Cairo signs a four-country condemnation of Houthi strikes on Riyadh, and the reason is commercial
Egypt joined Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on 12 October in backing Saudi “legitimate measures” against Houthi attacks. The Suez Canal’s entire recovery rests on the assumption that Houthi targeting is narrowing.
Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia on Monday 12 October condemned Houthi attacks on Riyadh airport as a “dangerous escalation that cannot be justified or accepted under any pretext,” reaffirming solidarity with Saudi Arabia and support for all “legitimate measures and steps” taken to counter the attacks and deter threats. The statement was reported by Tuvan Gumrukcu for Reuters and carried in Just Security’s 12 October digest; Egypt Today ran it under a Cairo dateline the same day. Cairo has historically kept its distance from the Yemen file. A day earlier, on 11 October, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty held a call with his Yemeni counterpart Afrah Abdulaziz Al-Zouba on regional developments, according to Egypt Today.
The commercial arithmetic explains the signature. Suez Canal Authority chairman Osama Rabie put revenue for the fiscal year ended June 2026 at $4.67bn, EGP 230.22bn, up 23 per cent from the FY2024 trough of $3.9bn, speaking to Ahmed Mousa on Sada Al-Balad on 28 June. August transits reached 1,358 vessels, up 27 per cent year-on-year, Rabie said on 20 September. The SCA has told an IMF delegation it projects roughly $10bn for FY2027/28. Against that, Madbouly said on 4 October — per Masrawy and Al Mal, relayed secondhand — that Red Sea disruption has cost more than $6bn a year and that revenue, at around $4.4bn, remains well under half its peak, blaming continuing tension in the Red Sea and at Bab el-Mandeb. Rabie’s own framing at the MARLOG conference was that the canal has shown “its ability to withstand economic and geopolitical challenges.”
Assessment: Read the R4 statement as a shipping document. Egypt’s fiscal recovery, its reserve build and its case for refusing a fourth IMF programme all assume underwriters keep narrowing their war-risk view of the Bab el-Mandeb approach. A strike on Riyadh airport widens it again, and Cairo has no instrument of its own in Yemen — only a signature on someone else’s. Note also what is not resolved: an Ahram Online headline reporting canal revenue down 7 per cent year-on-year in October sits on a date-ambiguous URL and most likely belongs to an earlier year. If it is current, every figure above is the wrong frame.