Egypt’s parliament clears Sisi to back Saudi Arabia, and Sanaa calls it war
The House voted Monday to authorise military support for the kingdom against Houthi attacks. A Houthi political bureau member called the vote a declaration of war on Yemen — a statement, so far, and not an event.
Egypt’s House of Representatives voted on Monday 26 October to authorise President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to provide military support to Saudi Arabia against attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, acting on a request from Sisi himself. AP, AFP and Reuters carried the decision independently. According to the chamber’s own statement as rendered by CNN Arabic, the authorisation came out of closed-door sessions held on 18, 19 and 26 October, and passed “by a two-thirds majority of its members, authorising the President of the Republic to take what is necessary to support the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, following coordination between the two countries,” in defence of “its territory, its sovereignty and its holy sites against any external aggression.” AP reports that parliament did not publish a breakdown of the closed-door vote: the two-thirds threshold is the House’s own characterisation of a tally it has not released.
The response came the following day from Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a member of the Houthi political bureau, in a Telegram post quoted by AFP and the Times of Israel: “Egypt and its parliament declared support for what is called the defence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and in doing so, it declares war against the Republic of Yemen.” AFP places the remark inside a longer statement reacting to a Monday visit to Tehran by the Saudi defence minister alongside Pakistan’s army chief, and reports that the Houthis have escalated attacks on Saudi Arabia since early October. Israel Hayom adds that Saudi Arabia intercepted a wave of missiles and drones; that interception claim comes from an Israeli outlet and is not independently confirmed here. Nothing retrieved shows Houthi action against Egyptian territory, Egyptian-flagged shipping or the canal approaches.
Assessment: Read the authorisation as a financial document as much as a military one. AP notes Saudi Arabia is among Egypt’s main financial backers; Cairo granted the kingdom a permission slip in the same week the pound hit a record low. What the vote does not say matters more than what it does: no tally, no force composition, no stated geographic limit in anything confirmed. Treat al-Houthi’s line as rhetoric until something moves — the test is not Telegram, it is whether traffic at the southern Red Sea approaches changes. Carriers were only beginning to return to Suez in October. That is Egypt’s exposure, and it is the number to watch.