Egypt Has Not Fired a Shot, and the Houthis Are Already Calling It War

The Houthis, the Iran-backed movement that has ruled Yemen’s capital Sanaa since 2014 and has spent October firing missiles at Saudi airports, are threatening Egypt because Cairo did the one thing they were counting on it not to do. On 26 October, Egypt’s 596-seat House of Representatives voted by more than the required two-thirds majority to authorise President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to take “necessary” measures to help Saudi Arabia defend itself, should Riyadh ask for help, Reuters reported. No Egyptian soldier has moved. No formal Saudi request has been made public. Yet within a day the Houthi leadership was describing the vote as war.

On 27 October, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a member of the group’s political bureau, wrote on Telegram that “Egypt and its parliament are thus declaring war on the Republic of Yemen, while doing Israel an enormous favor”, according to Ynet’s translation. In the same statement, as reported by Türkiye Today, he warned that Egypt was being “lured” into war “as they were lured in the sixties”, and that Israel was waiting to “pounce on Sinai”.

That is not the language of a movement that feels safe. A parliamentary vote, with nothing yet sent, has shaken the Houthis, and Egypt should take note of how much weight its word still carries.

Egypt’s parliament authorised Sisi on 26 October to help defend Saudi Arabia if Riyadh asks; Sisi has said Egypt will defend Saudi territory and will not attack Yemen.

The Houthis answered with a “declaration of war” charge and an accusation that Egypt serves Israel, after earlier warnings that the vote would endanger Egypt’s internal security.

Their alarm is strategic: Egyptian air defences would free Saudi forces for offensive options, shame the kingdom’s other allies into acting and end the isolation the Houthis are trying to impose on Riyadh.

If the Houthis drag Egypt into this war, Egypt’s answer will not stay defensive, and they will pay for Damietta as well as for whatever comes next.

Sisi first asked parliament for the mandate in mid-October, after a month of Houthi missile and drone strikes on Saudi airports and oil sites. The worst came on 10 October, when a ballistic missile hit the passenger terminals of King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing 13 people and wounding more than 300, Al Jazeera reported. Egypt’s National Defence Council pledged “all necessary and possible forms of support” to the kingdom, and the vote was postponed once, to 26 October, while MPs asked about the mission’s scope and cost.

Egypt’s constitution requires the National Defence Council’s opinion and a two-thirds vote of the House before forces can be sent on a combat mission abroad. Both conditions are now met. What remains is a formal request from Riyadh. Officials in Cairo, Sisi among them, have spoken of a Saudi request, but none has yet been submitted officially. Once it is, Sisi decides what to send and where.

Sisi has been clear about the limits. He told audiences repeatedly that Egypt’s role is defensive, and on 21 October he said any Egyptian action would be confined to protecting Saudi territory and borders, not attacking Yemen. Egypt is not marching on Sanaa, which makes the Houthi reaction all the more telling.

The warnings began before the vote. On 17 October, Yahya al-Rai, the speaker of the Houthi-run parliament in Sanaa, wrote to his Egyptian counterpart, Hisham Badawy. He warned that joining Saudi Arabia would “pose a grave danger” to Egypt’s national security and would put Cairo in “the same trench” as Israel. A threat to Egypt’s internal security can only mean strikes on Egyptian infrastructure, and Houthi-aligned accounts went further, saying Cairo International Airport could become a target if the vote passed.

Parliament passed the mandate anyway. The earlier threats did not move Egyptian lawmakers, and Mohammed Ali al-Houthi’s “declaration of war” will not move Cairo either.

These are not empty threats from a group with nothing in its hands. On 29 July, a drone set fire to two LNG vessels at Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Damietta, the first attack on Egyptian soil in the regional war. Nobody claimed it, and the Houthis denied it. Silent Dossier’s assessment is that the Houthis carried it out, with a drone launched from Kirkuk in northern Iraq rather than from Yemen, the nearest point to Damietta. Reports put the repair bill for one of the two vessels at about $50 million, with the ship taken to Spain for the work. The tone of the Houthi statements now is the tone of men who have already hit Egypt once and are reminding Cairo that they can do it again.

On the same day, 27 October, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Princess Reema bint Bandar, published a guest essay in The New York Times aimed at American public opinion, which largely sees the Houthi war as someone else’s problem. That indifference takes pressure off the White House and leaves the president free to stay out. Her message was that the Houthis are a terrorist movement with no limits, which she compared to ISIS in its early years. She called for terrorist designations, sanctions and dismantling the Houthi war economy.

Her case strengthens Egypt’s. A group that strikes airports full of civilians and fires towards Mecca and Medina is a threat to Saudi Arabia and Egypt alike. The Houthis are a terrorist group bent on destabilising both.

When Mohammed Ali al-Houthi says Egypt is being “lured” as it was in the sixties, he is invoking the North Yemen civil war. In September 1962, army officers overthrew Imam Muhammad al-Badr and declared the Yemen Arab Republic. President Gamal Abdel Nasser sent Egyptian forces to defend the new republic against royalist tribes backed by Saudi Arabia. The deployment grew to about 70,000 troops at its height and lasted until 1967, when Egypt withdrew after its defeat by Israel in the June war. Egyptian historians often call it Egypt’s Vietnam: years of mountain fighting, heavy losses and money spent far from home.

The comparison is false. In the 1960s Egypt fought inside Yemen, against Saudi Arabia’s allies, to change a government. Today it is offering to defend Saudi territory, at Riyadh’s request, against missiles fired at its cities and airports. Egypt also took part in the Saudi-led coalition from 2015, mainly with naval and air units, without sending ground forces into Yemen. Defending a neighbour’s airspace is not the 1962 expedition, and invoking it is an attempt to frighten Egyptians with their own history.

The Houthi danger to Egypt does not end if Cairo stays home. Bab el-Mandeb is one door and the Red Sea is one sea. If the Houthis manage to impose their terms on Saudi Arabia, they will not stop at the Gulf. A movement that can dictate to Riyadh will sooner or later turn to Cairo and ask for its share of the Suez Canal. Staying silent while the Gulf burns only postpones the bill, and it arrives larger.

Egypt has done nothing yet but vote, and that vote alone has shaken the Houthis, unsettled Israel, angered the Brotherhood and put the Mecca pact’s members on the spot. Egyptians have every reason to be proud of that. If the Houthis now carry out their threats, it will be they who drag Egypt into the war, not Egypt that goes looking for it. Egypt’s response will then not be defensive only. It will settle the old account and the new one, Damietta included, and the Houthis will pay a price they have not paid before.

Related reading: Why Is Egypt Backing Saudi Arabia Against the Houthis? and Why Houthi Attacks on Saudi Arabia Still Get Through.