Walking the tightrope between Tehran and Riyadh

Donald Trump threatened Iran with another strike, then called it off within hours — at the request, he said, of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. He now says talks resume today. Tehran says the opposite: no negotiations are under way, and it isn’t even Iran that asked for the pause, whatever Trump claims. Yet Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has spoken twice in the past 24 hours with Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. So the real diplomacy is clearly happening, just not where either government wants it seen. Neither Washington nor Tehran can afford to look like it needs the other, so both are working through intermediaries instead — a way to edge toward de-escalation without anyone having to publicly climb down.

Pakistan’s problem is that this mediating role doesn’t come free. Islamabad isn’t just a channel between Iran and the US; it’s also bound to Saudi Arabia by a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement signed in September 2025, under which an attack on either country counts as an attack on both.

That leaves Pakistan trying to be two things at once — a mediator Tehran trusts, and a defence partner Riyadh can call on. The access that makes it useful is the same thing that could make its position untenable the moment a real crisis hits.

The Yemen fault line

Yemen is where that crisis is most likely to start. Iran’s argument — that Yemen’s war has to be settled through Yemeni dialogue, not folded into the wider US-Iran fight — isn’t unreasonable on its face; the conflict grew out of domestic collapse and local power struggles long before Tehran got involved. But Reuters has reported that Iran flew IRGC commanders, advisers, and missile- and drone-related equipment into Houthi-controlled Yemen in July, a claim both Tehran and the Houthis reject.

If the Houthis hit Saudi territory or shipping, Riyadh will expect Pakistan to act under the defence pact. Acting would burn the trust that makes Pakistan useful to Iran. Not acting would leave Saudi Arabia wondering what the pact is actually worth.

A mediator with interests, not a neutral one

What makes Pakistan useful here isn’t neutrality — it’s the opposite. It sits next to Iran, has a real strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, and stands to lose from a wider war through higher energy costs, disrupted shipping, squeezed remittances from Gulf workers, and more instability on its western border. That gives it a genuine stake in keeping the conflict contained. But having a stake cuts both ways, and it demands discipline: Iran needs to believe mediation isn’t a setup for pressuring it into surrender; Saudi Arabia needs to believe diplomacy won’t give cover to attacks by Iran-aligned groups; and Washington needs to be convinced that a negotiated deal will actually hold better than another round of bombing. 

What Pakistan should do

The good news is that Pakistan and Qatar already have the right scaffolding in place. The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding set up a High-Level Committee, working groups on nuclear issues and sanctions, and a monitoring and communication channel meant to stop incidents at sea before they spiral. The priority now should be reviving that mechanism, not inventing a new one. Yemen, meanwhile, needs its own track — Yemeni-led, UN-backed, involving the Houthis, Saudi Arabia and Oman — while still making clear that attacks on Saudi shipping and infrastructure can’t be waved away as someone else’s problem.

The defence pact itself could use some quiet clarification. It sounds decisive on paper, but wars don’t usually start with a formal invasion anymore — they start with a drone, a proxy strike, something deniable. Does a Houthi attack automatically trigger Pakistani support? What would count as proof that Iran was behind it? Leaving those questions open invites the worst kind of misunderstanding: Tehran underestimating what Pakistan is obligated to do, Riyadh overestimating it, and Islamabad caught between the two in the middle of a crisis.

Pakistan should also resist trying to be the only mediator in the room. Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UN all have their own channels running already. Coordinating those efforts matters more than getting credit for any one of them.

And Islamabad needs to protect the quiet that makes a channel worth having in the first place — Iran can’t be seen negotiating under the threat of bombs, and Trump can’t easily admit that his own campaign has made him more dependent on go-betweens than he’d like. Success here won’t look like headlines about Pakistan’s role. It’ll look like the lines staying open the next time the shooting starts again.

Pakistan can’t make Iran give up its nuclear leverage, can’t guarantee Washington will choose talks over force, and can’t tell the Houthis to stand down. What it can do is stop these separate fires from merging into one uncontrolled regional war — using its Saudi ties to press Iran toward restraint, and its access to Iran to spell out the costs of escalation for Riyadh and Washington. That only works as leverage if Islamabad keeps its military commitments, its diplomacy and its public messaging pointed in the same direction. The moment they pull apart, the leverage turns into a liability — and there isn’t much room left in this region to absorb that kind of mistake.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.