The Military Command Council or MCC (Arabic: مجلس القيادة العسكرية) was a Nasserist military junta consisted of seven military officers, that ruled the Yemen Arab Republic from 1974 until its dissolution in 1978. The Chairman occupied the leading position in the Council.

For most of the junta's existence, its leader (and president of the YAR) was Ibrahim al-Hamdi. Under his leadership, the military junta pursued a reformist and leftist policy, independent of major regional powersand aimed at modernizing the traditionally backward and fragmented North Yemen. The junta actively sought to centralize power in its own hands and eliminate other informal centers of power, such as strong tribes and especially tribal sheikhs.

Nasserist officers first time gained power in 1962, when the Kingdom of Yemen suffered an army military coup, under leadership of field marshal Abdullah al-Sallal, against King Badr: the revolutionaries declared Yemen a republic. But Badr survived and able to unite tribes outside the capital Sana'a, where the coup took place. In a result, the coup triggered a bloody eight-year civil war between royalists and Republicans (so called "September Army"). At great cost to the country, the revolutionaries eventually won the war and ended the Yemeni monarchy.

The main country supporting the Yemeni Nasserists was Egypt under President Gamal Abdel Nasser: on his orders, tens of thousands of Egyptian soldiers were sent to North Yemen to help the pro-Republican side. Sallal's regime was kept in power precisely thanks to Egyptian assistance: for example, just a few days after the coup, 5,000 Egyptian soldiers were already placed in North Yemen to protect Sallal from a counter-coup. Sallal relied almost entirely on them and on volunteer pilots from Syria, rather than on his supporters in North Yemen itself.

But in 1967, the Six-Day War began, which went very badly for Egypt. Because of this war, Egypt began a hasty withdrawal of its troops from North Yemen, leaving Sallal almost defenseless against a coup. And the coup eventually happened: on November 5, 1967, while Sallal was in Baghdad, his regime was de facto overthrown by disgruntled officers.

The coup was orchestrated by Judge Abdul Rahman al-Eryani, who became the next president of the YAR. Al-Eryani was the first and last civilian leader to ever lead North Yemen. Eryani was extremely negative towards both the Saudi and Egyptian interventions in the civil war. He eventually managed to establish ties with Saudi Arabia, successfully convincing them to recognize the new republic and abandon their support for the monarchists. He opposed the monarchy in general and was a member of the "Free Yemeni Movement" opposition group during the kingdom exist, but he led the reconciliation process with the monarchists after the civil war, successfully negotiating a national peace accord with them.

However, Eryani was unable to build a strong national state, even after the civil war ended. His central government was very weak: North Yemen was in social chaos and was ruled by tribal and military power centers that emerged and strengthened after the overthrow of the officer Sallal in 1967: his concessions to the tribes were too great. In 1973, the spokesman and leader of the powerful Hashid tribal confederation, Abdullah al-Ahmar, denied widespread rumours that more than 20 percent of the projected spending was allocated to sheikhs, saying the correct figure was less than 2 percent. Because of that Eryani's policy, the penetration of tribal sheikhs into all state institutions eventually reached a new, very high, level. All important army units were commanded by tribal sheikhs, and many tribal militias were institutionalized and integrated into the army under Eryani, leftist militants waged a full-scale guerrilla war against his government from 1971 to 1973, and in January 1973, there were direct reports of local uprisings against the sheikhs and the infiltration of armed agents from South Yemen. A number of sources call the overthrow of Sallal and his replacement with Eryani "a step back in the goals of the 1962 revolution."

On June 13, 1974, a bloodless coup d'etat took place in the Yemen Arab Republic: a group of military officers successfully overthrew al-Eryani. Yemeni state radio announced that a council of seven Yemeni army colonels had been created to govern the country (which is MCC). According to the radio, the council was headed by Colonel Ibrahim al-Hamdi, who organized the coup. Hamdi became next official North Yemeni president (officially only in 1975). Military junta had imposed a 4-day, 24-hour curfew, but lifted it two days later, on June 16. On June 22, the MCC announced a new cabinet: it consisted of Muhsin Ahmad Al-Ayni (Prime Minister andForeign Affairs), Hassan Makki (Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs), Abd al-Latif Daifallah (Public Works), Muhammad al-Junayd (Finance), Abdallah al-Asnaj (Communications), Ahmad Jabir Afif (Education), All al-Saman (Justice), Ahmad Damash (Information), Abd al-Karim al-Eryani (Development Affairs of the State), Abd al-Malik al-Tayyib (Local Authorities), Yahya al-Mutawakkil (Interior Affairs), Muhammad Abd al-Wadfid (Health), Abdo Ali Usman (Municipalities), Sultan Algharshi (Supplies and Consumer Affairs), Muhammad al-Rubai (Youth, Labor, and Social Affairs), Ahmad al-Kabab (Waqf), 'Abd al-Wahhab Mahmud (Economy), Muhammad al-Wazir (Agriculture), Salah al-Masri, Amin Abfil Ras, and 'Abd al-Karim al-Jansi.