Outside the United Nations headquarters in New York.
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The 81st United Nations General Assembly meets under the theme, “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations That Delivers for All.” Yemen test that slogan. This past week in New York, three scenes illustrated the crisis: one inside, one outside, and one on the screen.
Inside the hall, Abdullah al-Alimi Bawazir, a member of the Presidential Leadership Council and a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah Party, headed Yemen’s delegation. He called for support against terrorism and smuggling and for help to dry up networks that finance and arm the Houthis. Few would disagree.
A few meters away, southern Yemenis in the United States held a vigil denouncing Saudi trusteeship over South Yemen and affirming its right to self-determination and statehood.
The paradox lies in the speaker. Al-Alimi Bawazir represents Islah on the Presidential Leadership Council, announced in Riyadh in April 2022 and reshaped by Saudi Arabia in January 2026, when Riyadh moved to sideline the Southern Transitional Council. That a leader of a party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, some of whose branches Washington has designated as terrorist organizations, addresses the world on counterterrorism, while southern forces that fought Al Qaeda and the Houthis struggle to be heard, highlights how broken the prevailing equation is.
A few meters away, southern Yemenis in the United States held a vigil denouncing Saudi trusteeship over South Yemen and affirming its right to self-determination and statehood. Inside, al-Alimi Bawazir restated his attachment to Yemeni unity—the same unity in whose name his party, armed with religious edicts, took part in the killing of southerners during North Yemen’s 1994 invasion of South Yemen. The vigil came nine months after Saudi aircraft struck southern forces as they pursued terrorist smuggling networks, followed on January 9, 2026, by Riyadh’s announcement dissolving the Southern Transitional Council. The announcement did not end the question; rather, it moved it from institutions to the street, as the crowds in Aden, Mukalla, and now outside the United Nations attest.
On the day of the vigil, former U.S. Yemen envoy Tim Lenderking said Yemen splitting into two states is “possible,” noting the precedent. Its future, he said, is for Yemenis to decide at the negotiating table, not outsiders to impose. Talks look difficult for now, he said: The climate is militarized, and the Houthis are building their capabilities and exploiting their opponents’ divisions.
Official discourse treats unity as Yemen’s natural condition. History says otherwise. Throughout the twentieth century, North and South were governed separately, and from 1967 to 1990, they were two sovereign states, each with its own United Nations seat. The May 22, 1990, unification was a compact between two states; the war of 1994 turned partnership into annexation by force.
None of this denies Saudi Arabia’s weight or its interest in border security. But a decade of Saudi stewardship has produced its verdict. In the North, the Houthis grew from a local insurgency into a regional power threatening the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb. In the South, exclusion of the Southern Transitional Council forces who fought the Houthis and Al Qaeda effectively opened the field to Islah. Riyadh’s gamble endangers Saudi security and international shipping alike.
If the future is a Yemeni decision, as Lenderking put it, it must be made among Yemenis themselves, not imposed by Saudi authorities in Riyadh. To achieve this, Washington should first lead the political process through the international Quartet, with both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi serving as guarantors and partners. The United States cannot subcontract its interest in the Bab el-Mandeb, and it has a unique stature to convene and guarantee and not to write Yemen’s future. American absence is a vacuum the Houthis and Iran both fill.
In Yemen, trust will not be built by a speech for a council born in Riyadh and reshaped at its sponsor’s pleasure, nor by dismissing southern demands in the name of a hollow unity.
Second, the dialogue should move out from under Saudi supervision, not out of hostility to Riyadh, but because a party engaged militarily cannot also referee. The talks might even include the Houthis—not to legitimize them, but to bind them to border and security arrangements under international oversight.
Third, a two-state outcome should be approached as a practical exit, not an ideological one: the 1990 borders as the basis for negotiation, resource-sharing arrangements, guarantees for freedom of navigation, and neighborly relations between two sovereign states that secure Saudi Arabia’s borders by treaty, not trusteeship.
The United Nations General Assembly asks for the restoration of trust. In Yemen, trust will not be built by a speech for a council born in Riyadh and reshaped at its sponsor’s pleasure, nor by dismissing southern demands in the name of a hollow unity. Until the decision returns to those who own it, and Washington assumes responsibility that its own interests dictate, the Houthis remain the only party succeeding because they have clear goals and a consensus policy, no matter how ill-conceived and destabilizing it may be.
