Caught between Iran and Saudi Arabia, can Pakistan stay neutral for long?

As Iran strikes Gulf targets, Pakistan navigates alliance with Riyadh while avoiding confrontation with Tehran. But with the war intensifying, hat posture will be hard to manintin, say analysts.

Islamabad, Pakistan – The reverberations of a war in which US-Israel attacks have killed more than a thousand people in Iran, including the country’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and Iranian missiles and drones have fallen on Israel in retaliation, are being felt deeply in Pakistan.

Six Gulf countries have also come under Iranian missile and drone attacks, putting Pakistan in a tough position.

The country shares a 900-kilometre (559 miles) border with Iran in its southwest, and millions of its workers are residents in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations.

Since September last year, Islamabad has also reinforced its decades-long ties with Riyadh by signing a formal mutual defence agreement that commits each side to treat aggression against the other as aggression against both.

As Iranian drones and ballistic missiles continue to target Gulf states, the question being asked with increasing urgency in Pakistan is what Islamabad will do next if it finds itself pulled into the war.

Islamabad’s answer so far has been to work the phones furiously, engaging regional leaders, including Iran and Saudi Arabia.

When US-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28, Pakistan condemned the attacks as “unwarranted”. Within hours, it also condemned Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Gulf states as “blatant violations of sovereignty”.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, who was attending an Organisation of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Riyadh when the conflict began last week, launched what he later described as “shuttle communication” between Tehran and Riyadh.

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Speaking in the Senate on March 3, and at a news conference later the same day, Dar disclosed that he had personally reminded Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi of Pakistan’s defence obliga