Media: Pakistan asked Iran to restrain Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia

Pakistan's Army Chief of Staff Asim Munir has asked Iran to exert influence on Yemen's rebel movement Ansar Allah (the Houthis) so that they stop carrying out attacks on Saudi Arabia.

This was reported by the British newspaper Financial Times (FT).

According to the publication's sources, Munir repeatedly asked the Iranian leadership to provide assistance in order to halt Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and its energy infrastructure, citing Islamabad's obligations to Riyadh, but without resorting to specific threats.

One of the publication's sources also noted that Islamabad, which in April deployed fighter jets at an air base in eastern Saudi Arabia, finds itself in a "difficult position." Pakistan refused to join Saudi Arabia's airstrikes on Yemen in 2015, however its current financial difficulties make it harder to continue evading the fulfillment of its allied obligations to the kingdom. At the same time, representatives of Pakistan's Foreign Ministry earlier declined to publicly name specific potential military measures in support of Saudi Arabia.

The situation in Yemen sharply escalated in early September, when the Yemeni rebel movement went on the offensive in the southwest of the country. Simultaneously with the ground offensive, the Houthis began striking with missiles and drones at coastal areas of the Red Sea and the outskirts of the city of Taiz, seeking to cut off the routes to Mocha and advance toward areas located near the strategically important Bab el-Mandeb Strait. On September 11, a Houthi military spokesman reported that Ansar Allah formations had launched an operation on Yemen's western coast with the aim of driving Saudi forces out of there. According to him, the reason was "attacks by Saudi-backed forces on residents, villages and districts of the western coast that have continued over the past years."

On August 7, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca Agreement. It stipulates that an attack on one of the countries will be regarded as aggression against all participants of the pact.

Source: TASS