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Pakistan Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Tuesday warned his Iranian counterpart not to attack Saudi Arabia, citing the mutual defense agreement between Islamabad and Riyadh.
“I explained to him that we have a defense agreement,” Dar, who is also Pakistan’s deputy prime minister, said, referring to talks he had with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday.
Dar credited the agreement between Islamabad and Riyadh, signed in September, for helping “keep missile or drone attacks (against the Saudis) to a minimum” compared to their Gulf neighbors.
In return, Dar said, Tehran sought “assurances” that Saudi soil would not be used to attack Iran.
The mutual defense agreement “states that any aggression against either country will be considered aggression against both”, but neither Islamabad nor Riyadh has yet implemented it, despite Pakistan fighting two conflicts with Afghanistan since October.
Dar’s comments to reporters on Tuesday, along with an earlier parliamentary statement, were the first public acknowledgment by a senior official in Islamabad or Riyadh that the deal could apply to the Iran war.
The Pakistani Foreign Minister’s statement came on the same day an Iranian drone damaged the US Embassy in Riyadh.
The embassy later warned of imminent missile and drone attacks on the eastern city of Dhahran, where oil company Saudi Aramco is based. A drone attack hit the kingdom’s giant oil refinery in Ras Tanura on Monday.
In a phone call with Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Saturday, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said “Pakistan stands in full solidarity with Saudi Arabia” but did not mention the defense deal.
Pakistan has condemned the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the “regional expansion” of the conflict, but its senior officials have avoided blaming the US or President Donald Trump, whom he has twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Any military action by Pakistan against Iran would be fraught with risk, as Tehran enjoys widespread support among its population, most notably the 40 million-strong Shia minority.
A decade ago, Islamabad refused to join Saudi and UAE air strikes on Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, drawing a sharp rebuke from Gulf officials.
Pakistan is currently engaged in a fierce cross-border war with the Taliban, its former proxy in Afghanistan, and despite bordering Iran, has been spared missile and drone attacks.
Yet it still faces significant threats from the Iran war. More than 4 million Pakistanis live in the Gulf country, most of them migrant workers, and an Iranian missile attack on Abu Dhabi on Saturday killed a civilian.
Saudi has sought to stay out of the war. Before the US and Israel began bombing Iran, Riyadh said it would not allow its territory to be used to attack the Islamic Republic.
But after the attack on the US Embassy on Tuesday, Riyadh warned that a repetition of Iran’s “defiant behaviour” would “push the region towards further tensions”.
“The Kingdom reiterated its full right to take all necessary measures, including the option of responding to aggression, to protect its security, territorial integrity, citizens, residents and vital interests,” the Saudi state news agency said.
The UK Government is concerned about the risk of escalating tensions in the Middle East and beyond.
“It is remarkable that this conflict has escalated so rapidly in just a few days, involving several Gulf countries, Lebanon, Iraq,” a British Foreign Office official said on Tuesday.
The official said the UK government took note of “the concerns of other countries in the region and beyond, including Pakistan”.
British diplomats are in close contact with Riyadh, and are discussing steps the UK could take to strengthen the kingdom’s security.
“We need to work to reduce tensions,” the UK official said.
Additional reporting by Andrew England
