A senior Houthi official has warned Turkey and Pakistan against backing Saudi Arabia in its war with the group, saying both countries would be attacked if they intervene.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthi political bureau, made the remarks in an interview with the Iraqi channel iNews. "We will strike them with an iron fist," he said. "Just as we are disciplining Saudi Arabia today, we will discipline them too."
Al-Bukhaiti warned last week that any direct Turkish or Pakistani intervention on Saudi Arabia's behalf would carry a heavy price.
The threat targets the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, signed in August by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, which created a framework for mutual defense cooperation. The pact has not yet been invoked. A Turkish official told Middle East Eye that Riyadh had not formally requested Ankara's assistance under it.
Regional analysts say Turkey is reluctant to confront the Houthis and would prefer to use its ties with both Riyadh and Tehran to defuse the crisis, while supplying Saudi Arabia with defensive equipment. Turkey has commercial, military and energy supply lines running through the Red Sea that an escalation could disrupt, and it already has a naval presence in the area, with warships guarding an energy exploration vessel off Somalia and participation in a UN-backed anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden.
The warning comes as the Houthis press their largest territorial advance in years along Yemen's Red Sea coast, reigniting the country's civil war and threatening Saudi oil exports. The group has claimed repeated missile and drone attacks on Aramco facilities, and Saudi authorities said attacks on September 8 wounded at least 73 people and set fires at oil facilities and utilities in the kingdom's south.
Al-Bukhaiti has framed the campaign as a response to Saudi policy, telling the Associated Press that it was Saudi Arabia that closed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to traffic to and from Yemen and imposed a blockade on the country.
