[3][4] In 2011, Bahah actively backed the revolution in Yemen beginning in March, demanding that President Ali Abdullah Saleh resign and avoid further bloodshed.

[5] President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi named Bahah, then serving as Permanent Representative to the United Nations, as Prime Minister-designate on 13 October 2014, with the assent of Houthis who had seized the capital the previous month.

[7] However, on 22 January 2015, after heavy fighting around the presidential compound, President Hadi and Prime Minister Bahah submitted their resignations and the cabinet dissolved, leaving Yemen without a government.

[8] Bahah was ordered to return to work by the Houthis after the House of Representatives was reinstated and Hadi escaped to Aden in late February 2015, but he and his former ministers reportedly refused.

[11] Le Monde described Bahah as "a man of consensus" and suggested he could step in as an acceptable successor to Hadi if the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen was successful in restoring the exiled government to power.