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Ali Abdullah Saleh

President of Yemen for decades, close to both Saudi Arabia and the United States until Yemen's 1990 Security Council vote on Kuwait, after which his country collapsed into civil war; he fled to Saudi Arabia and was killed by a bomb planted in the palace where he had taken refuge.

Ali Abdullah Saleh led Yemen for decades. In John Kiriakou’s account he was close to Saudi Arabia and close to the United States alike — until he split with Washington over Yemen’s vote on the use-of-force resolution against Saddam Hussein.[1][2]

A civil war began immediately, and Kiriakou stresses that it was never a simple two-sided fight: Al-Qaeda fought in it from the Hadramaut in the east — the name means dead vegetation, an area so dry that not even animals live there, and therefore a no man’s land nobody else could enter, where Osama bin Laden’s family originated. Former communists attacked the central government in the south, and the Shia Muslims of the north-west attacked it too.[2][3][4]

Saleh fled to Saudi Arabia, which took him in reluctantly. Someone was able to get into the palace where he was living and plant a bomb, which, in Kiriakou’s blunt phrasing, “quite literally blew his head off. So, Ali Abdullah Saleh no longer exists.”[4][5]

The movement that emerged from the north-western front of that war, the Houthis, eventually took control of the government he had led.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ National Security Files, 2026-07-27 — 26:24 on YouTube · Transcript
  2. ↑ National Security Files, 2026-07-27 — 26:57 on YouTube · Transcript
  3. ↑ National Security Files, 2026-07-27 — 27:28 on YouTube · Transcript
  4. ↑ National Security Files, 2026-07-27 — 27:59 on YouTube · Transcript
  5. ↑ National Security Files, 2026-07-27 — 28:29 on YouTube · Transcript
  6. ↑ National Security Files, 2026-07-27 — 29:30 on YouTube · Transcript

Sourced from John Kiriakou's on-record public statements. See his profile for the full body of his interviews, podcast appearances, and short-form video.

Categories: People