The latest Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia are more than another flare-up in Yemen’s unresolved war. They test the de-escalation that has largely held since 2022 and the credibility of the security arrangements built around it. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was therefore right to condemn the attacks unequivocally and reaffirm Pakistan’s support for Saudi sovereignty, territorial integrity and security.
That support now carries greater strategic meaning, especially in the light of Pakistan-Saudi Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (signed last September), which declares aggression against one is an aggression against both, and is intended to strengthen joint deterrence. The task before those at the helm of affairs is to preserve deterrence without allowing ambiguity to become a pathway to uncontrolled escalation.
Islamabad’s position offers a useful framework. It has combined firm solidarity with Riyadh with support for Yemen’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, while calling for an inclusive, Yemeni-led and UN-facilitated political settlement. History also suggests that military superiority alone cannot reconstruct Yemen’s fractured political order. Condemning the Houthis does not require abandoning the Yemeni people to another open-ended cycle of war.
This distinction matters because the renewed confrontation followed an attack by Yemen’s internationally recognised government on Sanaa airport, which it said was intended to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing outside approved procedures. Where divided sovereignty and regional rivalries overlap, miscalculation can travel faster than diplomacy.
Pakistan should neither blur responsibility for the missile attacks nor treat military escalation as the only proof of alliance credibility.
Saudi security is closely connected to Pakistan’s own economic interests. No qualms about that. Disruption in the Gulf or Red Sea is transmitted through oil prices and remittances. Using that extension, stability in the kingdom is far more than an abstract foreign-policy preference as it forms part of Pakistan’s wider economic security.
Furthermore, Field Marshal Asim Munir’s meetings in Ankara with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkiye’s military leadership underscore that Pakistan is not placing its strategic future inside a single bilateral relationship. The greater significance lies in Pakistan’s effort to construct a wider network of defence partnerships, deepen military interoperability and expand its diplomatic room for manoeuvre in an increasingly fragmented security order. *