The Politics of Yemen are in an uncertain state due to the Houthi takeover in Yemen. An armed group known as the Houthis or Ansar Allah seized control of the Northern Yemeni government and announced it would dissolve parliament, as well as install a "presidential council", "transitional national council", and "supreme revolutionary council" to govern the country for an interim period. However, the deposed president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, has declared he is still in office and is working to establish a rival government in Aden.
The foreign relations of Yemen are the relationships and policies that Yemen maintains with other countries. It is a member of the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Yemen participates in the nonaligned movement. The Republic of Yemen accepted responsibility for all treaties and debts of its predecessors, the YAR and the PDRY. Additionally, India acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has stressed the need to render the Middle East region free of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
The Yemen Arab Republic, commonly known as North Yemen or Yemen (Sanaʽa), was a country that existed from 1962 to 1990 in the northwestern part of what is now Yemen. Its capital was at Sanaa. It united with the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen on 22 May 1990 to form the current Republic of Yemen.
South Yemen, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, was a state that existed from 1967 to 1990 as the only communist state in the Middle East and the Arab world. It was made up of the southern and eastern Governorates of the present-day Republic of Yemen, including the island of Socotra. It was bordered by North Yemen to the North-West, Saudi Arabia to the North, and Oman to the East.
Ahmad bin Hussein al-Ghashmi was the fourth President of the Yemen Arab Republic from 11 October 1977 until his death eight months later. Al-Ghashmi assumed power when his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, was assassinated.
Ali Nasir Muhammad Al-Husani is the former leader of South Yemen serving as General Secretary of the Yemeni Socialist Party between 1980 and 1986. He was twice president of South Yemen and once the Prime Minister. He served as the Prime Minister from 2 August 1971 until 14 February 1985 and as Chairman of the Presidential Council from 26 June 1978, after overthrowing and executing Salim Rubai Ali, until 27 December 1978.
The Dhofar War took place from 1963 to 1976 in the province of Dhofar against the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman. The war began with the formation of the Dhofar Liberation Front, a Marxist group which aimed to create an independent state in Dhofar, free from the rule of the Omani Sultan Said bin Taimur. The rebels also held the broader goals of Arab nationalism which included ending British influence in the Persian Gulf region. Omani and British goals, on the other hand, were to safeguard Oman from communism and halt the spread of communist ideology as part of the broader Cold War.
Yemeni unification took place on May 22, 1990, when the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen was united with the Yemen Arab Republic, forming the Republic of Yemen.
The modern history of Yemen began with the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire. In 1839 the British set up a protective area around the southern port of Aden and in 1918 the northern Kingdom of Yemen gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. North Yemen became a republic in 1962, but it was not until 1967 that the British Empire withdrew from what became South Yemen. In 1970, the southern government adopted a communist governmental system. The two countries were formally united as the Republic of Yemen on May 22, 1990.
The Imams of Yemen and later also the Kings of Yemen were religiously consecrated leaders belonging to the Zaidiyyah branch of Shia Islam. They established a blend of religious and political rule in parts of Yemen from 897. Their imamate endured under varying circumstances until the republican revolution in 1962, then the formal abolition of the monarchy in 1970. Zaidiyyah theology differed from Ismailis or Twelver Shi'ites by stressing the presence of an active and visible imam as leader. The imam was expected to be knowledgeable in religious sciences, and to prove himself a worthy headman of the community, even in battle if this was necessary. A claimant of the imamate would proclaim a "call" (da'wa), and there were not infrequently more than one claimant. The historian Ibn Khaldun mentions the clan that usually provided the imams as the Banu Rassi or Rassids. In the original Arab sources the term Rassids is otherwise hardly used; in Western literature it usually refers to the Imams of the medieval period, up to the 16th century. The Rassid branch that came to power with imam al-Mansur al-Qasim is known as Qasimids.
In the years after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, Yemen became a key site for U.S. intelligence gathering and drone attacks on Al-Qaeda. According to the 2012 U.S. Global Leadership Report, 18% of Yemenis approved of U.S. leadership, with 59% disapproving and 23% uncertain. According to a February 2015 report from the Congressional Research Service, U.S. officials considered Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula the Al-Qaeda affiliate "most likely to attempt transnational attacks against the United States."
The Yemeni Civil War in 1994 was a civil war fought between the two Yemeni forces of the pro-union northern and the socialist separatist southern Yemeni states and their supporters. The war resulted in the defeat of the southern armed forces, the reunification of Yemen, and the flight into exile of many Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) leaders and other separatists.
The Imams of Yemen, later also titled the Kings of Yemen, were religiously consecrated leaders belonging to the Zaidiyyah branch of Shia Islam. They established a blend of religious and temporal-political rule in parts of Yemen from 897. Their imamate endured under varying circumstances until the end of the North Yemen Civil War in 1970, following the republican revolution in 1962. Zaidiyyah theology differs from Isma'ilism and Twelver Shi’ism by stressing the presence of an active and visible imam as leader. The imam was expected to be knowledgeable in religious scholarship, and to prove himself a worthy headman of the community, even in battle if this was necessary. A claimant of the imamate would proclaim a "call" (dawah), and there were not infrequently more than one claimant.
The Arab Cold War was a political rivalry in the Arab world from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, as part of the wider Cold War. It is generally accepted that the beginning of the Arab Cold War is marked by the Egyptian revolution of 1952, which eventually led to Gamal Abdel Nasser becoming president of Egypt in 1956. Thereafter, newly formed Arab republics, defined by revolutionary secular nationalism and inspired by Nasser's Egypt, engaged in political rivalries with conservative traditionalist Arab monarchies, led by Saudi Arabia. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 is widely seen as the end of this period of internal conflict and rivalry. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was installed as the leader of Iran's theocratic government. A new era of Arab-Iranian tensions followed, overshadowing the bitterness of intra-Arab strife.
The National Liberation Front was a Marxist paramilitary organization and a political party operating in the Federation of South Arabia, during the Aden Emergency. During the North Yemen Civil War, fighting spilled over into South Yemen as the British attempted to establish an autonomous colony known as the Federation of South Arabia. Following the exit of the British armed forces, the NLF seized power from its rival, the Arab nationalist Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY). In the aftermath of the Emergency, the NLF renamed itself the National Front and eventually became the main force behind the creation of the Yemeni Socialist Party which subsequently governed the country as a single-party Marxist-Leninist state.
There are no diplomatic relations that exist between Israel and Yemen and relations between the two countries are very tense. Yemen refuses the admission of people with an Israeli passport or any passport with an Israeli stamp, and the country is defined as an "enemy state" by Israeli law. During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war war, the Iran backed Houthi movement in Yemen launched missile attacks against Israel and ships in the Red Sea.
The South Yemen Civil War, colloquially referred to as The Events of '86 or The Events of January 13, or more simply as The Events, was a failed coup d'etat and armed conflict which took place on January 13, 1986, in South Yemen. The civil war developed as a result of ideological differences, and later tribal tensions, between two factions of the ruling Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), centred on Abdul Fattah Ismail's faction, at-Toghmah, and Ali Nasir Muhammad's faction, az-Zomrah, for the leadership of the YSP and the PDRY. The conflict quickly escalated into a costly civil war that lasted eleven days and resulted in thousands of casualties. Additionally, the conflict resulted in the demise of much of the Yemeni Socialist Party's most experienced socialist leadership cadre, contributing to a much weaker government and the country's eventual unification with North Yemen in 1990.
The Second Yemenite War was a short military conflict between the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. The war developed out of a breakdown in relations between the two countries after the president of North Yemen, Ahmad al-Ghashmi, was killed on 24 June 1978, and Salim Rubai Ali, a moderate Marxist who had been working on a proposed merger between the two Yemens, was murdered two days later. The hostility of the rhetoric from the new leadership of both countries escalated, leading to small scale border fighting, which then in turn escalated into a full blown war in February 1979.
Operation Simba, and the subsequent fighting around high ground near Sarfait, was the longest running conflict of the Dhofar Rebellion. On 17 April 1972, a battalion of the Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces (SAF) landed by helicopter to establish a position on a dominating ridge at Sarfait, near the border with the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). The aim was to interdict the supply lines used by the guerillas of the PFLOAG from the PDRY to the interior of Dhofar, which ran along the narrow coastal plain beneath the foot of the escarpment at the southern end of the ridge.
The First Yemenite War was a short military conflict between the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.
North Yemen 
Muslim Brotherhood 
Saudi Arabia 
Republic of China 
United States 
NDF 
South Yemen 
Libya 
Soviet Union 