 The ceasefire in Yemen has held for over a month. After a particularly violent few months which saw heavy bombing from the Saudi-led coalition and unprecedented deaths, the ceasefire came into effect on April 2. Despite quite a few violations, the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition have managed to keep an uneasy calm. Around the same time, there was also a reshuffle in the Saudi-backed government which was earlier headed by Abd Raba Mansour Hadi. How do we understand these traumatic developments of the past month? What has been the role of the United Nations in all these discussions? Rania Khalik of Breakthrough News explains. So it's been an interesting period this Ramadan which has just come to an end and throughout that time the ceasefire in Yemen did hold and it continues to hold despite a few violations but it wasn't a ceasefire organized by a mediator or through negotiations. It seemed to almost happen by accident. First the Saudis were under pressure from the last huge Houthi attack on Saudi territory and at the time the Houthis had run out of gas because nothing was coming into the port of Hudaida because of the blockade so they had no fuel for vehicles, generators, they were essentially coming to a standstill. So this is in fact why the Houthis have to take the city of Madib and the oil that comes with it just as an aside but meanwhile the Emiratis have reduced their support for their partners in Yemen because of the Houthi retaliations against the UAE but the structural problems of this all remain. None of the problems in the country or the reasons for the conflict have been solved so the ceasefire could just be an opportunity to rest and start again for all sides. Khalid bin Salman, the brother of Muhammad bin Salman seems to have the Yemen file now so it's been clear for a while that the Saudis were preparing to abandon their old allies in Yemen like Vice President Ali Muhsin and President Abid Rabu Mansour in favor of their former enemies who were their former allies who belong to the old Ali Abdullah Saleh network. There's a lot of switching sides in this area of Yemen. Ali Abdullah Saleh was the wily former president who had been a Saudi ally and then switched sides and joined with the Houthis and basically helped them take over the country but he was killed by the Houthis in 2017 for betraying them. So now the Saudis seem to have forgotten about all that and have empowered his network. So they got rid of the Yemen president and have created a presidential council in which Ali Abdullah Saleh's nephew, Thadak, a key military commander actually plays a key role. So the Saudis were accusing their former partners of corruption which of course should hardly be a concern for them but they were also just simply not effective. Anyway all that's to say we shouldn't view this move as anything but bullying by the Saudis. They offered all the Yemenis who attend their conference in Riyadh residency and a bank account and forced the creation of this new council. So it's really it's meant to unite the divided parties in Yemen who are also opposed to the Houthis so that they can have a common front against the Houthis. So now we just wait and see if the ceasefire is an opportunity for talks and compromises to take place or from the more cynical point of view if it's just an opportunity for resting, regrouping and then of course renewed fighting. And also you know the Saudis are frustrated as I've mentioned before with the Americans for the perception that the Americans haven't helped them enough against the Houthis and also for not recognizing Muhammad bin Salman as the counterpart with whom they should deal. So they've been playing the problem child if you will and the U.S. has sent Brett McGurk who's head of the Middle East at the White House to go and reassure them that America still loves them and that the UAE said they still love the UAE and that we're all still best friends for life. And then I should also add the U.S. military still has five or six bases in Yemen ostensibly as part of the war on terror. So that's kind of the overall situation in Yemen. It's really just a waiting game to see whether this very shaky ceasefire holds or whether again it's just kind of a time to rest and to rest up for new fighting. The U.N. negotiating process like with many conflicts in recent years is you know doesn't really have any weight behind it. It's more symbolic gestures and big statements on the international stage but much like what we saw with a country like Syria for example what was happening at the U.N. and the Geneva process never really amounted to anything. It was more about what was happening on the ground and more about how the regional players who were involved in this conflict were interacting with each other and talking to each other on their you know sort of in their own spaces and through back channels that was making any progress with deescalating the conflict. And I think the same is true for Yemen. The U.N. is for the most part toothless and it really has just in many of these conflicts become this kind of symbolic institution that wants to sort of pat itself on the back and make itself feel like it's the one leading these sort of ceasefires. But like I mentioned in this case with Yemen the U.N. didn't play a role. It was the local regional players playing a role for their own self-interested reasons. The ceasefire in Yemen has also had an interesting effect on the politics in Iraq which has been in limbo since the elections in October. These developments are also linked to the rapidly changing regional configurations in recent times. What are the new equations that are developing between powerful players in the region and how is this affecting Iraq? So interestingly enough the Houthi attacks on the UAE as well as one attack on the UAE that actually originated in Iraq has had interesting geopolitical consequences that appear to be leading to the resolution of Iraq's political crisis. But to explain this I should go back a bit you know Iraq had elections in October of last year and those elections were contested and full of corruption and fraud and manipulation and hundreds of millions of dollars being spent with money coming in from the UAE and Qatar as well as various Iraqi oligarchs. But of course you know that's just like every election in Iraq. Shias who dominate Iraqi politics ended up being divided after this election whereas Sunni and you know Sunnis are divided as well between an Emirati-backed faction led by the speaker of parliament Halbusi and a Qatari and a Turkish fact faction led by the oligarch Khamis Khanjar. So this is the Iraqi political divides are very much related to what country is backing you. So now you know some might remember that in 2017 the Gulf was divided and the Emiratis and the Saudis besieged Qatar and actually would have invaded Qatar had it not been for Turkish and Iranian support. So tensions were high and the Saudis and Emiratis had hoped to use the U.S. against their regional rivals like Iran. But then you know when Trump escalated with Iran and made it clear that he actually wouldn't help the Saudis and when the Houthis attacked Saudi oil companies and of course with the Americans you know the Americans did nothing as the Saudis saw it and they actually didn't do much. The Gulf slowly started to realize when this happened that the Americans were you know safe and removed from the consequences of their actions but the Gulf would be the first victim of American provocations against Iran in the region or wherever in the region against you know so and so they slowly started improving ties and in Biden's first year we saw much of the region you know realizing that America's failure to impose its will on Syria and Iraq and Iran and Yemen and places like Afghanistan at the same time that American power was in decline meant that they the Gulf states should find their own solutions and so we saw the Emiratis and the Qataris and the Turks and Egyptians and in the Iranians and the Saudis all improving relations and this culminated in fact in a recent visit by Turkish president Erdogan to Saudi Arabia and of course you know going back to Iraq and Iraq this is meant that the Sunni parties backed by Turkey and Qatar and the Emiratis were all united into one coalition but then a couple of weeks ago the Emiratis and Iranians reached an agreement that will actually lead to a consensus government with everybody included in Iraq and as a result just last week a parliament speaker Halbussi the Emirates man in Iraq that I had mentioned actually made a visit to Iran so the Emiratis actually told Halbussi to encourage the divided Shias to reach an agreement and so meanwhile the Emiratis are rumored to have paid off the Sutterist faction in Iraq to reach an agreement with Iran's allies in Iraq so we can assume that we won't be seeing the Houthis or Iraqis attack the UAE anymore at least for now as this is taking place but it just goes to show you how the region is so interconnected and that's something that's happening in one part of the region particularly among the power players in the region can actually impact politics in other places