Pakistan Walks Tightrope as Houthi War Tests Saudi Defence Pact — SkimNews
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- Pakistan this week delivered a Saudi warning urging Iran to rein in its Houthi allies, as army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir held a call with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi to discuss de-escalation, Pakistani, Saudi and Iranian sources told Reuters.
- The Houthi-Saudi fighting is the first major test of a mutual defence alliance signed last month between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey under which an attack on any one is treated as an attack on all, with Pakistani soldiers already deployed near the Saudi-Yemen border.
- Iranian officials privately told Reuters that while Pakistan may have good intentions, it lacks the means and negotiating experience of mediators like Qatar, though publicly they praise Islamabad's role.
- Kuwait pushed for a defence arrangement identical to Pakistan's Saudi pact, but Pakistani officials wary of deepening military ties with another Gulf state exposed to Iranian bombardment scaled the talks back to a narrower protocol on training and border security.
- Field Marshal Munir's elevated diplomatic role stems in part from what Chatham House's Farzana Shaikh called 'personal bonhomie' with Donald Trump, cemented by a Pakistani charm offensive involving crypto deals, rare minerals access and counterterrorism cooperation.
- Analyst Kamran Bokhari warned that active air-defence or intelligence support would 'tip Pakistan from stakeholder into combatant,' noting Pakistan's seventh-largest military is stretched across the India border, western insurgencies and existing Saudi deployments of thousands of troops and a fighter jet squadron.
Why it matters: Pakistan's hedging reveals the limits of Gulf defence pacts as a diplomatic instrument: by scaling back Kuwait's arrangement and declining to escalate alongside Riyadh, Islamabad risks losing the Gulf investment it needs to stabilize its crisis-hit economy while simultaneously losing credibility as a backchannel to Tehran.
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