History has its paradoxes and Yemen is a country in which tribal power games matter more than anything else. Between 1962 and 1970, Saudi Arabia and Egypt took part in the civil war in the north of the country. The Saudis supported the Royalists, faithful to the deposed Zaidite Shiite imam, while the Egyptians, who were unsuccessful, withdrew in 1967, after supporting the pro-republican military. The Yemen Arab Republic had come into existence in 1962. In a famous book published in 1971, Malcolm Kerr called the rivalry between Riyadh and Cairo an "arab cold war." [1] Forty years later, Yemen is the fulcrum of the “Middle Eastern Cold War” between Saudi Arabia and Iran.