ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign office warned on Thursday that any attacks against Pakistani-flagged vessels in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthi rebels will be “swiftly retaliated,” reaffirming Islamabad’s readiness to implement its bilateral defense agreement with Saudi Arabia.
Yemen’s Houthi movement recently declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, drawing widespread regional and international condemnation. The threats were followed by an attack on Wednesday night involving a Saudi-owned vessel, ENCELIA, in the Red Sea, which caused a fire onboard though no crew members were reported injured, Saudi media reported.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which share close strategic, economic and defense ties, signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA) in Sept. last year, which effectively treats an armed attack against one nation as an attack against both and serves as the cornerstone of their strategic relationship.
Speaking at a weekly press briefing, Pakistani foreign office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi confirmed that Islamabad’s concerns regarding the Houthi threat to the Kingdom and commercial shipping in the Red Sea had been raised with Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni during his meetings with Pakistani leadership this week.
“Any attack against Pakistani-flagged vessels or commercial vessels will be treated as an attack against Pakistan and will be swiftly retaliated. We will do so in our exercise of self-defense,” Andrabi said.
“Our line is strictly in our own national security context.”
Reiterating Islamabad’s broader security obligations, the spokesman emphasized that Pakistan would fully execute its mutual defense agreement with Saudi Arabia.
“As regards the dimension of Saudi Arabia that you raised, we remain committed to implementing all our bilateral agreements with Saudi Arabia, all bilateral defense agreements, including our defense pact with Saudi Arabia,” Andrabi told a reporter.
“All our agreements with Saudi Arabia, or for that matter with any country, once agreed through due process, including ratification, remain in operation. So, there is no question of any staging with respect to these agreements.”
Separately, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he had reaffirmed Pakistan’s complete solidarity with Saudi Arabia during his conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Thursday, saying that Houthi attacks on Saudi oil tankers “are unacceptable, violate international law, threaten freedom of navigation, and undermine regional peace and security.”
Asked if Pakistan had deployed its naval assets to the Red Sea, Andrabi said such operational determinations remained strictly within the purview of military authorities.
“What constitutes a threat or an attack is to be determined technically by our forces. We would remain alert in this area,” he said.
The spokesman drew attention to the strategic Bab El-Mandeb Strait as he highlighted economic and geopolitical stakes, noting that a significant volume of global trade and energy supplies flow through the 27-kilometer-wide maritime bottleneck between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
“We will obviously uphold our commitments under our bilateral act, same from the international community and our partners by and large. We remain vigilant of the situation. But as I said, this determination of what constitutes a threat and what constitutes an active attack is a matter of operational detail,” Andrabi said.
Addressing questions whether Islamabad shared its grievances with Tehran given its alliance with the Houthis, Andrabi said: “Obviously, you know, when we have discussions on regional developments, all regional developments, not to be surprised if these discussions took place.”
The US military announced Wednesday that it was conducting a 12th night of strikes against Iran as both sides increasingly targeted civilian infrastructure. Iran has responded to US attacks by targeting energy infrastructure and desalination plants that provide drinking water in parched neighboring Gulf countries.
Pakistan is seeking to revive diplomacy but it remains unclear what new arrangement could be reached to end the US-Iran war, which lately has become a battle for control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Andrabi said that Islamabad was continuing its efforts to end the US-Iran conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.
“We have not lost hope in the darkest of the days of this conflict cycle where escalations have mounted, where there have been armed attacks back and forth. Even then we were not discouraged,” he said.
“The fact is that Pakistan has been advocating for peace and the necessity to give peace a chance through diplomacy and dialogue, and we believe that the best template to revert to the peace process remains the Islamabad MoU.”
Pakistan emerged as a key intermediary by facilitating contacts between senior US and Iranian officials that paved the way for last month’s interim peace agreement, called the Islamabad MoU that included a 60-day ceasefire, reopening of Hormuz, and a timetable for a final deal on the war and Iran’s nuclear program.
