Rashad al-Alimi, the chair of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, is having a bad week. He promoted his brother-in-law, Saleh al-Maqaleh, to be his de facto office director despite Saleh’s history of corruption. Now it appears Saleh went further and actively worked as the Houthis’ Trojan Horse within the Yemeni presidency while Rashad looked away.
The White House and State Department also repeatedly rejected Rashad’s request for meetings with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he comes to the United States for the United Nations General Assembly. Rubio’s team, however, granted Rashad a lower-rankling meeting while shutting out Yemen’s most competent and pro-Western leaders.
While Trump seeks to expand the Abraham Accords, Rashad jets to Doha to attend the “Emergency Arab-Islamic Summit” to condemn Israel for its September 9, 2025, strike on Hamas.
Rashad has reacted by insulting the Trump administration. While Trump seeks to expand the Abraham Accords, Rashad jets to Doha to attend the “Emergency Arab-Islamic Summit” to condemn Israel for its September 9, 2025, strike on Hamas. Rashad tellingly did not react when Iranian authorities fired missiles at U.S. forces at the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. In recent days, Rashad’s media outlets also have been full of stories about Zionist penetration of Yemen.
Perhaps Rashad has amnesia, given how his Saudi backers welcome Israelis and openly coordinate with Israel. Again, in a region rapidly changing, while Rashad says he supports designation of the Houthis, his actions suggest otherwise. Increasingly, the appointed chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council appears to side more with the Tehran-Baghdad-Sana’a axis than with the majority of Arab states that seek greater coexistence.
While theoretically the appointed president of Yemen, [Rashad] chooses to spend his time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Beyond Rashad’s double game, Rubio should slam the State Department’s door on him for another reason: He is lazy. While theoretically the appointed president of Yemen, he chooses to spend his time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the only corollary is Paul Biya, the 92-year-old, dementia-addled president of Cameroon who chooses to live in Paris while his war-torn country disintegrates. True, Rashad sometimes will spend a couple days in Aden, the largest city in South Yemen, but time there only exposes his lack of legitimacy since Aidarus Al-Zubaidi, the president of the Southern Transitional Council, governs there and southern Yemenis look at Rashad as an interloper. North Yemen is dangerous, but any leader worth his merit, let alone millions of dollars in international support, should be rallying his forces in the liberated zone. Alas, here too Rashad falls short: He has no real backers beyond the Riyadh diplomatic circuit.
If Rubio’s team wishes to receive a Yemeni representative, they should receive one who chooses Yemen over Saudi Arabia or Iran. Rashad can come to New York City, and his delegation can shop on Fifth Avenue alongside the family members and aides to the Iranian, Turkish, and Somali delegations. But if Rubio wants to fulfill Trump’s mandate that regional states should take responsibility for their own problems, shutting the door on Rashad would send a message far more resilient, if he refused to bother with the expat president who today is more Saudi than Yemeni, more a symbol for nepotism and corruption than good governance, and who prioritizes regional rejectionism, and seeks to appease the Houthi threat rather than defeat it.
