• Shehbaz denounces Houthi attacks on Saudi, calls strikes threat to regional peace
• Houthis target Saudi military base with drones, missiles
• Riyadh says projectile injured two, damaged buildings, vehicles
• Tehran, UAE want to ‘turn the page’, Iranian president says after meeting crown prince
• Trump says ‘don’t care’ as Iran, Gulf states talks on Hormuz postponed

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will continue its efforts to defuse tensions and ensure peace in the region, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday, as the Houthis targeted Saudi military and energy infrastructure in their campaign to overthrow the Yemeni government backed by Riyadh.

Speaking to MBS by phone, PM Shehbaz condemned the Houthi attacks and expressed solidarity with the Saudi leadership and people. The prime minister said the Houthi actions threatened regional peace and security and could further disrupt the global economy and energy supplies.

The premier told the Saudi pri­nce that he, along with Field Mar­shal Asim Munir and Deputy Pri­me Minister Ishaq Dar, would continue their efforts to defuse tensions and bring peace to the region.

MBS appreciated Pakistan’s steadfast support for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well as its efforts for peace and stability in the region. The two leaders agreed to remain in close contact and looked forward to meeting each other at an early date.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkiye are members of a newly formed Makkah Defence Alliance. The defence pact, signed on Aug 7, aims to strengthen collective deterrence and empower its signatory states to treat an attack against one of them as an attack against all of them.

Houthi attacks

Meanwhile, Houthi fighters said they had used drones and missiles to attack a military base in southern Saudi Arabia as renewed fighting with Yemen’s government forces forced growing numbers of civilians to flee. The attack on the southern Sharurah base targeted “weapons depots and command and control centres that are managing the aggression against our nation and people”, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on X. The date of the operation was not specified.

On Saturday night, Saudi authorities said a Houthi projectile had fallen in an area near the border, hours after issuing alerts warning of the risk of possible attacks. The civil defence directorate said the incident resulted “in two injuries and material damage to a mosque, several buildings, and vehicles”.

The government forces earlier said they had struck Houthi fighters in the Red Sea city of Mocha, and later attacked other Houthi positions in the southwestern part of the country. “The Air Force of the Armed Forces targeted positions and barracks of the terrorist Houthi group with three airstrikes” in the Taiz region, the Yemeni military said Sunday in a post on X.

The government news agency Saba reported that Yemeni “forces destroyed vehicles and weapons and killed members of the Houthi terrorist militia” near the port of Mocha, and quoted a spokesman for the forces as saying they had also struck Houthi targets just outside the city. The Houthis, meanwhile, said on Saturday evening that over the past 48 hours, “Saudi enemy aircraft conducted 129 airstrikes” on areas under their control.

The Yemeni civil war has uprooted millions of people, and the latest fighting has forced even more to flee their homes. The UN’s migration agency said on Saturday that, since July, 76,000 people had fled the fighting — a figure that had quadrupled since last week.

About 1,400 people had fled to Djibouti, the country’s minister of economy and finance, Ilyas Moussa Dawaleh, said on Saturday. The renewed fighting in Yemen has killed more than 500 people, according to sources on both sides.

No help from US

US news site Axios also reported that Saudi Crown Prince MBS twice called US Trump to request strikes on the Houthis last week, but that the request was rejected.

Three sources told Reuters that MBS phoned Trump on Thursday asking for military aid to fight the Houthis, but was offered only intelligence support for now.

Trump acknowledged speaking to the de facto Saudi leader but said the Houthis had also “called us and they don’t want to fight with us”.

The US president did not elaborate on whether Washington would take any action, but told reporters that “everything’s gonna work out fine and dandy” in the region.

Ties with UAE

On Sunday, the Iranian president said Iran and the United Arab Emirates, whose relations have deteriorated since the start of the Middle East war, want to ‘turn the page’. “For the first time since the war and the incidents that occurred in the Persian Gulf, we had a constructive exchange with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi,” Massoud Pezeshkian said, a day after a meeting Sheikh Khaled Bin Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan in India, on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.

“It was agreed that we would turn the page, look to the future and build it together.”

Iran, Gulf states meeting on Hormuz

A meeting in Oman between Iran and Gulf nations, scheduled for Monday to discuss possible agreements on the Strait of Hormuz, was postponed at the request of some regional countries in a decision jointly made by Tehran and Muscat, Fars news agency reported, citing an Iranian foreign ministry official.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei earlier said the meeting being hosted by Oman would “serve as an essential cornerstone for ensuring stability and security”, in a statement carried by the ISNA news agency. The talks were planned as Iran and the United States clash over the blockaded strait, which is crucial for the global oil and gas trade.

It’s up to them: Trump

Asked about Monday’s planned meeting in Oman, the US president said he did not “care” about a proposed meeting between Iran and Gulf states to discuss the Strait of Hormuz. “I don’t care. That’s up to them,” Trump told reporters during a visit to Ireland.

On the other hand, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in an interview with the London-based pan-Arab news outlet Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed, made it clear that despite any agreement with Oman, Iran would not reopen the strait until the US satisfied Tehran’s demands.

However, Oman later announced the postponement of the meeting scheduled for Monday between Iran and Gulf countries on the Strait of Hormuz. “It has been decided to postpone to a later date the regional meeting that was to be held on Monday in Salalah, in order to create conditions conducive to a constructive dialogue,” the Oman News Agency said.

Few details have been released about the meeting, as most Gulf states have remained silent. Iraq said it would send a delegation, while Bahrain said it would not meet any Iranians.

With input from Agencies

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2026