Yemen’s internationally recognised government has named Foreign Minister Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak as the new prime minister in a surprise appointment.

Bin Mubarak replaces Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed at a time of rising tensions in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country after a spate of Red Sea attacks by Houthi rebels on ships that have prompted retaliatory strikes by the United States and the UK.

A decree issued on Monday by Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council and carried by the official Saba news agency announced bin Mubarak’s appointment as premier and assigned the outgoing prime minister to the post of presidential adviser.

It did not give a reason for the move.

Bin Mubarak, Yemen’s former ambassador to the US, is widely seen as a staunch adversary of the Houthi rebels.

He came to prominence in 2015 when he was kidnapped by the Houthis while he served as Yemen’s presidential chief of staff during a power struggle with then-President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The seizure of bin Mubarak helped plunge Yemen into a political crisis, resulting in clashes between the Houthis and Hadi’s presidential guards that prompted the president and the government to resign.

Bin Mubarak was also appointed as the country’s envoy to the United Nations in 2018.

Mohammed Al-Basha, a Yemen expert for the US-based Navanti research group, said bin Mubarak is seen as one of the “architects of the Saudi-led coalition” that intervened against the Houthis in 2015 to prop up the internationally recognised government, a year after the rebels captured the capital, Sanaa.