by
Austin BaySeptember 16, 2026
As I began a column examining the violent antics of ayatollah Iran's Houthi proxy army, news media were reporting that Saudi Arabia has asked Egypt to join its coalition to destroy the Houthis' military and gangster threat to the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
Sketching the map helps explain the strategic security and economic issues. What major global trade "choke point" lies at the northern end of the Red Sea? Egypt's Suez Canal, of course. In 2023 (a year of relatively safe sailing on the Red Sea), Egypt earned about $9.5 billion in Suez tolls. In fiscal 2025/2026 (a year with regional war and multiple threats to shipping), Cairo estimates $4.7 to $5 billion in Suez revenue.
At the Red Sea's southern end, between Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea) and western Yemen, lies the Bab al-Mandab (Gateway of Anguish). This narrow waterway links the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean's Gulf of Aden.
Bab al-Mandab to Suez to the Mediterranean is the quickest sea route from the Persian Gulf to Europe. Suez is the maritime shortcut between Europe and East Asia.
On unobstructed, unmolested or not-too-threatening days, oil tankers carry some 12% of the globe's crude and LNG supply through the Bab al-Mandab. One maritime insurance source estimates that over a trillion dollars in goods transit the passage every year.
After a successful two-week-long offensive against Saudi and UAE-supported forces within Yemen and along its Red Sea coast, Houthi propagandists bragged that their fighters controlled the Bab al-Mandab's eastern shore. They also claim to have seized two islands in the strait.
If this sounds like Tehran's Strait of Hormuz gambit -- indeed it is. Which is one reason circa 2005-6 Tehran began spending billions to train and supply Houthi fighters.
The Houthis had proved they could fight as desert and mountain warriors. Iran's Quds ('Jerusalem') Force -- the special covert operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps -- decided they could do much more.
So, Quds officers trained Houthi fighters to lay naval mines, fire anti-ship missiles and drones and conduct "swarm boat" attacks in the Red Sea. Quds officers likely control the missile crews. But when Houthi leaders threaten to attack commercial ships, maritime insurance rates spike and oil prices jump. Wary ships take the long route around the Cape of Good Hope, which means no Suez tolls for Egypt.
In the last decade, the Houthis have used increasingly sophisticated weapons, including anti-ship cruise missiles. In 2018, the Houthis attacked the UAE with long-range Sammad-3 drones. They have fired medium-range ballistic missiles at Israel. One errant missile reportedly hit Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Was it damaged? Or was it a message to Cairo?
The geographic and economic logic for regional power Egypt to join an Arab-led anti-Houthi coalition seems convincing.
However, Egypt lost a war in Yemen and lost it badly.
In 1962, Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt intervened in one of Yemen's perpetual civil wars. The socialist Nasserites supported the Yemen Arab Republic's secular government. The YAR was losing its fight with Shia Arab tribesmen supporting a former Yemeni monarch. The Shia resistance coalition's home turf was rugged northern Yemen. The coalition included tribesmen who would emerge as (or join) the Houthis.
In 1967, after losing ten thousand soldiers, Cairo withdrew from what some now call the North Yemen Civil War. Nasser's government was accused of using chemical weapons (phosgene, or mustard gas) against the tribesmen. Investigators found substantial evidence that chemical weapons were used in at least two attacks.
Consider this bitter irony: In 1962, the Saudi and Jordanian Sunni Muslim monarchies supported Yemen's deposed royalty and their Shia guerrillas.
Yes, this history predates ayatollah Iran. Since the Khomeinists seized power in 1979, the regime has harassed and weakened Saudi Arabia by attacking the kingdom from its Yemeni back door. Shia Iran also sought to undermine Persian Gulf Sunni Arab states by supporting Syria's Assad Shia dictatorship and establishing the "Shia crescent" --an Iranian-dominated land route extending from Iraqi Shia communities through Syria to southern Lebanon (Hezbollah land). The touted goal was to surround and destroy Israel, but surrounding and toppling Sunni petro-states was on the agenda.
After Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, Egypt sent a division to support Saudi Arabia.
In 2015, Egypt joined a Saudi-led coalition to support Yemen's hapless national government. A half-dozen other Arab and Muslim states sent contingents. The Egyptian public, however, was adamant. Egyptian public opinion supported providing aircraft and warships, but no ground troops. No Egyptian boots on the ground in Yemen, not in 2015.
2026: The Shia Crescent has fragmented. Syria has become a Turkish satrapy. Israel is strangling Hezbollah. The U.S. Navy controls Iran's sea coasts, so Iran's ability to resupply the Houthi forces is very limited, at best.
Will this calculus change reluctant minds in Cairo?