by special forces and eventually sunk by anti-ship missiles fired by the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (Nedaja).

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it had killed two members of a ‘terrorist group’ and wounded four others, in a clash in the Marivan general district of Kurdistan province on 19 May. It was the latest in a long line of security incidents along Iran’s western border. The latest operation, carried out by the IRGC’s Hamzeh Seyed Al-Shohada Base in partnership with local intelligence agencies, followed an incident on 5 May, when three IRGC soldiers including Colonel Shakiba Salimi were killed by what official sources labelled “counter-revolutionary terrorists” in Divandere.

Coronavirus security impact: The Covid-19 pandemic has undermined the military campaign of Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led campaign against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. Training for Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) has been put on hold and some foreign forces were withdrawn. Among those to confirm redeployments were Australia, France and Portugal. The activities of the Combined Joint Task Force have also been hampered by attacks from Iranian-backed militia, according to the US State Department, Defense Department and US Agency for International Development’s latest quarterly report on Operation Inherent Resolve, covering Q1 2020.