On August 28, 2025, an Israeli Air Strike on a Houthi cabinet meeting killed Houthi Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi and much of his cabinet. That might have been the Houthis’ second-worst loss in recent weeks. There are now conflicting reports that on September 9, Saudi Intelligence arrested Saleh al-Maqaleh, the deputy director of the office of Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council. Reports suggest the Saudis are investigating him on charges of cooperating with the Houthis.
If his arrest is accurate, and al-Maqaleh has certainly disappeared from public view, he would be the second figure connected to the Presidential Leadership Council and its constituent parties to be charged with aiding the Houthis in the past few months. In June, the Yemeni government acknowledged that Amjed Khaled, the former commander of Yemen’s Transport Brigade, long protected by the Islah Party, Yemen’s Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, had helped both the Houthis and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula conduct terrorism against Islah’s political competitors.
Saleh al-Maqaleh was born Saleh al-Ahdal in the governorate of Ibb but adopted his present surname to conceal his Hashemite lineage. He is the brother-in-law and has been a trusted confidant of Rashad al-Alimi since Alimi was the interior minister of Yemen between 2001 and 2008 under the late President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
[Saleh al-Maqaleh] has been a trusted confidant of Rashad al-Alimi since Alimi was the interior minister of Yemen between 2001 and 2008.
Al-Maqaleh rode Alimi’s coattails into several sensitive positions. In 2006, for example, Interior Minister Alimi appointed his brother-in-law to head the Aden Coast Guard. Rather than protect the coastline from smuggling, he sought to leverage the Coast Guard to smuggle subsidized diesel to the Horn of Africa, bringing him a windfall. His scheme was not without hiccups. In one episode, he was caught red-handed during a smuggling operation and jailed at the Criminal Investigation Prison. Alimi personally intervened with Saleh to win his release, commuting his sentence to termination of employment.
He subsequently left Yemen for the United States but, at Alimi’s urging, President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi appointed him deputy chief of the National Security Agency following the launch of Operation Decisive Storm in 2015.
He enriched himself off the agency’s budget while reporting exclusively to Alimi. When Alimi became chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council in 2022, he appointed al-Maqaleh as his de facto office director.
Al-Maqaleh created the Information and Decision Support Center, a shadowy security agency headed by Fayed Ahmed al-Adani, a pro-Alimi officer from Al-Bayda who was long a resident in Sana’a, but held U.S. citizenship, and staffed the center with other Alimi loyalists, some of whom had links to the Houthis. Al-Adani served as the liaison between Alimi and the Houthis. Al-Maqaleh gradually migrated critical powers from the National Security and Political Security services, the Ministries of Interior and Defense, to empower the center. It gained broad authority over land, sea, and air ports of entry; established a special operations room; and reported intelligence to Alimi personally.
Yemeni chatter and leaks from the investigation allege al-Maqaleh twisted intelligence to manipulate the Presidential Council’s decision-making and feed Alimi’s security obsessions. Al-Maqaleh also used his position to consolidate power, marginalizing Presidential Office Director Yahya al-Shaibi.
Al-Maqaleh reportedly used his position and the lack of oversight both to enrich himself and to facilitate weapons smuggling through government-controlled areas to the Houthis.
Prior to al-Maqaleh’s supposed arrest, Saudi authorities had urged Alimi to dismiss al-Maqaleh, especially after Vice President Faraj al-Bahsani, a former governor of Hadramout, publicly exposed photos and videos detailing Maqaleh’s involvement in a corruption and smuggling case involving an oil refinery in Mukalla.
Rather than unite Yemenis against the Houthis, the [Presidential Leadership Council] has given faction heads cover to use and abuse their positions to undermine each other and enrich themselves.
Whether or not al-Maqaleh is in Saudi custody or has simply disappeared for other reasons, Alimi is head of a Presidential Leadership Council that, three and a half years after its establishment, has failed miserably. Rather than unite Yemenis against the Houthis, the council has given faction heads cover to use and abuse their positions to undermine each other and enrich themselves. With this latest scandal, Alimi cannot plead ignorance. The alleged backdoor for the Houthis was his own brother-in-law, whom Alimi had previously rescued from multiple corruption scandals in the past. The question now is whether Alimi himself was complicit, or simply incompetent. Circumstantial evidence, however, suggests that Alimi—president of the Internationally Recognized Government of Yemen and nominal partner to the anti-Houthi international coalition—has covertly collaborated with the Houthis for profit. Alimi should step down or himself face arrest.
It seems only a matter of time before the Presidential Leadership Council collapses. Like the Stockholm Agreement and so many more diplomatic artifacts and agreements the United Nations and international diplomats crafted for Yemen, the council never fulfilled its function or promise. It has become a fiction whose fundamental corruption empowers the Houthis rather than enables their defeat.
Perhaps the best option for both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates, would be to appoint a formal, ceremonial president with two vice presidents, one in charge of governing southern Yemen and the other charged with governing those portions of northern Yemen that Yemeni forces have liberated from Houthi control. This would imbue each vice president and their political grouping with accountability and stop the tendency for Yemeni ministers to live in comfort abroad rather than among their own constituents.
