Iran is Pakistan’s neighbour and a stable relationship with Tehran is essential to border security trade and regional connectivity.

Pakistan should also use its unusual diplomatic access to Iran Saudi Arabia Türkiye China and the United States to press for practical arrangements on maritime security energy infrastructure border security and the use of proxy forces.

If the network built to protect Iran instead produces stronger American partnerships deeper Israeli Arab cooperation new regional defence arrangements and greater economic isolation then Tehran will have to ask whether strategic depth has become strategic overreach.

The Middle East is once again showing how difficult it is to distinguish victory from disruption. Iran has spent years building a network of allies and armed movements across the region because it believes that a country confronted by Israel the United States and a hostile regional environment cannot afford to wait for war to reach its own territory. Strategic depth became Tehran’s answer to strategic vulnerability. Yet the same strategy that has given Iran influence beyond its borders may now be producing consequences that work against the very regional order Iran hopes to reshape.

It would be unfair to ignore why Tehran arrived at this strategy. The memory of the 1953 coup remains powerful in Iran. The Iran Iraq War left an enduring fear of encirclement and vulnerability. Decades of sanctions military pressure and repeated threats have convinced the Iranian leadership that conventional deterrence alone is insufficient. From Tehran’s perspective Hezbollah the Houthis and other regional partners are therefore not simply instruments of expansion. They are a way of ensuring that any enemy contemplating an attack on Iran knows that the consequences will not remain confined to Iranian territory.

That rationale deserves to be understood even when its consequences are questioned. Iran’s support for the Palestinian cause is also not merely a convenient slogan. Tehran has consistently opposed Israeli occupation and presented itself as an alternative to governments that chose accommodation. There is a genuine ideological conviction behind this position as well as a strategic calculation. The Palestinian question remains unresolved and the suffering of Palestinians cannot be wished away simply because Iran has made it part of its foreign policy.

But a strategy can be understandable in origin and still become self defeating in practice.

Yemen illustrates the problem. The Houthis have their own Yemeni history political objectives and ideological commitments and cannot simply be reduced to Iranian puppets. Yet Iranian support has strengthened their military capabilities and connected Yemen’s conflict to a much wider regional struggle. Their recent capture of Mocha and seizure of Mayun Island have given them a physical position inside the Bab el Mandeb Strait and significantly increased their leverage over a vital international waterway.

Bab el Mandeb is not merely a Yemeni concern. It links the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and therefore connects Asian trade and Middle Eastern energy with European markets. When shipping becomes dangerous vessels are diverted around Africa freight and insurance costs rise and supply chains lengthen. A regional conflict suddenly becomes a problem for manufacturers in Europe consumers in Asia and American businesses and households already exposed to higher energy prices. Recent disruptions have pushed Brent crude above 100 dollars a barrel.

The significance becomes even greater when Bab el Mandeb is considered alongside the Strait of Hormuz. Iran sits beside Hormuz while an Iran aligned movement has gained leverage near Bab el Mandeb. One chokepoint guards the exit from the Persian Gulf while the other guards the entrance to the Red........

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