Pakistan will intensify diplomatic efforts to try to resolve the crisis in Yemen, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Monday, days after his Gulf allies criticized Islamabad for not joining a Saudi-led coalition conducting airstrikes there.
“Pakistan will intensify its diplomatic efforts in the coming days, in consultation with the leadership of Saudi Arabia, to resolve the crisis,” Sharif said in Islamabad, according to AFP.
“We believe that the restoration of President Hadi’s government will be an important step forward toward establishing peace in Yemen.”
He called on Iran to use its influence to help bring the Houthis to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, an American defense official said that Washington was aware of Tehran’s attempt to deliver the game-changing surface-to-air missiles to the Houthis, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“They don’t have an easy route in from the air. They don’t have an easy route in from the sea,” one senior US military official said of the Iranians. “There’s lots of intelligence focused on what they’re doing—from loading to potential delivery.”
So far, the military officials said, the coordinated military operations appear to have deterred Iran from taking major risks to aid the Houthis. US naval forces in the Red Sea this month boarded a freighter suspected of delivering Iranian weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen, American military officials said.
The destroyer USS Sterett’s search of the Panamanian-flagged Saisaban on April 1 came up empty. But it marked the US Navy’s first boarding operation in an expanding campaign to ensure Iran doesn’t supply game-changing weapons that would threaten Saudi-led airstrikes on the Houthis.
“We are looking. We know they are trying to do it,” a defense official was quoted as saying.
If the Houthis lay their hands on surface-to-air missiles, they would be able to put up a major challenge
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