The little civil war in Yemen last week spluttered on like a defective fuse. The royalist tribesmen trying to put the deposed Imam of Yemen back on his feudal throne made hit-and-run attacks on strongpoints held by the "republicans" of General Abdullah Sallal and their Egyptian allies. In return Egyptian planes bombed the tribal encampments and even crossed the border to blast again the Saudi Arabian town of Najran, the main staging area for supplies sent to the royalists by the nervous monarchs of both Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Kings Hussein and Saud.
Behind the scenes, the U.S. was exerting...