Sep 16, 2026 · 48 min · 15 segments
A few thousand dollars' worth of drones just took out Saudi Arabia's backup oil pipeline — the one the world was relying on when the Strait of Hormuz got blocked. Brent crude hit $109 a barrel. Diesel…
So here's what happened for all those who might not follow what's going on from a day-to-day perspective.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq attacked Saudi Arabia's east-west crude oil pipeline.
The pipeline was Saudi Arabia's primary backup route for exporting oil without going through the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, if you listen to last week's Crest report, we were talking about if you combined the pipeline with what was actually going through the strait on these big, massive ships, the combined total matched and even exceeded on some weeks, even exceeded what was being taken out pre-conflict.
So it was doing really well, and then boom, a few drones that only cost a few thousand dollars apiece hit that pipeline.
Now, they did say, we can get this back up and running in a couple weeks, but the issue is, what's to stop this from happening again? Because at this point, you've got all of these Iranian-backed terrorist groups that are spread out all through the Middle East.
It's not like having a war with Russia or a war with North Korea, which is confined to a geographical region for the most part.
These terrorists are spread out everywhere and they're all working with and have worked with Iran.
Because that country is just, as far as the people who are running it, anyway, just one big terrorist network.
They've got miles, tens of thousands of miles in places that, you know, you can only see with the best equipment.
So here's what happened for all those who might not follow what's going on from a day-to-day perspective.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq attacked Saudi Arabia's east-west crude oil pipeline.
The pipeline was Saudi Arabia's primary backup route for exporting oil without going through the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, if you listen to last week's Crest report, we were talking about if you combined the pipeline with what was actually going through the strait on these big, massive ships, the combined total matched and even exceeded on some weeks, even exceeded what was being taken out pre-conflict.
So it was doing really well, and then boom, a few drones that only cost a few thousand dollars apiece hit that pipeline.
Now, they did say, we can get this back up and running in a couple weeks, but the issue is, what's to stop this from happening again? Because at this point, you've got all of these Iranian-backed terrorist groups that are spread out all through the Middle East.
It's not like having a war with Russia or a war with North Korea, which is confined to a geographical region for the most part.
These terrorists are spread out everywhere and they're all working with and have worked with Iran.
Because that country is just, as far as the people who are running it, anyway, just one big terrorist network.
They've got miles, tens of thousands of miles in places that, you know, you can only see with the best equipment.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.