Islamabad is guarding Saudi cities against Houthi missiles while carrying messages between Tehran and Washington. That is not fence-sitting. It is the one position from which both wars can be ended.
Twice in four days last week, Pakistan did things that are not supposed to go together.
On Friday, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told reporters he was carrying an Iranian idea to Riyadh: talk to Yemen’s Houthis instead of bombing them. On Monday, his government joined Saudi Arabia and Türkiye in invoking the Makkah defence alliance for the first time, promising the rapid movement of forces into the kingdom the Houthis are attacking.
Critics call that a contradiction. It is the policy, and it may be the only one in the region that still makes sense.
Start with how Pakistan got here. When American and Israeli jets struck Iran on February 28, Islamabad condemned the attack, then condemned Iran’s retaliation against Gulf states, and joined neither side. Within a month its officials were ferrying a 15-point American proposal to Tehran. With China it tabled a five-point plan for a truce and open shipping lanes.
On April 7, hours before a deadline set by Donald Trump, Shehbaz Sharif asked for two more weeks. He got them. The ceasefire of April 8 was followed by 21 hours of talks in Islamabad between Vice President JD Vance and an Iranian delegation, the first direct contact at that level in decades.
The talks failed, a US naval blockade followed, and yet the channel survived. It produced the Islamabad Memorandum in June, which held for barely a month before fighting resumed on July 8. It sent Field Marshal Asim Munir to Tehran in August, where President Masoud Pezeshkian received him. Through each collapse, Iran’s foreign ministry has kept calling Pakistan the mediator.
That record is not spotless. American officials have grumbled, anonymously, that Islamabad paints Tehran’s position in brighter colours than it deserves. Mediators are rarely thanked while the shooting continues.
Then the war grew a second front. In July the Houthis began hitting Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. In early September they swept down Yemen’s coast, taking Mokha, Perim Island and the Hanish Islands, and with them the approaches to Bab el-Mandeb.
The timing was brutal. With the Strait of Hormuz shut, Riyadh’s oil was leaving through Yanbu and that southern gate. Strikes then forced the shutdown of the East-West pipeline that feeds it. Oil touched $108 a barrel.
Worse followed for the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia said it shot down a drone headed for Makkah, which the Houthis deny launching, and a grid station in Madinah was hit. Riyadh appealed directly to Washington and, by several accounts, received intelligence rather than airstrikes.
It was Pakistan and Türkiye that answered. The pact signed in Makkah on August 7 was triggered in Riyadh on October 5. A retired Pakistani general, Nauman Mahmood, became the alliance’s first secretary-general. Two days later the army’s spokesman confirmed on CNN that Pakistani troops are in the kingdom, as they have been for decades.
Read the fine print, though. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif says Pakistani and Turkish forces have a “presence in theatre” in a supporting role, and that only Saudi troops are fighting. That is a shield over Saudi cities and the holy sites, not an expedition into Yemen’s civil war.
It is also exactly what parliament promised in 2015, when it refused to join the Yemen campaign but pledged to stand with the kingdom if its territory or the Haramain were threatened. The difference, eleven years on, is that the threat arrived.
Now look at the other telephone. Mr Dar says Tehran has distanced itself from the Houthis and from Iraqi militias. Mr Pezeshkian has said publicly that Iran is “not at war with Saudi Arabia” and that the Houthis answer for their own actions. Islamabad briefed the Iranians on precisely how it would honour the Makkah pact before it did so.
No other capital sits in both rooms. Washington reaches Tehran only through intermediaries. Riyadh expelled Iran’s military attaché in March. Pakistan alone is a treaty ally of one side and the trusted messenger of the other.
That position is worth more than prestige, because the two crises are really one. Iran will not reopen Hormuz while its ports are blockaded. The Houthis say they will keep striking Saudi targets until what they call the blockade of Yemen is lifted. Tehran’s seven-day plan, offered at the United Nations last month, asks for an end to hostilities on every front.
Mr Trump rejected that plan and then, this week, said he was open to talks. He had already claimed last month that Iran had contacted Washington directly. A deal that opens one strait and leaves the other burning will not survive its first tanker. Islamabad is the one party able to say so to everyone involved, and it should press for a single package covering both waterways.
This is not charity. Petrol is nearing Rs395 a litre and winter LNG cargoes are in doubt. Three Pakistanis were killed in a Houthi attack in the Red Sea in August. Millions of our workers live within range of these missiles, and every pilgrim’s route runs through the cities now being targeted.
Success carries its own danger. Alliances drift from defending borders to crossing them, and the pressure to do more will grow with every missile. Pakistan should set its limits now and say them aloud that no ground role inside Yemen, no part in any strike on Iran, and a full briefing to parliament, even if operational details stay classified.
An American congressman, Joe Wilson, has already called the alliance a potential NATO of the Middle East. The label flatters, but it misses the point. NATO does not also carry its adversary’s messages.
In April the world learned that a middle power could stop a war for two weeks. October’s test is harder to hold a shield over Makkah with one hand and keep a line open to Tehran with the other, without dropping either. So far, Pakistan is managing both. The region should hope it keeps its nerve.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Lahore Times.
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