Geoffrey Miller: New Zealand changes tack in the Gulf

A sign of things to come.

That might be the best way to interpret New Zealand trade minister Damien O’Connor’s recent foray into the Middle East.

O’Connor stopped off in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi on a brief, yet important trip that comes as New Zealand prepares for its October 14 election.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Yemen and Islam’s internecine war

Yemeni President Hadi: rebels are ‘stooges of Iran’ – BBC

By regional standards, Saudi Arabia and its allies moved like lightning to intervene in Yemen. Countries outside the Arab League have also pledged to throw in their lot if needed, including Turkey and Pakistan. Compare this burst of energy with the sluggish (or non-existent in some cases) regional response to ISIS. And yet the Islamic State is surely a much greater regional threat than a bunch of renegades grabbing power in one of the world’s poorest, least influential and most shambolic nation-states, hardly worthy of the epithet, occupying the bottom end of the Arabian Peninsula. So why the flurry of activity? What threat do the Houthi pose that ISIS doesn’t?