Naqvi Meets Iran's President, FM as Houthi Attack Kills 6

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Mohsin Naqvi Meets Iranian President and FM in Tehran as Houthi Attack Near Bab el-Mandeb Kills Six, Including a Pakistani

The Pakistan Times — Islamabad, August 11, 2026

Pakistan's Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi arrived in Tehran on Tuesday for meetings with President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, marking his sixth trip to Iran as part of Islamabad's ongoing effort to help ease tensions between Tehran and Washington. The visit landed on the same day a Houthi missile attack on a commercial vessel in the Bab el-Mandeb strait killed six people, including at least one Pakistani national.

What Naqvi's Visit Is About

According to two officials familiar with the trip who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, Naqvi's goal in Tehran is to encourage Iran to return to negotiations with the United States under the interim peace framework Pakistan itself helped broker back in June, the same Islamabad memorandum that's been at the center of recent diplomatic efforts around the Strait of Hormuz. Araghchi posted photos from the meeting on his personal Telegram channel showing him greeting Naqvi, and Iran's presidency office separately released images of Pezeshkian welcoming the Pakistani minister at the start of their talks.

The timing lines up with some genuinely more hopeful noise coming out of the region too. Pakistan's own Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told Bloomberg in an interview published the same day that the US and Iran appear close to some kind of arrangement, saying the signals over the past two or three days point toward things shaping up again in favor of a peace deal. Araghchi, for his part, struck a more defiant tone publicly, telling reporters Iran has astonished the whole world during this war and proven itself a tough, invincible power, while insisting the Strait of Hormuz will not reopen until the US meets Iran's conditions, including what Tehran wants in compensation for people killed during the conflict.

The Attack Near Bab el-Mandeb

Separately, Yemen's coast guard confirmed that Houthi forces fired at least three ballistic missiles at a commercial cargo vessel identified as the Tihamah as it transited the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Tuesday. The strikes set the ship on fire and caused extensive damage, and according to the coast guard's own statement, killed several crew members along with personnel who were part of a rescue mission sent to evacuate the vessel. Casualty figures varied slightly across different official statements through the day, but coast guard officials confirmed at least three Pakistani nationals and one Indonesian national were among those killed, with the overall death toll reaching six once rescue force casualties were included.

Yemen's transport ministry said the assault involved an initial salvo of missiles followed by additional strikes as the vessel tried to maneuver away from the area. No group had claimed direct responsibility for targeting this specific ship at the time of publication, though the attack fits the broader pattern of Houthi strikes on shipping through the strait that have continued alongside the wider regional conflict.

Why Both Stories Matter Together

There's a pretty stark contrast sitting side by side here. While Pakistani diplomats are in Tehran actively trying to talk Iran and the US back toward peace, Pakistani civilians are simultaneously losing their lives in attacks tied to the same broader conflict zone, hundreds of kilometres away in Yemeni waters. It's a reminder of just how many different fronts this one regional crisis now touches, and how directly ordinary Pakistanis, not just diplomats and ministers, are being affected by it.

Read More: Why Saudi Arabia Can No Longer Stay Out of the Iran War

Sources: Associated Press,  Reuters

© The Pakistan Times. All rights reserved.

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