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Yemen is Iran’s new front for regional conquest

by Bassem Eid, opinion contributor - 11/09/26 7:30 AM ET

by Bassem Eid, opinion contributor - 11/09/26 7:30 AM ET

AP Photo/Hani Mohammed

Every American knows the word “mocha,” but few know that it is a city in Yemen.

For three centuries, Mocha was the coffee port from which the rest of the world received aromatic beans from their point of origin in Kaffa Province, Ethiopia. Tradition credits Shaykh al-Shadhili, the Sufi holy man said to have brought coffee drinking to Arabia, with its founding.

From Mocha, the beans traveled north to Turkish coffee houses. In 1683, they reached the Ottoman siege of Vienna, where legend says a spy named Georg Franz Kolschitzky opened the city’s first café with sacks the retreating Turks left behind.…