Houthis Are 80 km From Aden. Riyadh Must Now Call In Egypt’s Army
Egypt’s parliament has cleared Sisi to send troops to Saudi Arabia, but no request has come. With Houthis 80 km from Aden, Riyadh must ask Cairo now.
In this article
Context
Egypt will send forces to Saudi Arabia the moment Riyadh formally asks, and with the Houthis now 80 kilometres from Aden, Saudi Arabia should ask now. Egypt’s parliament authorised President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on October 26 to take “all necessary measures” to help defend the kingdom, after the National Defence Council had already approved the step. One thing is missing: a formal Saudi request. An informal request has reached Cairo, but the official one has not yet been sent.
The battlefield has run ahead of that diplomacy. On November 2, Yemeni military sources said Houthi fighters were attacking a government camp at the entrance to Tur al-Baha district in Lahj governorate, about 80 kilometres from Aden. That is closer than Tanta is to Cairo. It is the nearest the movement has come to the city since it briefly forced its way in during 2015, and it puts the seat of Yemen’s internationally recognised government within a few days’ push.
What Saudi Arabia needs from Cairo is not Egyptian soldiers in Yemen. It needs Egyptian troops and air defences to take over positions inside the kingdom, so that Saudi units can move to the south and to the Yemeni border before Aden is lost.
Key takeaways
- The Houthis have shifted their main effort from besieged Taiz to Aden and are about 80 kilometres from the city, their closest since 2015.
- Aden is defended more thinly than at any time in years, because the southern forces that once held it left after the Saudi-Emirati rupture in January.
- If Aden falls, the Giants Brigades on the Bab el-Mandeb coast are cut off, and Iran gains a second Hormuz at the mouth of the Red Sea.
- Egypt’s commitment is public and approved by its defence council and its parliament. When the Saudi request arrives, Cairo must honour it at any cost.
Analysis
Why did the Houthis turn from Taiz to Aden?
For weeks the Houthi effort was concentrated on Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, whose main road south to Aden they cut in early October. The siege has displaced more than 100,000 people, but the government forces inside the city centre have not surrendered and the fighting there continues. Instead of finishing Taiz, the movement changed direction. On October 30 it opened an assault on the al-Maqatira district of Lahj, and within three days its fighters had reached Tur al-Baha, one of the main approaches to Aden.
The timing follows the diplomacy. Talks between Washington and Tehran have resumed, and on October 26 Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkey’s intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin met Iranian leaders in Tehran. Mohsen Rezaei, who hosted the talks as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said afterwards on Iranian television that the Saudi side did not raise the Houthis at all. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has since said that Tehran bears no hostility towards the Gulf and is talking to Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
The Houthis read all of this as a closing window. They fear that a deal between Iran and the United States would leave them with less Iranian backing than before. They fear that a Washington freed from its Iran war would turn to supporting Saudi Arabia. They know they cannot fight alone for long if Tehran settles with Riyadh. So they are trying to win now, and the order to finish the job may well have come from Tehran. A Houthi flag over Aden would give the movement enormous leverage in any future talks with Riyadh, beginning with a demand that the Giants Brigades withdraw from the Bab el-Mandeb coast and hand back the ground they took there.
Why does Aden matter in Yemen’s war?
Aden is the port city on the Gulf of Aden that has served as the temporary capital of Yemen’s internationally recognised government since the Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 and the government relocated south. It holds the government’s main seaport and main airport, and it is the gateway through which Saudi Arabia ships support to the government’s forces by sea. Houthi fighters entered the city in the spring of 2015 and were driven out that July by local fighters backed by the Saudi-led coalition. Holding Aden has been the foundation of the anti-Houthi camp ever since.
The city’s defences are now at their weakest. In January 2026, the rupture between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates came to a head in Aden: Saudi-backed government forces took control of the city, the leader of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, fled, and the southern forces that had held Aden for years withdrew at Riyadh’s demand. The Houthis have tested the gap since. Their missiles hit the Maashiq presidential palace in October and struck Aden airport on October 28 after an evacuation warning. The UN-brokered truce of 2022, which had largely frozen the front lines, collapsed when the Houthi offensive down the Red Sea coast began in September.
Analysis
What happens if the Houthis take Aden?
The goal is not Aden alone. Weeks ago, government troops expelled Houthi fighters from the mountains overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb strait, and the Giants Brigades, the strongest anti-Houthi force in Yemen, now hold a long stretch of the coast facing it. With Aden taken and the road behind them closed, those brigades would be encircled with no route for supplies. The Houthis would then grind them down, and with them any chance of recovering lost territory. They would also control the main artery to Taiz, where a large part of the government’s army is already besieged. That would be a catastrophe.
It would also hand the Houthis the Bab el-Mandeb strait itself. That is a direct blow to Egypt, whose Suez Canal lives on traffic passing through the strait; Cairo has said the Red Sea attacks cost the canal about $7 billion in revenue in 2024 alone. For Saudi Arabia it would be a strategic defeat. Vision 2030 cannot succeed while the kingdom’s Red Sea trade sits at the mercy of the Houthis, whatever agreement Riyadh might sign with them. Iran would gain a second Hormuz: one strait it already harasses, closing and opening it at will, and a second at the mouth of the Red Sea.
A Houthi movement holding Aden and the whole west of Yemen would be the strongest militia Iran has, stronger than Hezbollah. Hezbollah at least lives inside a state that weighs on it, and sits on Israel’s border where Israel can hurt it. The Houthis hold half of Yemen, run their own government, negotiate directly with Riyadh and would control the strait. Their next push would be east, for the rest of the country. Iran already sends advisers and experts to them; after Aden, the Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah could send forces of their own, because Tehran would relish encircling the Gulf from Hormuz on one side and Yemen on the other. A Houthi state on the kingdom’s southern border would threaten Saudi Arabia by land. None of this serves Israel either.
Why are the Houthis hitting Saudi oil and airports now?
The Houthis know Saudi Arabia is preparing for a new phase of the war, and they are attacking its economy to slow it down. On October 27 the movement claimed a missile strike on the Ras Tanura refinery on the Gulf coast, which processes about half a million barrels a day at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil export system. The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted four drones and three ballistic missiles launched towards the kingdom. On November 3, Aramco reported that its third-quarter net income had risen by about a third from a year earlier, a strong result that the Houthis are trying to put out of reach. The strikes on oil, airports and pipelines are meant to drain the revenue and the confidence Riyadh needs to intervene in Yemen.
Washington expects worse. On November 2 the US Mission in Saudi Arabia issued a security alert warning that the Houthis had attacked civilian airports and other critical infrastructure, and that further attacks could close airspace and cancel flights. US government employees in the kingdom now need the chief of mission’s authorisation before they use a Saudi airport, and non-essential staff and their families were ordered to leave on October 23. A warning like that comes before an earthquake, not after it.
Will the United States step in?
President Donald Trump ruled out direct US military action against the Houthis in September, limiting American help to intelligence and targeting data. The case for staying out, as it is made in Washington, is that the Houthi war looks like the Iran war in miniature. The United States could not destroy Iran’s missiles because they sit on mobile launchers that keep moving, and Saudi Arabia cannot destroy the Houthis’ missiles for the same reason. The United States cannot settle the Iran war without ground forces, and Yemen’s government forces are too weak to face the Houthis on the ground. On this view, an American air campaign would change nothing, and a Washington relieved to leave one war would not open another.
Silent Dossier disagrees. American entry would matter less for the bombs it drops than for the states it would bring in, because several governments still hesitate to commit to Saudi Arabia’s defence and would move if Washington did. But Riyadh cannot wait for that. Even if the United States and Iran freeze their war, the road to a Saudi deal with Tehran is long and the road to an American one is longer, so the Houthi front will keep burning.
What should Saudi Arabia ask of Egypt?
Saudi Arabia has two roads, and it must take one within days. The first is to make peace with the UAE fast enough for the southern forces to return and defend Aden. The United States is mediating, but there is no settlement yet and the dispute has grown too large to patch quickly. The second is to put its alliances to work. That means asking Pakistan for ground forces, pressing Turkey for more air defences and a bigger military presence, and pushing the Turkish parliament to ratify the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed on August 7. Syria, whose foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani said in August that Damascus was considering joining that pact, should be asked to decide. Above all, it means a formal request to Egypt, so that Egyptian air defences and troops take over positions the Saudi army now holds inside the kingdom. That would free Saudi forces for the south and the border with Yemen, and would open the option of a Saudi ground operation.
That is the role Cairo has offered. In a letter to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Sisi said Egyptian help would defend Saudi territory and borders without reaching into Yemen, and Egypt’s foreign minister repeats it almost daily. While no request has come, markets have calmed, hot money has returned to Egypt and the pound has steadied. A formal request would put all of that at risk, and Egypt must honour it anyway. It was the first country, and the most open one, to stand publicly with Saudi Arabia. It did not deliberate for months, as Turkey has, or offer support in secret. Sisi made the pledge on air, in front of the army, and the defence council and parliament confirmed it. That is a commitment stronger than a NATO pledge, and there is no room left to hesitate.
The Houthis understand this, which is why they are working on Cairo. Senior Houthi official Mohammed Ali al-Houthi called the parliamentary vote a “declaration of war” on Yemen, and Mohammed al-Bukhaiti has since told Egyptian media that the movement welcomes Egyptian mediation and would negotiate in Cairo. Neither the threat nor the offer should delay Egypt by a single day. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did not take the easy road of an alliance with Israel; he chose the hard one, a Sunni alliance of states that had never fought on the same mission. It was an honourable decision, and it deserves to win. Aden must not fall. Riyadh must send the request, and Egypt must answer it.
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