Saudi-Pakistan-Turkiye pact: A new shield or strategic signal?

Islamabad, Pakistan – Three folders – two in green and one in crimson red – changed hands beneath a portrait of Saudi King Salman at al-Safa Palace in Mecca on Friday.

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkiye’s president, and Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, held them up for the cameras, the ink still fresh on the pages inside.

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The signatures of the three leaders had just bound Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan to the “Makkah Joint Defence Agreement”, which treats an attack on any one of the countries as an attack on all three.

The mutual defence pact, which does not name a specific threat, was signed more than five months into the United States-Israel war on Iran, a conflict that has pulled missile and drone fire onto Gulf oil exporters, including Saudi Arabia, and shut down much of the Strait of Hormuz.

It builds on a bilateral Saudi Arabia-Pakistan pact signed less than a year ago, now widened to include Turkiye’s defence industry and NATO-standard military.

Sharif called it a “shield of peace” for the region, while Erdogan said the pact “does not target any country” and remains “open to the participation of all brotherly countries seeking peace, prosperity and stability”. Saudi officials also stressed the agreement does not pose any threat to regional security and does not come at the expense of the kingdom’s ties with other allies, including the US and Gulf countries.

Still, the pact’s signing has raised questions about the region’s changing power dynamics.

Muhammad Faisal, a security and foreign policy analyst, said the agreement’s value “lies in creating uncertainty for adversaries and strengthening collective deterrence, rather than specifying fixed military obligations similar to Western alliances”.

Kamran Bokhari, a senior resident fellow at the Middle East Policy Council, a research centre based in Washington, DC, agreed the practical shift is minimal at this stage, calling it “a strategic signal” rather than “an operational alliance,” with any integrated military capacity years away.

A pact year in the making

The trilateral track itself is not new.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, left, embracing Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after signing a joint defence pact in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, September 17, 2025 [Saudi Press Agency via AP Photo]

Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan have run a formal defence-industrial forum since at least 2022, laying the groundwork long before the signing of last year’s bilateral agreement and the escalating regional tensions brought about by the war on Iran.

Sardar Masood Khan, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington and Beijing, said the Saudi-Pakistan pact “was and is a nucleus”, arguing that interest from countries such as Turkiye, Egypt, Qatar and Kuwait followed soon after its signing in September 2025.

“Turkiye is the first to make up its mind,” he said. “This network may expand in the future.”

Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum, said Kuwait and Qatar would be the most plausible candidates, pointing to Kuwait’s own emerging defence ties with Pakistan and Qatar’s longstanding relationship with Turkiye.

“There are real opportunities, particularly with Qatar and Kuwait, to expand this pact, and mutual interests to move in that direction,” she said. “It is a space worth watching closely.”

That reported interest has not emerged in a vacuum. Since October 2023, Israel has struck at least six countries across the region, including a September 2025 strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, its first known attack inside a Gulf state.

And last month, Kuwait ratified a defence pact with Pakistan that was originally signed in 2023.

The endorsed Arabic text, published in the official gazette, sets out 11 areas of cooperation, including training, logistics and intelligence-sharing – none of which resemble a mutual-defence clause. Its ninth article states the pact does not affect either party’s obligations under other international agreements, insulating it from entanglement elsewhere.

Faisal argued the Mecca pact should be read in similar terms for now, while Bokhari said the absence of a named threat in its text was deliberate rather than accidental.

“Everyone involved understands that the agreement is principally aimed at containing Iran and the network of non-state actors it has cultivated across the region, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi Shia militias,” said Bokhari, adding that none of the three signatories is “yet prepared for an overt strategic confrontation with Tehran”.

What each side brings

The signing of the pact comes as Yemen’s Houthi rebels have resumed attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure and oil tankers in the Red Sea, while also threatening a maritime blockade on the kingdom. Saudi Arabia, which supports Yemen’s internationally recognised government, has responded with its own air attacks in Houthi-held areas.

Aziz Alghasian, a Saudi researcher and senior non-resident fellow at the Gulf International Forum, said the Houthi threat to Saudi Arabia was not the pact’s direct cause but its accelerant.

Calling it “Saudi-centric deterrence”, Alghasian said the kingdom has been seeking to develop its own capacity alongside building alliances to help it deter any attacks, instead of simply relying on US security guarantees.

People look at scale replica drones on display at the Baykar exhibit at the SAHA International Defence and Aerospace Expo on May 6, 2026 in Istanbul, Turkiye [Chris McGrath/Getty Images]

Analysts say each side is bringing a different strength to the alliance, with Alghasian pointing to Saudi Arabia’s capital, Pakistan’s nuclear status and manpower, and Turkiye’s fast-growing defence-export industry.

Pakistan’s nuclear-power status has long been floated as its unique contribution to any Gulf pact, but Alghasian said that from a Saudi perspective, it would be a slight exaggeration to see Islamabad as the most valuable signatory.

Turkiye “is a crucial partner for developing Saudi Arabia’s own defence sector capacity, and I think that angle interests the Saudis considerably more than the Pakistan dimension”, he added.

Gokhan Ereli, an international relations expert and an assistant professor at Ibn Haldun University, said what Turkiye acquires by signing the pact is “strategic depth” and a “formalised reach into the Gulf and South Asia that no European alliance was ever going to grant it”.

“Ankara is not trading NATO for Mecca,” added Ereli. “Turkiye is investing in a second insurance policy in a neighbourhood where the first one has stopped paying out reliably.”

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s own room to manoeuvre is shaped partly by dependence for financial assistance.

Days before the summit, the State Bank of Pakistan confirmed Saudi Arabia had rolled more than $5bn in deposits for three more years, part of $8bn currently propping up Pakistan’s external accounts.

The pact also follows a separate nuclear cooperation deal signed by Saudi Arabia and the US last month to establish a civilian nuclear programme in the kingdom, which has long expressed interest in acquiring nuclear technology for civilian use in an effort to diversify from fossil fuels.

Rayed Krimly, Saudi deputy minister for public diplomacy, said in a social media post the Mecca agreement was “not linked to any nuclear ambitions or arms race”.

Faisal, the foreign policy analyst, said such statements reflect real constraints rather than diplomatic caution alone.

“Turkiye does not need a Pakistani nuclear umbrella because it is a NATO member with US nuclear weapons present on Turkish territory, while Saudi Arabia is pursuing civil nuclear cooperation with the US,” he said, adding that Pakistan’s nuclear status “matters only as implicit strategic weight”.

That same ambiguity raises further questions for Islamabad.

Pakistan has spent months positioned as a mediator between the US and Iran – and Bokhari believes that role could be affected following the signing of the pact.

“Its credibility as a mediator will inevitably be diminished, but not eliminated,” he said.

Nuclear-capable missile Ghauri is driven past with its launcher during Pakistan National Day parade in Islamabad March 23, 2007 [File: Mian Khursheed/Reuters]

Faisal was less pessimistic, noting Pakistan’s mediation “is also a team-effort” with Qatar.

Alghasian, the Saudi analyst, argued Pakistan’s presence was an intentional choice designed to blunt any criticism.

“When you have a mediator inside a trilateral defence arrangement, it becomes very difficult to credibly characterise it as anti-Iran,” he said. “I think it was a deliberate and shrewd decision to have Pakistan at the table. That is what gives this pact its diplomatic insulation.”

Thafer, on the other hand, said the deterrence logic works precisely because Pakistan and Turkiye border Iran directly, raising “the stakes considerably should Iran contemplate any direct action against Saudi Arabia”.

Ereli said Turkiye, too, has more incentive than its partners to keep Tehran engaged rather than alarmed.

“Ankara’s task, as ever, is to deter without provoking,” he said, “and it is a balance Turkiye has more incentive than anyone in this bloc to keep.”

Iran’s response

Tehran’s first public reaction came from its parliament.

Ebrahim Rezaei, a member of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, wrote in a social media post that “a paper agreement with Turkiye and Pakistan” will not bring Saudi Arabia security, “just as years of one-sided dependence on the Americans did not bring them security”.

Alghasian said the “dismissive” tone of Iran’s response was “predictable … that kind of posture is what we have come to expect.”

Reza Khanzadeh, a Middle East analyst at George Mason University, said the muted, parliamentary-level response may not hold, and that Iran is likely to pursue diplomacy and deterrence at once rather than choose between them.

“Tehran will probably not treat this as merely three bilateral relationships formalised at the same time,” he said, warning the collective-defence clause changes how separate relationships function.

Khanzadeh expects Pakistan to be Iran’s first diplomatic priority given the shared border and Islamabad’s mediating role, with Tehran likely to seek assurances on troop deployments and any nuclear implications for Saudi security.

But he also pointed to uncertainty within Iran’s own leadership.

“[Supreme Leader] Mojtaba Khamenei has yet to make a public appearance, further questioning who is the real final decision maker within the regime, which then leaves room for even the smallest of groups to raise their opposition and concern to such a pact,” he argued.