Photo- Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman( MBS) as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif looks.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan spoke out Saturday about the concerning spread of the Iran war throughout the Middle East, saying Saudi Arabia should not be involved.
“We do not accept Saudi Arabia being made a part of the ongoing conflict between Iran and America,” Fidan told Turkish TV station NTV. “Saudi Arabia should be kept outside this equation because they themselves are not seeking to become involved in it.”
Saudi Arabia has been plunged into the expanding war after the Iran-backed Houthis started targeting Saudi-flagged oil tankers exiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea in solidarity with Iran attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
On Saturday, the Houthis attacked deep into Saudi territory, including the capital of Riyadh and its 8 million inhabitants.
The attacks are particularly concerning to Turkey after it signed a defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan last month. The agreement calls for each country to treat the other as if an attack on one is an attack on all, similar to NATO’s Article 5.
Fidan also told NTV the Saudis may have some military needs and Turkey would look to assist as part of the defense agreement, according to AFP.
Meanwhile The Iran-backed Houthis said on Saturday they launched strikes targeting “sensitive sites” in Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh and oil facilities in the kingdom’s port city of Yanbu, hours after residents reported blasts in the Saudi capital.
“In response to the Saudi enemy’s criminal attempts to target the capital Sana’a … the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out two successful military operations using a large number of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said, in a statement on Telegram, referring to the name they use for unofficial armed forces. “The first targeted sensitive sites in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and the second targeted Aramco facilities in Yanbu.”
The Houthis did not specify what the “sensitive sites were,” but one appeared to be an Aramco fuel storage depot at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport.
On August 9 Turkey and Pakistan signed a new defense agreement, which “stipulates that any armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all. But neither Pakistan nor Turkey made any move to help Saudi Arabia after it was targeted by the Iran backed Houthi rebels, One analyst was quoted as saying ” withe parters like Pakistan and Turkey the saudis need no enemies ”
CBS
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