The Gulf stops waiting for Washington 

The mutual defense pact signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan sent several signals at once. It aligned three of the most influential powers in the Muslim world, took its name from Islam’s holiest city, and was concluded at a venue overlooking the Kaaba. The choice of Makkah carries its own weight across the Muslim world. 

The bloc brings together nuclear capability, military strength, defense industry and money among states that already share ideological influence, leadership ambitions and a set of contemporary grievances. 

The three pledged that an armed attack on any one of them will be regarded as an attack on them all, a clause that mirrors NATO’s Article 5. 

Their commitment to a collective defense framework is a strategic gambit with far-reaching diplomatic consequences, and signals a possible shift in the region’s security architecture against the backdrop of the ongoing US-Iran war. 

The composition is unusual, with Turkiye and Pakistan as non-Arab members of a Gulf-centered pact. Each brings different capabilities. Saudi Arabia brings economic weight and regional influence. 

The pact supplements rather than replaces the American security umbrella, at least for now. 

Owais Tohid

Turkiye, which fields NATO’s second-largest military, adds a proven domestic defense industry in drones, missiles and naval platforms. Pakistan, the only nuclear-armed Muslim state, brings long experience in integrating conventional and asymmetric warfare doctrines, and a highly trained officer corps. 

The pact comes as the wider Gulf is embroiled in war, Israel’s continuing aggression and Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners’ oil installations, while the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to commercial shipping. 

Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have attacked Saudi interests and disrupted shipping in the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, while Iraqi Shiite militias have struck Saudi oil and energy installations. 

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners have shown restraint, but now see a need to diversify their security dependence. The pact is the result. 

The US has struggled to contain the upheaval. Its protracted stalemate with Iran has fed a global energy crisis and exposed its inability to secure its oil-rich Gulf allies, deepening doubts about Washington as a reliable security guarantor in the region. 

The US has long underpinned the region’s defense through a network of more than a dozen military bases, effectively financed by hundreds of billions of dollars in investment from the oil-rich Gulf states. The pact, however, supplements rather than replaces the American security umbrella, at least for now. 

In essence, the agreement formalizes trilateral defense cooperation and a wider diplomatic alignment built on collective deterrence. 

This shifting security architecture is the first major sign of a redrawn geopolitical map in West Asia. The first clear fracture in America’s security umbrella emerged last September, when Israel struck members of the Hamas negotiating team in Doha, a key US ally. 

Eight days later, Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. Pakistan subsequently deployed thousands of troops, fighter jets, drones and an air defense system to the Kingdom, according to reports at the time. 

Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani officials have framed the new pact as a defensive alliance, stressing that it is not intended to establish a military axis or a sectarian bloc. They maintain that it is not directed against any country, including Iran, and is not linked to any nuclear arrangement or arms race. They say Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella does not implicitly extend to it. 

The pact also does not abrogate or replace existing agreements, including the Pakistan-Saudi mutual defense pact. Nor does it disturb Riyadh’s arrangements with Washington: the two signed a landmark civil nuclear cooperation agreement in July. 

 The alliance is likely to expand. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has indicated that Egypt is expected to join once outstanding technical issues are resolved. 

Pooling the capabilities of three influential Muslim states, the alliance has the potential to establish trans-regional deterrence stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Red Sea. 

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir are the central figures behind the alliance, along with other regional leaders. 

Many observers view the pact as a strategic shield against Israel’s expansionist designs and a counterweight to Iran’s continued attacks on Gulf countries, widely seen as an attempt to extend Tehran’s regional hegemony. 

Turkiye and Israel have sparred over Gaza, with senior Israeli figures labeling Ankara a new threat in West Asia and likening it to Iran. Israel views Turkiye and Pakistan, two Muslim nations with powerful militaries, as the main obstacles to its vision of a Greater Israel. Both share Saudi Arabia’s concerns over Israel’s revisionist ambitions. 

The pact adds a layer of security against aggression from Iran and its proxies, including the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq. Iran can neither expel the US militarily nor continue testing red lines with impunity in the Gulf, and the window for bargaining is narrowing with the formation of the alliance. 

Beyond their military strength, Turkiye and Pakistan’s history as diplomatic intermediaries for Iran makes their alignment with Riyadh particularly consequential. 

Doha is understood to agree in principle with the alliance’s concept and scope. Since Iran’s path to a peace deal has historically run through Pakistani, Turkish and Qatari intermediaries, its diplomatic options are likely to narrow. With the visible negotiation track now running directly through alliance members and their supporters, Iran is likely to face pressure to concede on its proxy networks and maritime posture if it wants a deal. 

Within a day of the signing, hard-liners on Iran’s Supreme National Security Council restated their maximalist position and issued a set of core demands Washington must meet before the Strait of Hormuz reopens. Pragmatists have taken a different line. President Masoud Pezeshkian has said he believes now is the best moment to reach an agreement with the US. 

Ultimately, whether Iran chooses continued aggression through a prolonged war or accepts a peace deal involving a managed retreat will be settled by its internal politics before it becomes visible in the Strait of Hormuz or the wider Gulf. 

The US, which started the war, now faces a dilemma: how to repair geostrategic interests jolted across the Arab world while finding a graceful exit. Trump cannot win militarily without paying a political price, with the midterms looming. CNN, citing a source, has reported that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, has said the US needs an off-ramp from the war because the military options on the table could backfire. 

The three members of the pact are all US allies and would prefer a quick deal between Washington and Tehran. But they also know there is no going back, and that whatever peace comes will operate under a new normal. In that new normal, they are asserting themselves as a combined strategic partner. 

Owais Tohid is a veteran journalist and analyst with expertise on South Asia and the Middle East.  He has reported on war and conflict in Asia for 30 years, witnessed the rise and fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, covered the US-Israel war with Iran and the Palestinian conflict in the Occupied Territories. He has worked for BBC World Service, VOA, AFP, and has headed several Pakistani TV stations.  X: @OwaisTohid