Iran has not received any official invitation to join the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei on Monday.
Mehdi Rahimi, head of the Iranian Parliament News Agency, said that Iran was invited to the Mecca pact signed earlier this month by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan, Lebanon-based broadcaster Al Mayadeen reported on Sunday.
Rahimi said the proposal is currently under consideration by the Iranian leadership, the report said.
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye signed a joint defense agreement in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Aug 7 amid rising regional security concerns, according to Pakistan's Foreign Ministry.
The agreement aims to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression, under which an armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against all, the ministry said in a statement.
Iran denies receiving invitation to join Mecca defense agreement
Iran denies receiving invitation to join Mecca defense agreement
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index closed lower on Monday mainly due to the sudden share placement by Chinese tech and retail giant Alibaba, a market analyst said.
Hong Kong's stock market ended lower Monday with the benchmark Hang Seng Index down 1.89 percent to close at 25,517.33 points.
The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index shed 1.89 percent to 8,471.36 points, and the Hang Seng Tech Index tumbled 3.61 percent to 4,594.04 points.
Timothy Pope, an analyst for the China Global Television Network (CGTN), recapped the day's developments, saying that the Alibaba share placement -- its first since listing on the Hong Hong stock exchange in 2019 -- had been the big story of the day's trading.
"A surprise share placement by Alibaba caught investors off guard today and dominated sentiment on the Hang Seng. The Index ended the session down by 1.9 percent. It wasn't just the size of Alibaba's share placement -- although that was the biggest follow-on offering of new shares by a company on the Hong Kong stock exchange at 10.2 billion U.S. dollars worth -- it was also that they sold the shares at a pretty hefty discount, 8.4 percent below Friday's close. The only thing that wasn't surprising about this listing is what Alibaba is going to do with the money. You wouldn't need three guesses, it's going to fund AI infrastructure, AI models and chips. But it did have investors worried about stock dilution and whether these investments are going to pay off," he said.
Pope said the focus of the Hong Kong market in the coming days will remain on the performances of tech companies, with more earnings reports due to be released.
"For the rest of this week Hong Kong is going to be focused on earnings as well. Nvidia obviously will be closely watched by everyone. But there's also Wuxi Bio on Tuesday, which has been a really strong stock recently, and Li Auto on Wednesday, [which will be] another test for the EV (electric vehicle) sector," he said.
Hong Kong stocks down as Alibaba's sudden share placement dominates market sentiment: analyst
