India, April 7 -- Iran's attacks on energy facilities in Saudi Arabia - its long-term nemesis which houses US military bases - on Tuesday put Pakistan's top civil and military leadership in a bind, at a time when it was trying to play peacemaker in a conflict that has created global ripples and is now in its second month.

At the heart of the bind is a defence pact that nuclear-armed Pakistan has with its oil-rich patron Saudi Arabia.

For six weeks so far, Pakistan walked a precarious tightrope - condemning American and Israeli strikes on Iran, then also condemned Iran's retaliatory strikes on Gulf states as "blatant violations of sovereignty", while simultaneously reaffirming its defence obligations to Saudi Arabia; and all this while s...