Tuesday, October 27, 2026
The news that moves freight
Ocean Oct 27, 2026 · 7 min read

Egypt authorises forces for Saudi Arabia as Houthi exchange widens

Suez Canal’s owner moves a step closer to the Houthi war. Egypt’s parliament on Monday 26 October cleared President Sisi to defend Saudi Arabia, passing the two-thirds bar of 398 out of 596 MPs, The National reports. Our view: Egypt is not about to send troops, but the risk on Suez routings has just gone up. The Houthis have already warned Cairo. Container capacity through the canal is only just back above half its 2023 level, BIMCO data show. Expect carriers to hedge rather than commit. Our call: if Saudi Arabia launches a ground offensive against the Houthis, at least one major container carrier pauses or drops a Jeddah call by early December.

Egypt has a mandate to fight for Riyadh, and the Suez recovery is the exposed flank

Egypt’s House of Representatives said on Monday 26 October that a two-thirds majority had authorised President Abdel Fattah El Sisi to take the “necessary measures” to defend Saudi Arabia’s “territory, sovereignty and holy sites against any external aggression”, The National reports. Under Article 152 of Egypt’s constitution, sending the army on a combat mission abroad needs two-thirds of the 596-member house, or 398 MPs. The roll call was held behind closed doors, and no exact tally was published.

Our view: nothing has been deployed yet, and nothing may be for weeks. But the country that owns the Suez Canal has now said, on the record, that it is ready to fight on Saudi Arabia’s side against the Houthis. That changes the risk picture for every forwarder who has started routing Asia–Europe cargo back through the Red Sea. The threat to shipping no longer depends only on what the Houthis think of Saudi Arabia. It now also depends on what they decide to do about Egypt.

What Cairo actually approved

The mandate is wide, but it comes with conditions. Sisi, as supreme commander, has the legal power to act. He has said Egypt will do so only if Saudi Arabia asks, and no formal Saudi request has been announced, according to The National. Officials describe any mission as defensive. It is not clear whether it would mean ground troops, air defence or naval forces.

The process took nine days. Sisi asked for the mandate on 17 October at a Military Academy graduation. Egypt’s National Defence Council met on 18 October and pledged “all necessary and possible forms of support”, without saying what form, size or duration that support would take (The National). Parliament sat in closed session on 18 and 19 October, then adjourned for a week.

Passing the bar was never in doubt. The four main pro-government parties hold 403 of the 568 elected seats, The National says. The Wafd party said Saudi security is “an inseparable part” of Egypt’s national security. Dissent was small. The Egyptian Social Democratic Party, with about a dozen seats, told its MPs to abstain.

Cairo is also still talking. On 22 October, Reuters reported that Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty wanted to explore “every opportunity for the possibility of reaching political solutions” in Yemen. He said any deal should include a full Houthi withdrawal from territory seized near the Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow strait at the southern mouth of the Red Sea. The same report says Sisi has framed Egypt’s role as defending Saudi territory and borders, not attacking Yemen.

The Houthi response, and a weekend that kept escalating

The Houthis did not wait for the result. Yahya Al Raei, speaker of the Houthi-run parliament in Sanaa, wrote to Egypt’s speaker, Hisham Badawi, that involvement would pose “a grave danger” to Egypt’s national security, The National reports.

The fighting with Saudi Arabia widened on the same day. Residents of Riyadh got a civil defence alert at 3:42am local time on Monday, and a ballistic missile aimed at the capital was destroyed in mid-air, Daily Ittehad reports. Coalition spokesman Major General Turki Al-Maliki said forces had destroyed two missile launch platforms in Sanaa. He wrote on X: “Operations continue to dismantle the terrorist Houthi militia’s ballistic missile network.” A wider operation reportedly destroyed five missile storage tunnels, four more launch platforms and a storage site.

The Houthis claimed attacks on Monday on pumping stations along the East-West pipeline, the roughly 1,200km line that moves Saudi crude from the Gulf to Yanbu on the Red Sea, avoiding the Strait of Hormuz. They also claimed an attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport. On Saturday they claimed strikes on the pipeline, an Aramco site at Yanbu and the Rabigh refinery. Saudi authorities had not immediately confirmed the latest claims, Daily Ittehad says.

Riyadh’s airport reopened two terminals on Sunday, after a Houthi-claimed strike on 10 October killed 13 people. Flightradar24 showed limited traffic. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the airport would “never be safe”.

Proof that the risk is already being priced

The clearest number comes from oil. Rystad Energy says Houthi pressure on tankers in the Red Sea has pushed Saudi cargoes onto longer routes, via Suez and around the Cape of Good Hope. Freight on the Yanbu–Ningbo route rose from $24 a barrel in early September to $48 on 22 October. Brent crude rose 6.2% to settle at $117 a barrel on Friday 23 October (AJOT / Rystad Energy).

The Suez Canal has gained from the Hormuz crisis. Revenue rose 42% year on year to $505 million in July, the highest month since December 2023, Bloomberg reported via Transport Topics on 8 September. The canal authority expects $5.8 billion to $6 billion for 2026, against $4.1 billion in 2025. That is still far below the record $10.2 billion of 2023. The National notes that Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping have already cut Suez revenue, one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency.

Container lines have only half come back. Weekly container capacity through the canal reached about 753,000 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units, the standard box measure) in the first two weeks of October, just over half the 2023 level, according to BIMCO figures reported by Tradlinx on 16 October.

What happened last time

Egypt has been here before. It joined the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen in March 2015, mainly as a naval partner, deploying about 800 ground troops but playing only a limited combat role, Reuters reported on 22 October. In August 2015, Egypt’s National Defence Council extended the mission to defend “the Red Sea and the Bab El-Mandab Strait” for up to six months, Daily News Egypt reported at the time. Egyptian warships went to the Red Sea.

That history matters for two reasons. First, Egypt’s instinct is naval and defensive, which fits the wording of this week’s mandate. Second, a naval role puts Egyptian ships in the same waters as commercial traffic. Any exchange of fire there would land directly on the shipping lanes forwarders use.

Carriers have also shown how fast they reverse. CMA CGM moved its FAL1, FAL3 and MEX services back to the Cape on 20 January 2026 after a brief Suez return, Tradlinx reports. Maersk diverted selected ME11 and MECL sailings around the Cape on 27 February and widened that to every sailing on both services on 1 March. Logistics provider APL warned customers on 1 September that “Some carriers may divert route without prior notice”.

What forwarders should do now

Treat Suez routings as reversible. Our view is that the Egypt vote will not, on its own, send carriers back to the Cape. But it adds a trigger. If Egyptian forces deploy, or the Houthis act on their warning, carriers that have just returned will look again at their Red Sea exposure.

Practical steps: - Quote Asia–Europe and Asia–Mediterranean cargo with a Cape fallback. Spell out in contracts who pays if a sailing is re-routed mid-voyage. - Check cargo insurance. APL advised customers to talk to their insurers about the impact of route changes. War-risk premiums, the extra cover charged for sailing through conflict zones, can move faster than freight rates. - Watch Saudi Red Sea ports. Jeddah and Yanbu sit on the coast the Houthis are targeting. Any ground escalation puts calls there under review first. - For air cargo into Saudi Arabia, plan around Riyadh. The airport is open but only partly, and the Houthis say they will keep targeting it. Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Dammam remain the practical gateways. - Track two signals. A formal Saudi request to Egypt would be the first. Any Houthi action against Egyptian-flagged or Suez-bound ships would be the second, and the more serious.

Our call

These are our predictions. At sea: if Saudi Arabia launches a ground offensive against the Houthis, we expect at least one major container carrier to pause or drop a Jeddah call by early December. The Egypt vote makes that escalation path more likely, not less.

In the air: King Khalid International in Riyadh stays on restricted, prior-permission operations, with no European belly capacity (cargo carried in the hold of passenger planes) back, until at least mid-November. Over the four weeks to mid-November, we expect Saudi-bound air rates via Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Dammam to rise as freight squeezes through fewer gateways.

Sources