Pakistan, mediator in the conflict between Washington and Tehran, said on Thursday that the warring parties were negotiating toward de-escalation after a new series of bombings on Iran carried out by the United States during the night, and Iranian retaliatory fire.
“Negotiations between the parties are underway, particularly regarding the Strait of Hormuz and in order to achieve de-escalation,” said Pakistani diplomacy, adding that it would “do everything possible to bring all parties back to the Islamabad peace protocol signed in mid-June and intended to pave the way for peace talks.”
Before the latest strikes, the conflict between Iran and the United States had expanded to another front, pitting pro-Iranian Yemeni Houthis rebels against Saudi Arabia.
“The war by proxy is the continuation of direct war by other means, and it is waged with considerable strategic coherence,” Hesham Alghannam, a Saudi analyst and researcher specializing in security issues, told AFP.
Saudi Arabia relies on the Red Sea to sustain its exports, while Iran again blocks the Strait of Hormuz, on the other side of the peninsula, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas had flowed before the war, launched on February 28 by U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Thursday morning, the Revolutionary Guards said that two tankers had attempted the night before to leave the “safe maritime corridor” designated by Iran, and that one of them had “caught fire,” with no further details.
