Pakistan, Sept. 23 -- The situation in the Gulf has grown steadily clearer of late, and with it the realisation that neither Israel nor its principal patron, the United States, can secure their wider aims unless Saudi Arabia is at length brought into line. Direct persuasion having failed to draw Riyadh into recognition of the Abraham Accords, both parties appear to have resorted to more circuitous means of tightening the noose. What once seemed a confused picture of regional tension now reveals a deliberate design intended to isolate the Kingdom and compel a change of course.

Events about the Bab el-Mandeb Strait were never without purpose. Their true object has been to hem Saudi Arabia in and to multiply the pressures bearing upon it fr...