Pakistan on Friday strongly condemned Houthi ballistic missile attacks targeting Saudi Arabia, including the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah, and reaffirmed what it called its unwavering solidarity with Riyadh, as the Foreign Office used its weekly briefing in Islamabad to set out the country's position on a series of regional crises.
Foreign Office spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan told journalists that the attacks, carried out on 26 October, were a grave violation of Saudi Arabia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. He said strikes aimed at areas around Islam's holiest sites showed a blatant disregard for the sanctity of those places and for the safety of civilians.
Pakistan had already condemned the October attacks when they happened, but Friday's briefing was the fullest restatement of Islamabad's position since then. The spokesperson repeated Pakistan's commitment to the Makkah Alliance for Defence, the joint defence arrangement under which Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye agreed in August that an armed attack against one of them would be regarded as an attack against all three.
The defence pact has moved quickly from paper to practice. On 28 October, Lieutenant General Nauman Mahmood, the first secretary general of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, met Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad, a meeting the spokesperson cited as evidence that the alliance's machinery is now being put in place.
The briefing also covered the wider diplomatic effort behind the scenes. On 23 October, the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a grouping known as the R4, met in Istanbul to discuss Palestine, Yemen, the tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, and the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. The ministers later met their counterparts from France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, and reaffirmed their commitment to dialogue, de-escalation and negotiated solutions, according to the Foreign Office.
On the standoff between Iran and the United States, the spokesperson said Pakistan had acted as a sincere mediator and provided all possible facilitation to bring the two countries to the negotiating table after they had not spoken to each other for 47 years. He pointed to the signing of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries as evidence of Pakistan's diplomatic efforts, and said Islamabad, Qatar and other countries were continuing to support mediation.
The spokesperson acknowledged that negotiations and mediation could take time, but said disputes could be resolved through diplomacy rather than war. He added that Iran's nuclear programme had remained under discussion since 2015 and that Pakistan supported a peaceful resolution of the issue. He also described Israel as a spoiler in efforts to resolve the tensions between Iran and the United States.
Pakistan also renewed its call for an immediate path towards a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, with an independent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders and East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside a ceasefire in Gaza. The position was restated as regional tensions and security concerns dominated the discussions among the R4 foreign ministers in Istanbul.
In a separate announcement at the briefing, the Foreign Office said Pakistan had received an invitation from India to attend a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in New Delhi from 20 to 22 November. The spokesperson said the invitation had been extended to all member states and that a decision on participation would be taken by the leadership after institutional consultations.
The spokesperson also said Pakistan remained ready to welcome Sikh pilgrims through the Kartarpur Corridor once India lifted restrictions on their movement, and announced that an event commemorating Baba Guru Nanak would be held towards the end of November. Asked about the United States, he said the American elections were an internal matter for that country and that Pakistan maintained close relations with Washington.
What happens next will depend on whether the diplomacy the Foreign Office described can hold. The Makkah defence alliance is still being formalised, the Iran-US mediation has produced a memorandum but no final settlement, and the decision on the New Delhi meeting is still to be made. For now, Friday's briefing put on record Pakistan's central message: solidarity with Saudi Arabia, defence of the holy sites, and dialogue over war across the region.
