Houthis Threaten Egypt, but Cairo Has Chosen Saudi Arabia Over the Suez Canal

Yahya al-Ra’i, speaker of the Houthi-run parliament in Sanaa, wrote on Saturday 17 October to Hisham Badawi, speaker of Egypt’s House of Representatives. Egypt does not recognise that body; it recognises Yemen’s internationally backed government. The letter, carried by the Houthi channel al-Masirah, rejected Egypt being drawn “into the same trench as the takfiri forces and the Israeli occupation entity” and warned that involvement “would pose a grave danger to its national security”, The National reported.

Read in order, the letter makes its purpose plain. It begins with the brotherhood of the Egyptian and Yemeni peoples. It ends with concern for the stability of Egyptian society and its home front. The letter names no target and says nothing about strikes, but a country’s stability rests on its infrastructure: power stations, water plants, shipping through the Suez Canal and its main airport. Houthi-aligned accounts on social media went further and named Cairo International Airport as a target if Egypt enters the war.

The letter went to the speaker, not to the president, and that was deliberate. Its message to Egyptian lawmakers was: if Sisi is reckless, do not be reckless with him. Refuse the mandate.

Sisi chose his venue with care. He spoke on 17 October at the graduation of cadets from Egypt’s Military Academy, in front of the country’s military commanders. “I call on parliament to convene an emergency session to authorise us,” he said, adding that “it is absolutely unacceptable for us to allow the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be targeted” and that “I am not speaking about attacking or waging war. We are seeking only to defend,” according to The National. He framed the action as following the guidance of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That wording is respect, not subordination: Riyadh asks, and Cairo moves.

The request is not still to come. It has been made. On 13 October, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told Bloomberg Television that “whatever is being asked by the Saudis, of course we will respond,” and “without any reservation, we provide all kinds of support,” Middle East Monitor reported. That is not the language of diplomacy. It is the language of a government answering a request already on its desk. Sisi’s speech four days later turned that answer into a constitutional step.

On Sunday 18 October Egypt’s National Defence Council pledged “all necessary and possible forms of support” to the kingdom, and parliament met in emergency session the same afternoon. The outcome had not been published when this article was filed. It is not in doubt. King Salman addressed Egypt’s parliament in 2016, when Egypt was still emerging from the June 2013 revolution. This parliament will not refuse Saudi Arabia now.

Article 152 of Egypt’s constitution bars the president from sending the armed forces on a combat mission abroad without consulting the National Defence Council and winning a two-thirds vote in the House of Representatives. The United States has a similar rule, under which Congress must authorise sending troops into war; Donald Trump has repeatedly worked around it. Egypt does not.

The request matters for two reasons. First, Sisi wants a national mandate before a military move: a parliamentary vote means the Egyptian people back the decision. Second, the request itself reveals the scale of what is on the table. Air-defence batteries or warships do not need a vote: Egypt sent aircraft to the UAE without one. Tactical Report, a Gulf-focused intelligence newsletter, has reported leaks that Egypt moved Patriot air-defence systems to Saudi Arabia around the crown prince’s visit to Cairo in September. Asking parliament points to the army itself, and ground forces are the door to a full war.

The Houthis, the Iran-aligned movement that seized Yemen’s capital Sanaa in 2014, fought a Saudi-led coalition from 2015 until a truce in 2022. That truce collapsed in July 2026, when the Houthis declared a “maritime blockade” of Saudi ports and seized more territory. In September they pushed along the Red Sea coast to ground overlooking the Bab al-Mandeb strait. On 4 October the Saudi-backed government launched “Operation Dawn of Yemen”, and the coalition acknowledged its first air strikes on the Houthis since 2022, Al Jazeera reported.

The Houthis answered by striking the kingdom itself. Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport has been hit 20 times since early October, killing 17 people and injuring more than 300, and its operations were shut down, according to The National. Missiles and drones have targeted oil facilities and the Red Sea hub of Yanbu, which carries much of Saudi Arabia’s exports since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in March. UN envoy Hans Grundberg told the Security Council on 9 October that Yemen had slid back into “full-scale war”. The Houthis want Riyadh to pay for its offensive and to fight it alone.

The Houthis’ biggest gain in this war is not territory. It is Saudi Arabia’s isolation. American coverage has repeatedly noted that the group’s sharpest success has been keeping the United States, the kingdom’s main ally, out of the fight, by promising to hit American bases and ships if Washington joins. The letter to Cairo carries the same message: enter the war in any form and we will close Bab al-Mandeb, and the ships that feed the Suez Canal will stop coming.

Egyptian troops in the kingdom are petrol next to the fire. If a Houthi missile hits a site guarded by Egyptian soldiers, Egyptians die and Egypt must respond. Their presence also narrows the Houthis’ options. Today they strike Saudi targets at will. With Egyptians deployed in places the Houthis may not be able to map, every launch becomes a gamble.

There is a further reason for Houthi anxiety. Their fighters know the Yemeni government’s forces, the Saudis, the Emiratis and the Giants Brigades; they have fought them all. They have never faced Egyptian ground forces. Sisi has said Egypt is not going into Yemen and the mission is defensive. Even so, the Houthis threaten Egypt while it moves only to defend, because Cairo’s decision is the one thing they did not expect.

Saudi Arabia, Türkiye (Turkey) and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement in August, treating an attack on one as an attack on all three. Turkish officials spent months urging Egypt to join. Egypt is now arriving at the alliance’s purpose on its own terms, without signing.

The reason is that a signature would carry obligations Egypt does not want. Formal membership would commit Egypt to defend Türkiye, putting it on the opposite side of its partnership with Greece and Cyprus and the Medusa exercises it has just held with them. On 14 October the Egyptian, Greek and Cypriot defence ministers met in Cairo, The Jerusalem Post reported, and Cairo’s message to Athens and Nicosia is that Egypt is not joining the pact. Membership would also set Egypt against India, Pakistan’s rival and a close partner of Sisi’s, whose prime minister Narendra Modi is a personal friend.

So Egypt takes the part that concerns Saudi Arabia and leaves the rest. The same Post article quoted analyst Jonathan Hessen calling Egypt’s offer to Riyadh symbolic and unlikely to be used. Four days later Sisi asked parliament to send the army. Türkiye and Pakistan signed and then deployed. Egypt did not sign and moved on its word. That is a stronger commitment than any document.

Some Saudi commentators on social media insist the kingdom does not need Egyptians and can defend itself. They do not decide. Such matters are settled between the King of Saudi Arabia and the President of Egypt.

They also miss the larger picture. Saudi Arabia is spreading its alliances because its American ally has not moved. It has a strong military, with a defence budget of around $82 billion a year, and it does not need Egypt as a token. It needs depth, because what comes next is harder. Donald Trump has signalled that he may move against Iran after the US midterm elections. If the Iran war resumes, the missiles aimed at Saudi Arabia will come from Iran as well as Yemen, and Egyptian soldiers will be part of that fight.

Pakistan has put some 40,000 troops behind Saudi Arabia’s defence. Reuters reported in May that about 8,000 Pakistani troops were deployed with a fighter squadron and air defences, and that the pact allows up to 80,000. Yet Sisi is the first Arab leader outside the fighting to say openly that his country will defend the kingdom, whatever the cost.

Egypt also gains. Its soldiers will acquire combat experience against the drones and missiles fired at Saudi cities and civilian targets, and its army will build joint command experience with the Saudi military.

Sisi’s request came one day after Trump told reporters that the Abraham Accords were back on the table with Saudi Arabia “maybe more than ever”, adding that “Saudi Arabia is very happy to have Israel’s support and our support”. As Washington offers Israel as the kingdom’s protector, Arab and Muslim states are moving on their own.

That is the scenario Iran fears most. Egypt beside Saudi Arabia, with Türkiye and Pakistan, forms a Sunni bloc facing an Iranian axis of militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen and Tehran itself. Iran does not want this war to take on a sectarian character, because the Muslim world counts 57 states, most of them Sunni-majority, and that arithmetic does not favour Tehran. Egypt’s move will also press Türkiye to act and Pakistan to do more. A war that began between Iran and its rivals is becoming regional, and Iran is losing the partners it hoped to court.

Western coverage has largely missed this. Most reports of Sisi’s speech focused on his remark that he would not seek another term after 2030, not on the mandate to defend Saudi Arabia.