The U.S. State Department and international diplomats cling to the dangerous fiction that Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council is legitimate. Foreign envoys treat its chairman, Rashad al Alimi, as a counterterrorism partner. In reality, this character is an expatriate figurehead who controls no real territory and lives in hiding in Saudi Arabia. He is Yemen’s Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia: a leader on paper, but a ghost in practice.
While the Houthis terrorize international shipping and dominate northwestern Yemen, al Alimi’s administration functions as a corrupt syndicate. His ministers divert combat funds to lavish lives in Cairo and Jeddah, and the Yemeni people call them the “government of the hotels.”
On Sept. 9, 2025, Saudi intelligence arrested Saleh al Maqaleh, al Alimi’s brother-in-law and deputy presidential office director, for allegedly aiding the Houthis. Leaked findings indicated that he manipulated intelligence, facilitated weapons smuggling through government areas, and staffed the Information and Decision Support Center with Houthi assets. Earlier, Vice President Faraj al Bahsani shared video evidence linking al Maqaleh to an illicit oil-smuggling ring in Mukalla.
Al Alimi’s leadership has reached its cowardly nadir. At the United Nations, he warned that the Houthis were growing stronger. His own record explains why: he clings to power, obeys Riyadh’s inconsistency, and appeases the Houthis by blocking forces capable of defeating them.
That corruptness resurfaced on July 13. After PLC-aligned forces struck Sana’a International Airport to prevent an Iranian aircraft carrying a Houthi delegation from landing, al Alimi ordered that the confrontation not expand to avoid dragging Yemen “into wider war.” Rather than exploit success and project statesmanship, disrupt Iranian resupply, and pressure the Houthis, he cowardly chose de-escalation on Tehran’s terms.
Al Alimi shelters saboteurs within the anti-Houthi camp. He protects the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah party to satisfy Saudi patrons. This terrorist organization’s leaders enriched themselves through a $500 million Hamas investment portfolio managed by Hamid al Ahmar while sheltering extremist cells such as Amjed Khaled’s transport brigade. Al Alimi also remained silent when Saudi forces struck Southern Transitional Council counterterrorism units, effectively endorsing attacks on his own coalition.
Indeed, the PLC must be dissolved, and al Alimi should follow in the footsteps of former Foreign Minister Khaled Alyemany, who resigned over the fraudulent 2018 Stockholm Agreement. If he refuses, Washington must bypass his “hotel government” entirely.
The Trump administration — which has already denied al Alimi meetings with the U.S. president and the secretary of state — should turn its quiet snub of him into policy and back forces that actually fight.
First, Washington must restore ties with Tariq Saleh’s 64,000-strong National Resistance Force and the STC, whose 90,000-plus troops secured six former South Yemen governorates in just 48 hours.
Second, America must revoke al Alimi’s diplomatic standing, end high-level engagement, audit aid routed through PLC structures, and redirect it to vetted STC and NRF representatives.
Third, Congress must place military financing and counterterrorism assistance under Pentagon supervision, tying each tranche to territorial gains, Iranian arms interdictions, and the destruction of Houthi missile and drone infrastructure.
HOUTHIS ACCUSE SAUDI ARABIA OF STRIKING YEMEN’S INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Fourth, Washington should build a southern Red Sea security network linking STC and NRF coastal forces with American intelligence and technical support to monitor Houthi launch sites, drone corridors, and Iranian smuggling routes, and shield the Bab el Mandeb.
America must stop bankrolling a Hamas-like exile clique in five-star luxury hotels and start arming forces capable of crushing Iran’s Houthi proxy. Otherwise, our taxpayers will continue financing the fiction that is surrendering the Red Sea to Tehran.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the Israeli special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a doctorate in intelligence and global security in the Washington, D.C., area.