With Yemen apparently on the verge of becoming the world’s next failed state and a regional base for al-Qaeda, a series of U.S.-assisted air and ground assaults that shook pockets of Yemen last week might have seemed like a positive development in...

Yemen’s President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, flew into the Gulf of Aden on Nov. 7 to celebrate the first exports of liquefied natural gas from a sprawling $4.5 billion plant — the biggest ever investment in his otherwise impoverished desert country. A...