ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — Pakistan has moved on two fronts this week over the escalating Houthi assault on Saudi Arabia: publicly warning that its trilateral defence pact with Riyadh and Ankara could become operational, and separately delivering a direct diplomatic message to Iran urging it to rein in the Yemeni group.
The pressure follows Tuesday’s Houthi strike on an airbase in Khamis Mushait and oil infrastructure in nearby Saudi cities, which wounded 73 people and ranks among the most serious attacks on the kingdom since the US-Israeli war on Iran began in February. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said Saudi Arabia had already answered with 54 airstrikes across Yemeni provinces within 12 hours, warning the strikes on Saudi territory “will not go unanswered and unpunished.” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the Houthi attacks as “cowardly” and reaffirmed what he called Pakistan’s steadfast support for Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.
In a Tuesday night interview with a private Pakistani channel, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said the Makkah Defence Pact, signed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, would come into effect if the Houthi threat spilled further into Saudi territory. “Under the trilateral agreement, any aggression against any of the three is regarded as an aggression against all. There is no ambiguity about that,” he said. He added that “unprovoked aggression or spillover of whatever is happening in Yemen into Saudi Arabia will definitely make this agreement operational… We are bound by the terms and conditions of this pact. God willing, we will honor them in case there is a need.” Asif made the same point even more directly in separate comments to another news outlet: “A Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia is an attack on Pakistan.” He separately warned the Houthis against trying to draw Saudi Arabia into the broader US-Iran conflict, saying they would be doing so “at its own peril,” and predicted that “Israel will have to pay a price” once peace was eventually restored to the region.
A day later, Reuters reported a more direct diplomatic move: Pakistan had delivered a Saudi warning to Iran itself, urging Tehran to rein in the Houthis, in what sources described as a coordinated effort to prevent the crisis from spiraling further. A senior regional diplomat told Reuters that Pakistan conveyed the message to Tehran over the preceding 24 hours. A senior Iranian official confirmed Pakistan had delivered it on Tuesday, with Iran’s response being that “Iran does not control the Houthis,” a denial that sits awkwardly against a separate detail in the same Reuters report: two Iranian sources said Tehran had in fact told the Houthis the previous week to go ahead with strikes on Saudi Arabia. Officials in Islamabad stressed that any Pakistani military role in the matter would be confined to helping defend Saudi territory rather than any offensive action.
Reuters frames the Houthi-Saudi confrontation as a second active front in the broader regional war, running alongside the separate escalation between Iran and the United States over Gulf shipping, including tanker strikes and Iran’s attack on a US-linked base in Jordan reported earlier this week, together threatening global energy supplies from two directions at once.
Pakistan’s willingness to intervene so directly, first through Asif’s public pact warning, then through a private diplomatic channel to Tehran, marks a shift from its historically cautious balancing act between Saudi Arabia and Iran, relationships it has worked for years to maintain simultaneously. That Islamabad has now done both in the same week is itself a signal of how seriously it is treating the risk of the Houthi crisis spreading further.
