As Saudi tensions with Iran-backed Houthis escalate, mediator Pakistan faces pressure to choose a side

For much of the past year, Pakistan has played a dual role as Riyadh's defence partner and Washington's backchannel to Tehran but this week's fighting between Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi movement and Saudi forces is increasingly testing how ​long Islamabad can hold both positions at once.

The fighting represents the first major test of the mutual defence alliance that was signed between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey last month, adding to ‌a pre-existing pact between Islamabad and Riyadh. Under the arrangement, an armed attack on any one of the three countries is to be regarded as an attack on all.

Pakistani officials worry the Houthi threat is more likely to draw Islamabad into a war than Iranian missile strikes on Saudi energy infrastructure were earlier this year. Pakistani soldiers are deployed near the Saudi border with Yemen, two Pakistani officials told Reuters in July, increasing their direct exposure.

Defence deals with Gulf nations have been a key part of Pakistan's plans to boost its fledgling economy ​after years of crisis, and have often been accompanied by parallel or subsequent talks about Gulf investments.

However, Pakistan also relies on oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea - routes ​that Iran and the Houthis have shown they can disrupt - giving Islamabad reason to avoid alienating Tehran even as it deepens ties with the Gulf.

Warning to Iran

In the past, ⁠tensions between Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have at times escalated into deadly clashes. Two years ago, Iranian missile and drone strikes on alleged militant hideouts in Pakistan's Balochistan province, along their shared border, prompted retaliatory attacks from Islamabad - ​tensions that briefly raised the spectre of a new conflict but soon calmed.

This time, Pakistan is seeking to prevent an escalation before it's too late.

This week, it delivered a Saudi warning urging Iran to rein in its Yemeni Houthi allies, ​Saudi, Pakistani and Iranian sources told Reuters on Wednesday. Pakistan army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir also held a call with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi on Thursday evening to discuss "ways to restore diplomatic efforts to de-escalate on all fronts", a Pakistani source said.

"Pakistan is trying to keep a low profile in the Saudi-Houthi conflict because Pakistan's own stakes are high," a second Pakistani government official told Reuters. "It does not want to spoil relations with Iran."

In a briefing on Thursday, Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Sajjad Haider Khan said no military response to the ​Houthi attacks was currently under discussion.

"Iran's leadership has consistently appreciated Pakistan's mediation efforts," Khan told Reuters in response to a request for comment. "Pakistan has consistently opposed escalation and advocated restraint, dialogue and diplomacy."

Balancing act

Publicly, Iranian officials have praised ​Pakistan's role and said they do not view the defence pact as a threat. But in private it is a different story; three Iranian sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters, explaining that while Pakistan might have good intentions, it does not have ‌the means to ⁠deliver or the experience of negotiators such as Qatar.

Iran's foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

There are signs Islamabad is now recalibrating as it digests the scale of the balancing act it has taken on.

After Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed their initial defence pact last year, Kuwait pushed for a largely identical arrangement, according to four sources with knowledge of the talks. Pakistani officials, wary of deepening military ties with another Gulf state exposed to Iranian bombardment, scaled the discussions back, the sources said.

The two countries instead signed a narrower protocol in Islamabad last month covering training, border security and capacity-building — falling short of what Kuwait had hoped for.

On Thursday, foreign ministry spokesman Khan said there ​were no plans to expand the broader Pakistan-Saudi-Turkey alliance to ​new members at the moment.

Mediator or combatant?

Farzana Shaikh, ⁠an associate fellow at Chatham House, questioned whether Tehran's trust in Islamabad was ever as solid as assumed.

She said Pakistan "does not have the kind of wherewithal or indeed experience that Qatar and Oman would have brought to the table," and that Islamabad's elevated role owed less to its own diplomatic capital than to "the personal bonhomie" between President Donald Trump ​and Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir.

Trump has called Munir his "favorite field marshal" on numerous occasions, following a charm offensive by Pakistan that revolved around crypto deals, American access to ​rare minerals, and counterterrorism.

Others argue ⁠that this may not need to be a fatal blow for Islamabad's role as a mediator.

Kamran Bokhari, a Washington-based analyst on Pakistan-Iran relations, said Tehran engages Islamabad precisely because of its alignment with Riyadh and Washington.

Islamabad's alignment lets it deliver messages in ways a genuinely neutral party could not, which is exactly the value Riyadh and Washington are counting on when they route messages through Islamabad, he said.

But an escalation in fighting between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia could upend that calculus.

"Relaying and shaping ⁠messages is one ​thing," said Bokhari, but "active air-defence or intelligence support is another, tipping Pakistan from stakeholder into combatant."

Pakistan, which maintains the seventh-largest military in the ​world measured by active military personnel, had already deployed thousands of soldiers and a squadron of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia under the earlier defence arrangement.

With troops also being deployed along Pakistan's tense border with India and fighting multiple insurgencies in the country's western provinces, Islamabad is ​now trying to temper demand from other Gulf states eager for similar guarantees.

"Pakistani forces are stretched," Bokhari said, making additional commitments "daunting."