Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on the 19th that, following recent attacks on Saudi Arabia, Turkey will honor the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement and may provide Saudi Arabia with military-technical assistance. He said signatories are closely monitoring Houthi attacks from Yemen and condemned strikes on oil infrastructure, adding Saudi requests for aid would likely be technical areas Turkey can meet. Fidan dismissed claims the pact’s substantive progress has been slow.

CNN reported Sept. 18 that U.S. forces nearly launched an operation after an AI-generated intelligence report circulated. Four people familiar with the matter said a report this spring, during the war with Iran, claimed a Chinese vessel was carrying parts for a nuclear-weapons program to the Middle East. U.S. forces moved to intercept; two sources said armed personnel were preparing to board and another source said U.S. military aircraft were airborne. As the operation was about to start, officials reassessed a report compiled by a U.S. Special Operations Command analyst and found it had been generated by an AI chatbot that misidentified the cargo.

Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency reported a magnitude-5.8 earthquake at 11:18 local time on Sep 19, located about 75 km northeast of Sarmi Regency, Papua province; depth 10 km.