Egypt’s parliament on Sunday put off a vote on whether to authorize President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to send the armed forces on a combat mission to defend Saudi Arabia from Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis. The House of Representatives deferred the decision after a closed session that ran nearly three hours, the independent Egyptian outlet Mada Masr reported.

Lawmakers resumed the debate at 1 p.m. Cairo time Monday, or 5 a.m. CT, and parliamentary sources told the Cairo outlet EnterpriseAM it would run through Tuesday. Approval would put the Arab world’s largest army behind a kingdom under near-daily Houthi attack since early October, a fight President Donald Trump has so far kept U.S. forces out of.

Washington has held back

Two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News that Trump turned down a request last month from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to join the kingdom’s strikes on the Houthis. He came close to ordering airstrikes a week later but again declined, the sources said. Trump offered intelligence and targeting support instead, sources told CBS in September.

After the Oct. 10 Houthi attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, which killed an American, Trump told reporters, “We may. We’re gonna look at it.” Leaving the White House on Tuesday, Oct. 13, he would not say whether he had decided, CBS reported.

A two-thirds vote behind closed doors

Article 152 of Egypt’s constitution says the president may not declare war or send the armed forces into combat abroad without consulting the National Defense Council and winning approval from two-thirds of the House’s members. House bylaws require that vote in a closed session. The Abu Dhabi newspaper The National put the threshold at 398 of 596 members.

Sisi asked for the session Saturday at a Military Academy graduation, seeking authority to act “if we are asked to do so.” He said he was not speaking “in order for us to fight anyone or attack anyone,” adding, “We are speaking only in defense.”

The National Defense Council, chaired by Sisi, met Sunday morning at Ittihadiya Palace in Cairo and pledged “all necessary and possible forms of support” to defend Saudi Arabia’s security, territorial integrity and Islamic holy sites, the presidency said. The statement did not mention troops.

Three lawmakers told Mada Masr the vote was delayed because members demanded details of the military’s role beyond that statement.

Three members said they would abstain, The National reported. “No MP has rejected the authorization,” said Mostafa Bakry, a lawmaker who is close to the state. A yes vote would not by itself send troops, and no formal Saudi request has been announced, The National reported.

What Egypt would be stepping into

Neither Sisi nor the council has said how many troops could go. Unnamed sources, including a lawmaker with a military background and a government official, told Mada Masr they expected air defense and naval forces, with no ground combat.

The war Egypt would enter displaced 231,991 people between Aug. 1 and Oct. 14, according to the International Organization for Migration’s displacement tracking. The agency recorded 99% of that displacement after Aug. 31, when hostilities intensified, and said Taiz province hosts 52% of those displaced. An IOM spokesperson, Zoe Brennan, put the total at 233,077 in Geneva on Friday.

Warnings from Sanaa, backing from the Gulf

Yahya al-Raei, speaker of the internationally unrecognized Houthi-run parliament in Sanaa, wrote to House Speaker Hisham Badawi on Saturday. He warned that Egypt’s involvement “would pose a grave danger to its national security,” The National reported.

Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers, meeting Sunday in Manama, Bahrain, condemned the Houthi attacks “in the strongest terms,” said aggression against any member “constitutes a direct aggression against all” and called for the group to be designated a terrorist organization. According to the State Department, the U.S. designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization in January 2021, revoked that designation weeks later, named them specially designated global terrorists in 2024 and restored the foreign terrorist label in March 2025.

Casualties on both sides of the border

A Houthi projectile hit a residential area of the southern Saudi city of Najran on Sunday, injuring six citizens and damaging three homes and three vehicles, Saudi Arabia’s Civil Defense said.

Also in Najran, a Saudi National Guard AH-6i reconnaissance helicopter crashed, killing its two officers. Coalition spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki said it went down because of “a technical malfunction.” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said Saturday his forces had shot down a Saudi helicopter near Najran, a claim al-Maliki mocked on X. The Houthis later released footage they said showed the downing, which Reuters could not verify.

The Houthi-run Health Ministry first said a Saudi airstrike Sunday on a house in Saada province’s Sahar district killed at least nine people, including five children and two women, and wounded 19, The Associated Press reported. The ministry later put the toll at 10 dead, seven of them children, and 23 injured, the Houthi-run Saba news agency reported.

The Oct. 10 airport strike killed 12 people and injured 309, Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation said. Among the dead was Azza Ramzy Mohamed Hassan, 28, an Egyptian flight attendant for the Saudi airline Flynas, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said. The Indian Embassy later said an injured Indian national had died. On Oct. 13, a Houthi strike set off a fire at an Aramco office building in Dhahran that Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry called “limited.”

The House debate is scheduled to continue Tuesday.