Formerly known as the states  Yemen Arab Republic and   Democratic Republic of Yemen. The republic of Yemen occupies the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula on the Red Sea opposite Ethiopia, and extends along the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula an the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.  Saudi Arabia is to the north and Oman is to the east.
Yemen is about the size of France.
       
It has a 700-mile (1,130-km) narrow coastal plain in the south that gives way to a mountainous region and then a plateau area.  Some of the interior highlands in the west attain a height of  12,000 feet (3,660 m).