Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has told Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that trust is needed to facilitate talks and mediation on the conflict in the Middle East, the prime minister’s office said on Saturday.

It said Pezeshkian had praised Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts and that the two leaders had discussed hostilities in the region and efforts to end the conflict during a call that lasted over an hour. Sharif briefed Pezeshkian on Pakistan’s diplomatic contacts with the United States and Gulf states, it said.

Pakistan has been leading negotiations between the warring nations as the Gulf countries who had originally been mediating discussions found themselves embroiled in rebuffing Iranian attacks on sites within their borders.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has destroyed a Ukrainian air defence depot in Dubai on Saturday, according to the Fars news agency.

Rubbishing the plan this week, Iranian officials described the conditions as “excessive”, “maximalist” and “unreasonable”. Senior officials who reviewed the proposal felt it only served US and Israeli interests, a source told Reuters, though adding that diplomacy is still on the table.

Analysts have told The Independent that despite US boasts of success, the war will not be ended militarily and one month since the conflict began Iran feels it has the upper hand.

Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian has threatened to deliver a “decisive and crushing response” if Tehran’s key infrastructure and economic centres are targeted by the US and Israel.

“We have repeatedly stated that Iran does not carry out preemptive attacks, but in response to attacks on infrastructure and economic centers, we will deliver a decisive and crushing response to the aggressor enemy,” Pezeshkian wrote on X on Saturday.

“To the countries of the region, I say: if you seek development and security, do not allow our common enemies to orchestrate the war from your territories.”

The Houthis, formed in the late 1990s, developed as political-religious Shia movement and launched a series of guerrilla wars against Yemen’s national army upon conception.

The rebels have developed an arsenal including ballistic missiles and armed drones capable of hitting Israel more than 1,000 miles from Sana’a.

In 2024, the rebel group launched its first sustained attacks on ships passing through the Red Sea claiming it was in retaliation for Israel’s attacks on Gaza. The onslaught disrupted global trade by striking the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which is a narrow strip of sea between Yemen and east Africa that is a key international trade route.

Experts say the Houthis, along with Gaza’s Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, form part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” – a military alliance built over four decades to oppose Israeli and American power in the Middle East.

Israel’s military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen toward Israel early Saturday and the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels later claimed responsibility for the attack, their first since the war in the Mideast started.

Brigadier General Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, claimed responsibility in a statement aired Saturday morning on the rebels’ Al-Masirah satellite television.

The possible entry to the war of the Houthis calls into question whether the group will again target commercial shipping traveling through the Red Sea corridor.

Sirens went off around Beer Sheba and the area near Israel’s main nuclear research center for the third time overnight Friday into Saturday as Iran and Hezbollah continued to fire on Israel overnight.

Loud explosions also filled the air in Tel Aviv and Israel’s Fire and Rescue Service said it was responding to 11 different impact sites across the metro area.

An FBI spokesperson confirmed that the agency chief Kash Patel’s email was hacked by the Iran-linked Handala Hack Team.

The group published dozens of emails and photographs on Friday that they said were taken from a personal inbox belonging to Patel.

“We have taken all necessary steps to mitigate potential risks associated with this activity,” FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said today.

The data accessed by the hackers were “historical in nature and involves no government information”, Williamson said.

Iranain strikes have forced the shutdown of Qatar’s production of helium, which is critical to semiconductor manufacture.

“The shutdown of Qatar helium production due to the US-Iran military conflict has removed roughly a third of global helium supply and shifted the market from oversupplied to undersupplied,” Deutsche Bank analysts said earlier this month.

Experts warn that a drawn-out war could forced chip makers to seek alternate sources and supply routes.

Russia, which is the world’s third largest helium supplier could gain from this disruption.

“If Qatari disruptions persist, Russia is well placed to further expand its role in China’s helium supply mix,” Center on Global Energy Policy researcher Erica Downs wrote in a blog post.

Kuwait International Airport was targeted ⁠by multiple drone attacks ⁠that ​caused ⁠significant damage ⁠to its ​radar ⁠system ‌but resulted in no ‌casualties, state news ‌agency KUNA ⁠said on Saturday, citing the country’s Civil Aviation ‌Authority.