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Karachi

Promise and Perils

It’s time to share power with the peripheries and let the core learn to live with changing realities of statecraft

By Ambassador M. Alam Brohi | September 2026

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Türkiye signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, a trilateral mutual-defence accord, in the holy city of Makkah on 7 August 2026. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the agreement alongside Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The agreement is also referred to as the Makkah Accord. Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has described it as a purely defensive pact, saying that it is not directed against any country. He has also said that the agreement remains open to other regional countries that support its principles.

However, the signing of a mutual defence agreement by three important countries of the wider Middle East – at a time when the region is faced with a devastating war imposed on another important Muslim country, Iran, by the USA and Israel – is bound to raise strategic concerns in many countries within the region and beyond. For different reasons, these may include the Gulf States, Iran, the USA, Israel, India, China, and Russia, among possibly others. The Accord will certainly give impetus to India’s political and diplomatic hostility towards Pakistan.

Pakistan is upbeat about this diplomatic achievement for obvious reasons. First, it has bolstered its political influence, diplomatic stature, and strategic clout in the Middle East at a time when the political and strategic dynamics in the region are undergoing far-reaching changes. Second, its closer alignment with the most influential state in the Gulf region – Saudi Arabia – will bring added economic and strategic benefits. Third, the partners in the trilateral Accord have implicitly recognised Pakistan as a significant security provider in the region.

Pakistan signed a similar bilateral defence pact with the Saudi Kingdom last year. The expansion of this bilateral agreement to include Türkiye has changed its nature, scope, and complexion, from a bilateral understanding to a multilateral defence accord, particularly as it remains, in the words of our Foreign Minister, open to other countries of the region. The door has been left ajar for any other interested country to join, underscoring its non-aggressive character. This has placed it on the path towards a multilateral alliance for collective defence and security, a step in the right direction towards a worthy cause. Such a move may help ease regional tensions and mitigate rivalries among regional leaders.

While the pact, as already elaborated, enhances Pakistan’s strategic position as a net security provider – bolstering its political, strategic, and diplomatic clout – it also brings in its wake numerous strategic challenges. These relate to balancing its bilateral relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, other Gulf States, and Iran, given the existing diplomatic divergences, political and strategic antagonisms, economic competitions, and leadership rivalries among them.

Pakistan was probably looking for such a strategic alignment in view of its internal political polarisation, economic predicament, and escalating tensions with India and Afghanistan. However, we should be cautious about pinning overly euphoric hopes on the trilateral agreement. Will it deter India from destabilising Pakistan or heating up the border? I doubt it. We may secure loan rescheduling or additional economic assistance from our Arab brothers. But such assistance can provide only temporary relief; it cannot transform our economic position unless we undertake the long-overdue structural reforms needed to place the economy on a sustainable footing.

Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s assertion notwithstanding, countries like Iran, Israel, the UAE, India, and the USA will certainly be looking askance at the motives of the signatory states. Inter-state conduct is always subjected to thorough scrutiny in order to discern the real motives behind any diplomatic move. Diplomats are among the most watched people in their host countries; their movements and contacts with local opinion-makers are closely restrained. The axiom followed by diplomats is this: read between the lines, carefully observe the body language of your interlocutor, use your skills of face-reading, and draw your conclusions.

Iran’s low-key reaction to the Makkah Accord, as conveyed by the spokesman of its Foreign Ministry, notwithstanding, the event has not aroused a positive public reaction in the country. One Iranian politician commented tauntingly, warning the Saudis that a paper agreement with Pakistan and Türkiye would not bring them security – just as years of one-sided milking by the Americans did not. The Iranian leadership’s formal reaction, though low-key so far, has been pragmatic and wise, aimed at avoiding any new controversy involving friendly countries like Pakistan and Türkiye.

Iran has shown caution while commenting on the agreement, saying that it “did not regard the agreement as an immediate threat.” Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei claimed that the pact “reflected a changing regional perception of the US,” underscoring that regional countries could no longer rely on Washington for their security in the manner they had in the past. He further asserted that Tehran “had no reason to believe that the agreement was directed against Iran,” pointing to the deep religious, historical, and civilisational ties between Iran and the three signatories.

The phrase ‘immediate threat’ in his first statement significantly reflects Iran’s concerns about the pact. While he takes a cautious and pragmatic stance, Iranian leaders will continue to view the pact with suspicion – especially given that it has been signed in the immediate context of the Houthis’ active involvement in disrupting maritime traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb strait, between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. However, Iran will avoid confronting the signatory states and becoming unwisely embroiled in any new antagonism.


Also viewed from the historical perspective of Saudi–Iran rivalry in the Gulf region, and given the current fluid and dangerous situation, the Iranian leadership will certainly consider the accord as being against their national strategic interests – restraining their space for manoeuvrability, particularly when they are facing, as they claim, an existential threat from the USA and Israel, who are using the land and airspace of the Gulf States for attacks on their country.

We may secure loan rescheduling or additional economic assistance from our Arab brothers, but such assistance can provide only temporary relief

The signatory states of the trilateral pact are close allies of the USA. Türkiye has close bilateral relations with Washington, D.C. It has also recognised Israel and maintains a full-fledged diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv, headed by a resident ambassador. Türkiye has consistently supported the Palestinian cause and, at times, has remained at loggerheads with Israel on the questions of the two-state solution, the occupied Arab lands, Jerusalem, and Gaza.

The USA has enjoyed extensive bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia, reset in an exclusive meeting between US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal in 1945. Since the recalibration of its relations with Washington after the brief air skirmishes with India in May 2025, Pakistan has also been in the good books of President Donald Trump. Keeping all this in view, many countries are incredulous that the trilateral agreement was negotiated and finalised without the tacit approval of US leadership. This conclusion has some appeal if the entire situation is reviewed in the context of the ongoing war and the growing sense of insecurity gripping US allies – particularly Saudi Arabia – in the face of Iran’s recent robust retaliatory attacks.

Therefore, many countries believe that the trilateral pact will shore up the US security architecture in the Gulf region and give it a free hand to deal with Iran. It could also serve as a countervailing force against Iran, which may emerge triumphant from the war with renewed strategic power, in order to prevent it from disturbing the strategic equilibrium in the region and further eroding the political and strategic interests of the USA and Israel.

Some countries examine the trilateral agreement from another angle – one that is prejudicial to the American standing in the Gulf region. The pact, they assert, manifestly represents a growing erosion of confidence in the security umbrella that the USA has been providing over the years, from the Cold War to the Arab–Israeli wars, the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and the Arab Spring in the Middle East. This current war has revealed many weaknesses of the USA, despite its status as the most powerful country. How, then, can the wealthy Arab states rely on a superpower for their collective defence through its military bases, when the ongoing war with a far weaker and smaller country has brought it to the end of its tether?

This gripping sense of insecurity has triggered a frantic search for a new security provider. Within the region, two countries – Türkiye, with its developed military industry, technological advancement, large economy, and army, and Pakistan, with its large, disciplined, war-hardened armed forces and nuclear deterrence – could have provided the required level of collective defence and an effective countervailing force in the event of aggressive posturing by Iran. Saudi Arabia’s accumulated wealth will sustain this strategic move.

All these speculations could be fundamentally altered if Iran were to join the trilateral agreement. Its accession would transform the pact into a much broader multilateral security arrangement and could potentially give it the complexion of an anti-Israel strategic alliance—much to the chagrin of the United States. This, however, would not mean that Washington would withdraw from the region and leave the arena open to its rivals. On the contrary, the United States would be likely to further strengthen Israel as a strategic power and reinforce its own regional partnerships.

China and Russia, for their part, would have strong incentives to prevent any further erosion of their strategic influence in the region and to ensure that Iran is not excluded from emerging arrangements for regional security and collective defence. Russia has maintained close strategic ties with Iran, while China played an important diplomatic role in facilitating the restoration of Saudi-Iranian relations in 2023. Both countries have opposed U.S. pressure on Iran and are likely to remain important diplomatic and strategic partners for Tehran. The regional strategic picture, however, remains fluid. The chessboard is likely to become considerably clearer in the coming months.

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