Islamabad, Pakistan — Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had two phone calls on Thursday night: one with Pakistan’s chief of defence forces, Field Marshal Asim Munir, the other with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan. The calls capped the most dramatic week yet in the Houthi-Saudi war. Houthi drones and missiles wounded 73 people and set oil facilities ablaze in four Saudi cities on Tuesday, among the heaviest strikes of the war, according to the Saudi-led coalition.
Iran-backed Houthi fighters reached the coastal town of Mocha at dawn on Thursday and pushed offshore to seize nearby islands. By Friday morning, they had grabbed control of all of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Yemeni government officials said fighters also reached Dhubab, on the Bab al-Mandeb coast, while boats carrying Houthi fighters reached Mayyun Island, at the heart of the strait, after government forces withdrew.
There has been no official announcement by Houthi authorities confirming control of the strait. Brent crude surpassed $107 a barrel on Friday, as the advance raised fears that both of Saudi Arabia’s main export routes, the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb, could come under pressure at once — one by Iran directly, the other by Tehran’s ally, the Houthis. Satellite images on Thursday appeared to show a fire along the East-West pipeline, Saudi Arabia’s main Hormuz-bypass route, which carries close to seven million barrels a day over 1,200km (746 miles) to Yanbu.
Riyadh has not confirmed a pipeline strike. Earlier this week, Pakistan’s Defence Minister, Khawaja Asif, warned that the mutual defence pact between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye “will definitely“ be activated if the fighting spills further into the kingdom. But with Munir calling Tehran on Thursday night, analysts say the question is not whether Pakistan is preparing to act, but whether diplomacy is the course Islamabad has already chosen.
At the Pakistani Foreign Office’s weekly briefing on Thursday, spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan declined to confirm recent reports that Islamabad had passed a Saudi warning to Iran to rein in the Houthis, calling them “unsubstantiated”. He was equally dismissive of a claim that Saudi Arabia had asked Pakistan to strike Houthi positions in Yemen, calling it “hypothetical” with “no discussion of this kind”. But when asked whether Pakistan was reaching out to the Houthis through Iran, Khan did not deny it.
Pakistan would “continue to pursue dialogue and diplomacy for peace and stability in the broader region”, Khan said. Jauhar Saleem, Pakistan’s former foreign secretary and president of the Islamabad-based Institute of Regional Studies, called the phrasing deliberate. Pakistan’s military chief Munir has travelled to Tehran four times since April.
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