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Currently Playing: PEPE: China Threatened to Cut Off Rare Earths on Trump Weapon China Is Bringing to Xi-Trump Summit

Iranian sources tell Transition Protocol that when Xi Jinping meets Donald Trump in Washington next week, he is expected to link China's rare-earth exports to the American naval blockade of Iran. Pepe Escobar, recording from Moscow fifteen minutes after the information reached him, on what that would mean — and on the week Yemen took the Bab al-Mandeb and the House of Saud ran out of friends. Recorded past midnight in Moscow on Friday 18 September 2026, the first in a new weekly wrap-up series. In this episode: — What Iranian sources expect Xi to put to Trump at next week's summit, and why rare earths are the lever. Beijing has not confirmed this and, as Pepe says on camera, it never will. — The message Sanaa sent to the White House through Oman, and the American base named in it. — How Ansar Allah took the Yemeni coast, Mayun, and control of the Bab al-Mandeb — and what happens at Taiz and Marib next. — Riyadh's search for allies: Pakistan, Turkey, Britain, and — as widely reported since 15 September — Israel, through US Central Command. — Why Islamabad cannot join a war against Yemen without paying for it at home. — The Saudi East–West pipeline, the repair clock, and what three more drones would do to it. — The argument in Washington over striking Iran before or after the midterms. — Why the Bab al-Mandeb is closed to some shipping and not to others — a distinction almost nobody else is making. — Two chokepoints, record diesel prices, and the stagflation warning. — And to close: mandala multipolarity against what Alexander Dugin calls the Dark Enlightenment. #PepeEscobar #Iran #China #Yemen #TrumpXi #RareEarths #StraitOfHormuz #SaudiArabia #Pakistan #Geopolitics