Saudi Arabia Takes Full Control of Yemen’s South
My latest for the Stimson Center on what the STC collapse actually reveals
I published a new analysis for the Stimson Center building on my former posts, fleshing out the dramatic events in southern Yemen over the past two weeks: the STC’s dissolution, Zubaidi’s extraction to Abu Dhabi, the treason charges, and Saudi Arabia’s assumption of direct control over Yemen’s military and political file.
Much of what I saw written about the subject has focused on the tactical sequence: who moved where, which governorate fell when, what Zubaidi did or didn’t do. But the tactical lens misses the strategic picture. This was never really about the STC’s miscalculation or even Zubaidi’s refusal to board that plane to Riyadh.
The South became a liability for Riyadh, not because the Kingdom opposed southern aspirations, but because it could not control the vehicle carrying them. The STC remained, despite years of Saudi diplomatic investment, a UAE project, built on Emirati funding, equipped with Emirati weapons, shaped by Emirati priorities. And its open signaling toward Israel’s Abraham Accords, at the exact moment MBS has staked political capital on progress for Palestinians, clarified the stakes:
“A force positioned on Saudi Arabia’s border and openly aligned with the UAE while seeking political recognition from Israel, at a moment when the Kingdom has staked significant political capital on progress toward a resolution for Palestinians, had become a liability rather than an asset.”
What Riyadh saw was a pattern:
“For Saudi strategic planners, these developments form a trajectory: a UAE-Israel architecture extending southward, with the STC as its Yemeni node. Riyadh decided to sever that node before it consolidated further.”
And now Riyadh faces a dilemma it cannot resolve:
“How does one sponsor a cause whose logical conclusion one cannot permit? The conference has a venue, but it does not yet have a destination.”
There’s a deeper question here that I don’t fully explore in the Stimson piece, one I’ll return to. The STC executed what appeared to be the ritual sequence of legitimacy: transition, consultation, constitutional declaration. The form was correct. But form doesn’t generate substance. The problem is that authority requires recognition. The STC had territory; it didn’t have permission. It conflated the aesthetics of statehood with its conditions.
And now we watch Riyadh attempt something that may be structurally impossible: to administer a cause while foreclosing its conclusion. Its a contradiction the system cannot resolve without transforming itself, or repressing the contradiction entirely. Saudi Arabia has chosen repression for now. Whether that holds is another question.
Read the full piece here: Saudi Arabia Takes Full Control of Yemen’s South