Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at joint efforts to counter Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, the potential future of nuclear weapons in Lithuania, and espionage allegations against a former German spy chief.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey triggered a mutual defense pact on Monday in response to repeated Houthi strikes on Saudi infrastructure. The joint deterrence measures, which appear to include the “rapid deployment” of Pakistani and Turkish troops to the Persian Gulf kingdom, mark the first time that the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement has been invoked since it was signed in August.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at joint efforts to counter Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, the potential future of nuclear weapons in Lithuania, and espionage allegations against a former German spy chief.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey triggered a mutual defense pact on Monday in response to repeated Houthi strikes on Saudi infrastructure. The joint deterrence measures, which appear to include the “rapid deployment” of Pakistani and Turkish troops to the Persian Gulf kingdom, mark the first time that the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement has been invoked since it was signed in August.

The Houthis have yet to comment on the activation of the mutual defense pact.

Under the trilateral, NATO-style agreement, “any armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all.” Although military cooperation among the three Sunni Muslim-majority nations is nothing new, the timing of the pact’s creation was particularly notable, as it came less than one month after Yemen’s Houthi rebels began launching attacks on Saudi Arabia.

In recent weeks, fighting between the Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized Yemeni government has only worsened. Houthi forces seized control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including the strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait, and targeted critical energy infrastructure and Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia. This week, the Houthis also claimed to have launched attacks on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s Aramco-associated Petro Rabigh refinery, and other locations.

In response, Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen launched a counteroffensive on Monday in........

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