Yemen's Interior Minister & US Envoy Discuss Security

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ADEN, Yemen — Yemen’s interior minister, Major General Ibrahim Haydan, discussed security cooperation with the acting United States ambassador, Neil Hopp, in a video call on Wednesday.

The state news agency Saba said the two covered joint security cooperation between the two governments.

Haydan thanked the United States for its support for the internationally recognised government and for backing the Yemeni Coast Guard, according to the agency.

He said he wanted more cooperation on maritime security, border control, illegal migration and counter-terrorism, Saba reported.

The minister also raised what the agency described as Houthi escalation and its threat to internal security and to shipping routes in the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf.

Hopp confirmed his administration’s support for firmer security cooperation with the interior ministry, Saba said, along with continued coordination and exchange of expertise and information.

Yemen Herald could not independently verify the account, which rests on the Yemeni state agency’s summary of a closed video call. The United States mission to Yemen had published no readout at the time of writing.

Hopp is new in the post. He arrived as chargé d’affaires for the United States mission to Yemen on 5 August, three weeks before the call.

He is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of counselor and has served more than 24 years in State Department and interagency foreign policy and national security roles.

His Washington assignments have 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 on his arrival that he would work in close partnership with the Yemeni government to advance President Donald Trump’s priorities and support Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s diplomatic efforts.

The United States suspended operations at its embassy in Sanaa in February 2015 and has run its Yemen mission from outside the country since.

Hopp has been meeting senior Yemeni figures since taking up the job. Al-Alimi, the chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council, discussed Houthi escalation with him in a separate meeting reported this month.

The Coast Guard has become a focus of several donors. The United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia organised a Yemen Maritime Security Partnership in April to train the force, with support from the European Union, the United States and Japan.

Yemen’s embassy in Washington has set out what the government wants from the United States, listing more support for the armed forces and the Coast Guard, closer intelligence coordination, and help intercepting Iranian weapons shipments bound for Yemen.

Tehran denies arming the Houthi movement. The United States embassy has said separately that it is committed to strengthening its partnership with the Yemeni government on maritime security and counter-terrorism.

The maritime brief Haydan raised has grown more urgent this summer. A naval monitoring group reported on 22 July that Houthi forces had deployed missiles and drones against ships in the southern Red Sea.

Yemen’s transport ministry said a Houthi strike on the Egyptian-owned, Tanzania-flagged cargo ship Tihamah in the Bab al-Mandab strait on 12 August killed four crew members, three of them Pakistani and one Indonesian, and two rescuers.

Al Jazeera, NBC News and CNBC reported those deaths, citing the ministry and the United States military. NBC News described them as the first deaths in a Houthi strike on shipping since the regional war began in February.

The United States military said it struck a container ship the same day as it attempted to sail toward an Iranian port, according to the same reporting. It did not identify the vessel.

The Houthi authorities in Sanaa reject the government’s characterisation of their operations. Saba carried no Houthi response to Wednesday’s call.

A United Nations-brokered truce agreed in 2022 has broken down, and international news organisations reported that the collapse followed a Saudi air strike on the runway at Sanaa airport on 13 July.

International reporting dates the start of the wider regional war to 28 February, when Iranian missile and drone attacks struck Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, according to a Gulf Cooperation Council statement.

The government Haydan serves has changed leadership twice this year. The Presidential Leadership Council named Shaya Zindani prime minister on 15 January, moving him from the foreign ministry, and the foreign ministry passed on 23 July to Afrah al-Zouba, the first woman to hold it.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its March 2026 response plan that more than 22 million Yemenis need assistance and 18.3 million are acutely food insecure.

OCHA put the number of children under five with acute malnutrition above 2.2 million, of whom 516,157 are severely malnourished, and the number of internally displaced people at 5.2 million. Its appeal sought 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.

Haydan’s ministry oversees the Coast Guard alongside the police and the civil defence, and its remit covers the land borders and crossings that the Presidential Leadership Council ordered reviewed on the same day.

Saba gave no figure for the size of the Coast Guard, named no specific programme the two sides agreed to expand, and did not say whether either government proposed a further meeting.