Egypt Stands With Saudi Arabia on Its Most Dangerous Front, and It Has Learned Yemen’s Lesson

Egypt is sending forces to Saudi Arabia because President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has promised to defend the kingdom, and Israeli military reporting now says their first job will be the front Riyadh fears most: its northern border with Iraq, where Iran-aligned militias have already hit Saudi Arabia harder than the Houthis have. The first air-defence cargo has landed. The ground mission waits on Egypt’s parliament.

On 17 October, at the Egyptian Military Academy, Sisi told Saudi Arabia that Egypt, in line with the directives of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, would “carry out any measure” to protect and defend it, Al Jazeera reported. The next morning at least two Egyptian C-130H transports landed at King Fahd Air Base in Taif, according to open-source flight tracking relayed by JFeed. Their cargo was air defence, not infantry. Egypt is bringing the Gulf a cheap answer to cheap drones, including a new homegrown laser, and it is taking that answer to the border with Iraq.

Sisi’s pledge is defensive but open-ended, and Egypt’s parliament has paused to ask what the army will actually do in Saudi Arabia before it votes.

Israeli media expect thousands of Egyptian troops and say their main task will be guarding Saudi Arabia’s northern border against Iraqi militias, which struck the kingdom’s East-West oil pipeline in September.

Egypt arrives with its own inexpensive air defences, including the EGY-HEL 01 laser unveiled in Sinai days before Sisi spoke, so the Gulf no longer has to fire Patriot missiles at cheap drones.

Egypt has learned the lesson of its 1960s war in Yemen: it will not scatter its army, and its newest weapons are still tested facing Israel.

Sisi’s words were “any measure”, and that is the phrase American coverage singled out. The support Egypt offers is defensive, but it is not limited. The National Defence Council, which Sisi chairs, followed on 18 October by pledging Saudi Arabia “all necessary and possible forms of support”, The National reported. Egypt acts only if Riyadh formally asks.

A combat mission abroad needs two-thirds of Egypt’s 596-seat House, or 398 votes. This is a chamber with an overwhelming pro-Sisi majority, yet after hearing in closed session what the army would do, some 350 MPs asked to speak. The vote has now been put off for a week, until 26 October, The New Arab reported. That is not a revolt. The MPs want to know what Egypt is going into and when it comes out, as we reported from the first session.

It is the right question, because Saudi Arabia is not fighting on one front. It is fighting the Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias firing from Iraq, and an Iran with which open war may resume. On 18 and 19 October US embassies across the Gulf, Iraq and Jordan issued security alerts warning that hostilities could escalate and that Iran-aligned groups may target Americans, Euronews reported. Egypt was not on the list. The Houthis, for their part, are trying to talk Cairo out of it: “Egypt is bigger than that,” Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti said, Ynet reported.

They are Shia armed groups aligned with Iran that grew out of the war against the Islamic State and kept their weapons afterwards. The best known are Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Harakat al-Nujaba. Many of their fighters sit inside Iraq’s state-funded Popular Mobilisation Forces, yet they answer to their own commanders, and several have long been armed and guided by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

That is what makes them so hard for Saudi Arabia to deter. There is no single militia to hold responsible. When a drone crosses the border, the kingdom often cannot tell which group launched it, and hitting back risks a fight with the Iraqi state that hosts them. After the September pipeline strike, Iraq’s government confirmed the drones came from its territory and dismissed the Maysan operations commander, and Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi set a 30 September deadline for armed groups to disarm. At least four Iran-backed militias refused or set conditions Baghdad cannot meet. Regional officials told AP the Houthis helped the Iraqi groups plan their attacks, which ties the northern and southern fronts together.

The newest piece is a laser. During a live-fire exercise by the Second Field Army in Sinai on 15 October, attended by Defence Minister Ashraf Salem Zaher, a light vehicle appeared carrying a system marked “EGY-HEL 01”, Egypt Independent reported with the army’s photographs. Israeli analysts studied the images frame by frame and identified a laser weapon. The Israeli military site Nziv Net reads the name as Egyptian High-Energy Laser, version one, says it was probably built by the army’s own Technical Research Centre, and describes a short-range system against drones and small projectiles, Middle East Monitor reported.

Israeli estimates put its power at about 30 kilowatts. Israel’s Iron Beam is a 100-kilowatt-class system, and a laser mounted on a light truck is limited by the power the vehicle can generate. Lasers also have known weaknesses: bright sun and dust reduce their effect, and the beam must stay on a drone until it burns. Its exact range and kill rate are not public.

Two things point to the laser travelling to Saudi Arabia. The first is timing: it was shown on 15 October, and Sisi spoke two days later. The second is the “version one” label. Egypt wants to test it against real drones, and a live front where militias fire cheap drones and rockets is the best test range there is. It would serve first in the north against the Iraqi groups and could later cover the south against Houthi drones. Because it is wholly Egyptian, with no Western technology inside, Egypt can build and send it in numbers once it proves itself. It also shows how fast Egypt’s army is learning from the Iran war and the war in Ukraine.

The location of the unveiling carries a second message. The Second Field Army guards the Suez Canal and Sinai and drills against one contingency: an Israeli attack. Egypt tested its newest weapon in full view of Israel, not on its southern border with Sudan. Cairo will help Saudi Arabia, but it will not repeat the mistake of 1967, when much of its army was tied down in Yemen as Israel struck. Its main enemy remains in view.

The Egyptian deployment is one part of a wider realignment. On 18 October Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman flew to Abu Dhabi and met UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed and Vice President Mansour bin Zayed. The Guardian reported that the UAE will resume paying the southern Yemeni forces it built, including the Giants Brigades, as HNGN summarised. Ground forces decide the Yemen war, and the Giants Brigades have been the spearhead of the government side advancing on the Houthis. The quarrel was over power: Abu Dhabi wants the Southern Transitional Council to hold authority, Riyadh wants it under Yemen’s government. Renewed Emirati salaries suggest a compromise has been reached, even if its terms are not public. If the UAE comes back fully, the government side will advance faster.

France is in, too. President Emmanuel Macron said on 24 September that France would send “soldiers, radars, and defence systems” to protect Yanbu, Arab News reported, adding that until a few weeks earlier more than five million barrels a day had flowed out of the site.

American coverage keeps returning to one point: all of this is happening without Washington. Riyadh has concluded that the United States will not fight its Yemen war and has turned to a plan B built on Egypt, Pakistan, Türkiye (Turkey), the UAE and France. That coalition is now taking shape, and it points to a hotter war in Yemen. Every Saudi advance will draw Houthi fire on the kingdom, and if that strategy stalls, the Iraqi militias will join in, all while Washington is formally warning that the war with Iran is coming back.

Egyptians and Saudis can weigh the decision for themselves. Silent Dossier’s view is clear: Egypt has every reason to be proud. Britain’s Daily Telegraph noted that Egypt did not retaliate when a drone set two gas ships on fire at its Damietta port in July, yet rose to defend Saudi Arabia when the kingdom came under attack. Egyptians know which camp was behind the Damietta strike. When a British newspaper praises Egypt’s stand and shows how much Saudi Arabia means to Egyptians, Egyptians should stop and take that in. It shows the chivalry and the resolve of Egyptians: when it matters, they show up, whatever their critics say.

Egypt has also learned from its own history, which it has not always done. In 1962 Gamal Abdel Nasser sent troops to Yemen. Egypt’s force there grew to about 70,000 men, and by most estimates more than 10,000 of them never came home. The lesson is not to concentrate everything in one place. Egypt’s borders are all burning: the war in Sudan has not ended, Libya is not fully stable, Türkiye and Greece could clash at any moment, and Israel wants to push Palestinians into Sinai. An army that keeps its newest weapons facing Israel while it guards Saudi Arabia’s north has absorbed that lesson.

Egypt has the experience for this mission. Silent Dossier trusts President Sisi and the Egyptian parliament to reach the right final decision.