Interior Minister Ibrahim Haidan discusses border and coast guard cooperation with US envoy
Yemen Herald News 
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Yemen’s interior minister met the acting U.S. ambassador in Riyadh on Thursday to discuss border security and coast guard cooperation, the state news agency Saba reported.
Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Haidan and Neil Hop reviewed what Saba called aspects of security cooperation between the two governments.
Haidan thanked the United States for its support to Yemen’s border security and coast guard, according to the agency.
He called for widening that cooperation to cover organised crime and terrorism.
Both sides underlined the importance of closer coordination, Saba said.
Hop said his administration wanted to strengthen security cooperation and build up the interior ministry’s capacity, the agency reported.
The account rests on Saba, the news agency of Yemen’s internationally recognised government. No independent confirmation of the meeting or of what was discussed has been published, and Yemen Herald could not verify the agency’s summary.
Saba gave no figures, no timeline and no description of any new programme.
Hop took over as chargé d’affaires for the U.S. Mission to Yemen in August, the mission said when it announced his arrival.
He is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of counselor and has spent more than 24 years in State Department and interagency foreign policy and national security posts, according to the mission.
His earlier Washington assignments included director of the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs, office director and acting deputy assistant secretary for Pakistan, and senior adviser for technology diplomacy in the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy.
The mission said his responsibilities cover maritime security, counterterrorism and work with Yemeni authorities on their capacity to confront armed groups.
The U.S. Mission to Yemen has operated from Riyadh since the embassy in Sanaa suspended operations in February 2015, after the Houthis took the capital.
Yemen’s interior ministry oversees the coast guard, which patrols approaches to Aden and the stretch of Red Sea coast held by government forces.
The United States designated the Houthi movement a foreign terrorist organisation with effect from March 4, 2025.
The designation was the second time Washington applied that label to the group.
Yemen’s internationally recognised government is seated in Aden and led by the Presidential Leadership Council, which was formed in April 2022 and is chaired by Rashad al-Alimi.
The council and its ministers have worked largely from Riyadh and Aden since then.
Fighting continued in the west of the country on the day of the meeting.
Saba reported that al-Alimi telephoned commanders the same Thursday, among them Presidential Leadership Council member Tareq Saleh, to review operations on fronts in Taiz governorate.
The agency said the prime minister separately followed developments on the Taiz and Hodeidah fronts. Yemen Herald has not independently confirmed either account.
Merchant shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden has been attacked repeatedly since November 2023, disrupting traffic through the Bab al-Mandab strait.
Those attacks are the backdrop to the maritime security work the U.S. mission has said it is pursuing with the government in Aden.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its March 2026 humanitarian needs and response plan that more than 22 million people in Yemen need assistance.
The plan put the number of acutely food insecure people at 18.3 million.
It recorded more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, including 516,157 with severe acute malnutrition.
OCHA counted 5.2 million internally displaced people.
The agency appealed for $2.16 billion to reach 12 million of those in need.
The White House counterterrorism strategy published in May 2026 placed Yemen and the security of Red Sea waterways among Washington’s stated priorities.
Yemen’s coast guard has drawn outside support for years. The United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia launched the Yemen Maritime Security Partnership to develop the service and help it protect commercial traffic, counter smuggling and deter piracy off Yemen’s coast.
The United States, the United Nations and other governments have contributed to the force at various points.
The fiscal 2026 defence appropriations act directed funding toward improving what it called the overall professionalism of the Yemeni coast guard.
The Congressional Research Service set out the state of U.S. policy toward Yemen in a briefing paper dated May 12, 2026.
Haidan has held the interior portfolio in the internationally recognised government, which relocated from Sanaa after 2015.
Saba filed its account of Thursday’s meeting from Riyadh at 5:30 a.m.
Traffic through the strait has not recovered. Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported in its Red Sea briefings in July and August 2026 that transits through Bab al-Mandab were running far below normal volumes, at one point about 38 per cent down.
Suez Canal traffic in early 2026 stood roughly 60 per cent below the level recorded before carriers began diverting around southern Africa, according to shipping analysts.
Rerouting adds days to voyages between Asia and Europe and raises fuel and insurance costs.
The Houthis have said their campaign is tied to the war in Gaza. Shipowners and Western governments describe it as a threat to freedom of navigation.
Saba did not say whether the two men agreed to meet again.
About the Author
