The Saudi Arabia-Türkiye-Pakistan agreement should not be confused with a “Muslim NATO”. Its deeper significance lies in the search for a regional security order at a moment when old guarantees have become uncertain, economic infrastructure has entered the battlefield and middle powers are acquiring influence once reserved for great powers.
The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement should be read between two dates. On June 17, 2026, the United States and Iran accepted an interim arrangement intended to provide 60 days for turning a fragile cessation of hostilities into something more durable. On August 7, 2026, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed their mutual-defence accord in Makkah.
On August 17, 2026, the 60-day window expired without a final settlement; Washington ruled out simply extending the arrangement while Tehran warned of a more offensive posture. The coincidence captures the strategic environment in which the Makkah pact has emerged: regional states are no longer willing to assume that somebody else will restore order when deterrence fails. Reuters and Chatham House have documented the fragility of the process.
The agreement, signed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, declares that an armed attack on one will be regarded as an attack on all three. The public statement did not specify the military response automatically required from each signatory. Subsequent Turkish explanations have outlined political and military coordination, joint exercises across several domains, cooperation in air defence, unmanned systems, electronic warfare and artificial intelligence, and greater defence-industrial collaboration. The institutional skeleton is beginning to appear, although much of the operational anatomy remains undisclosed. Reuters’ original account is important precisely because it separates the sweeping political commitment from the details still to be worked out.
Calling this a “Muslim NATO” makes for an attractive headline but poor strategic analysis. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has compared the collective-defence principle to NATO’s Article 5. Even Article 5, however, does not mechanically require every ally to declare war.
The pact obliges each member to assist the attacked state through “such action as it deems necessary”, which may include armed force. NATO’s power derives from three quarters of a century of integrated planning, command structures, interoperability, intelligence systems, standardisation and political consultation not from one sentence in the Washington Treaty. The Makkah pact has borrowed the principle of collective deterrence; it has not reproduced NATO’s institutional architecture. NATO itself explains this distinction. This distinction becomes more important after President Donald Trump’s reported welcome of the agreement as a significant step towards the three states assuming greater responsibility for their security. At first sight, American approval of a new regional defence arrangement appears paradoxical. It is entirely compatible with the current Washington doctrine.
The White House’s own description of “NATO 3.0” stresses burden-sharing and greater conventional responsibility for allies. Washington also signed a Strategic Defense Agreement with Riyadh in November 2025 while reaffirming the United States as Saudi Arabia’s primary strategic partner. The Makkah accord therefore represents strategic autonomy without strategic divorce. Riyadh is adding insurance policies rather than cancelling the American one.
Saudi Arabia’s calculations are more geoeconomic than ideological. The kingdom’s overriding project is economic transformation. Vision 2030 requires functioning ports, reliable energy exports, secure aviation routes, uninterrupted investment and confidence that industrial and urban infrastructure will not periodically become collateral damage in somebody else’s war. The conflict with Iran has demonstrated how quickly oil installations, shipping lanes, airports and even desalination infrastructure can become strategic targets. Carnegie scholars have rightly observed that the Gulf’s development model itself has become part of the security equation. Saudi defence policy consequently cannot be separated from protection of capital accumulation and economic diversification. (Carnegie).
Riyadh also confronts an uncomfortable lesson from the 2026 war. An American security relationship remains enormously valuable, but hosting American forces and possessing expensive Western weapons do not guarantee insulation from conflict generated by decisions over which Gulf governments exercise little control.
Marwan Muasher, vice president for studies at Carnegie, has described the Iran war as exposing weaknesses in the old U.S.-Gulf relationship; Andrew Leber, a nonresident scholar in the Carnegie Middle East Programme, similarly argues that fragile Gulf economic models now demand stronger collective security. The Makkah agreement is one response to this problem: increasing Saudi agency without abandoning Washington.
Türkiye arrives from a different strategic direction. Ankara seeks room for manoeuvre inside, rather than outside, the Western alliance system. Aslı Aydıntaşbaş’s important Brookings study, “Turkey’s search for a Middle East order”, describes a state attempting to manage regional disorder while retaining NATO membership and developing greater strategic autonomy. She is a fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution and the director of The Turkey Project. She is also a senior associate fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
Türkiye brings to Makkah a rapidly expanding defence industry, especially drones, naval platforms and increasingly sophisticated electronics. Saudi capital and procurement demand give Ankara markets and scale. Pakistan adds established military cooperation, training and another defence-production network. What emerges is potentially more consequential than ceremonial collective defence: an industrial-security partnership spanning the eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea, Gulf and Arabian Sea.
Pakistan brings something different again. Its conventional forces, nuclear status and longstanding Saudi military relationship are obvious assets. Its less appreciated asset is diplomatic access. Asfandyar Mir’s provocative Foreign Affairs essay, “Pakistan Won the War in Iran”, identified a shift in the distribution of diplomatic influence: states lacking traditional great-power credentials can become indispensable when they retain channels to antagonists that major powers cannot themselves connect. Pakistan’s role in mediation between Washington and Tehran showed that strategic relevance could arise from being a bridge rather than an appendage of one camp.
That is precisely why Pakistan should resist interpretations of the Makkah agreement that turn it into the military spearhead of a new bloc. Islamabad’s greatest value lies in simultaneously maintaining consequential relationships with China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Iran and the wider Gulf. Its geography can be an asset only when balanced diplomacy prevents geography from becoming a trap.
The Foreign Office’s repeated insistence throughout the Iran crisis that dialogue and diplomacy remain indispensable was not ceremonial language; it reflected a basic Pakistani interest. President Erdogan’s conduct on August 17, 2026 reinforces the point. While supporting the Makkah pact, he urged Trump to resume diplomacy with Iran and offered Turkish assistance in negotiations. A genuinely defensive arrangement should make that combination possible: stronger deterrence alongside continued communication with Tehran.
Converting the pact into a Sunni-Shia confrontation would be disastrous for Pakistan, strategically damaging for Türkiye and contrary to Saudi Arabia’s own interest in preventing another prolonged war.
The nuclear question requires exceptional care. Pakistan’s presence inevitably gives the accord a nuclear shadow, particularly after the bilateral Saudi-Pakistan defence agreement of 2025 generated speculation about extended deterrence. The public Makkah agreement contains no disclosed nuclear guarantee. Saudi officials have specifically denied that it represents a nuclear axis or arms race, while Pakistani officials previously said nuclear weapons were “not on the radar” in implementing the bilateral Saudi pact. The distinction between strategic ambiguity and an actual nuclear commitment should not be erased. The wider nuclear environment nevertheless makes ambiguity more sensitive. Washington and Riyadh signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement in July 2026 whose treatment of Saudi uranium enrichment has generated an intense non-proliferation debate.
The Council on Foreign Relations and other specialists have questioned whether the arrangement weakens safeguards traditionally demanded in comparable agreements. The nuclear issue surrounding Makkah therefore comes largely from the regional environment rather than the text of the trilateral pact itself. (CFR analysis). India will naturally examine the accord through the prism of its rivalry with Pakistan. Islamabad would make a serious mistake by doing the same in reverse. Saudi Arabia has simultaneously deepened defence cooperation with India, including training, maritime collaboration, military exercises and defence-industrial engagement under the bilateral Strategic Partnership Council.
Riyadh’s interests with New Delhi are too substantial for the Makkah agreement sensibly to become an extension of Pakistan’s India policy. Its strategic value for Pakistan lies elsewhere: widening diplomatic relevance, improving defence-industrial opportunities and giving Islamabad a greater role in shaping the regional order. Israel presents another complexity. The regional anxiety that produced the agreement cannot be understood solely through Iran. Israeli military reach and the perception among several regional governments that Washington cannot always restrain Israeli action also form part of the background.
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) had already identified the possibility of Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan and Egypt coordinating more closely as the regional balance changed. The Makkah signatories have wisely avoided identifying Israel or Iran as the pact’s named enemy. Preserving that ambiguity is strategically preferable to converting a defensive arrangement into an ideological front.
Geoeconomics may ultimately determine whether Makkah acquires real substance. The three states possess unusually complementary assets: Saudi financial power and energy centrality; Turkish defence technology and manufacturing; Pakistani manpower, military experience and an expanding production base. Joint procurement and production can reduce costs, diversify suppliers and build technological interdependence. Cooperation in drones, electronic warfare, artificial intelligence, air defence and maritime security could be more significant over a decade than dramatic declarations about collective retaliation. Different weapons ecosystems, American in Saudi Arabia, NATO and indigenous systems in Türkiye, and a large Chinese component in Pakistan will also make interoperability technically and politically demanding.
Here Constitutional Political Economy enters a field too often left entirely to strategic studies. A mutual-defence commitment is also a contingent fiscal liability. Someone must pay for interoperability, stockpiles, exercises, basing, logistics, intelligence networks and joint production.
Someone must decide when an “attack” has occurred. Does the obligation cover missile strikes by non-state actors, cyberattacks, attacks on commercial shipping, blockades of energy routes or only conventional assaults upon sovereign territory? Who authorises the Pakistani, Turkish or Saudi military response? What role belongs to legislatures? How are procurement contracts scrutinised? Strategic credibility eventually depends upon institutions, budgets and political legitimacy.
The collapse of the 60-day Iran process makes these questions urgent. Tehran retains the capacity to threaten Hormuz and impose economic costs far beyond the battlefield. Chatham House warned even before the present breakdown that any reopening of the Strait would leave the underlying deterrence problem unresolved.
The answer cannot be permanent war around the world’s most consequential energy arteries. It must combine credible defence with a regional diplomatic architecture capable of preventing every crisis from becoming a test of alliance credibility. Expansion should therefore come later, not first. Egypt may eventually join; other states could follow. A larger membership would carry symbolic weight but could also multiply conflicting interests before mechanisms for consultation and response have been tested.
The history of Middle Eastern alignments is littered with impressive announcements that could not survive changing threat perceptions. IISS made this point even before the Makkah agreement was concluded, recalling how rapidly earlier regional groupings lost coherence.
The Makkah pact is consequential precisely because it reflects something larger than its three signatories do. The international order is moving away from neat alliance blocs towards overlapping networks in which middle powers hedge, bargain and cooperate across old geopolitical lines. Lynn Kuok’s Foreign Affairs analysis of American coercion in Asia makes the wider point: states pressured to make exclusive choices increasingly seek space between great powers rather than permanent alignment with one against another. Makkah belongs to this world of flexible minilateralism.
Geoeconomics may ultimately determine whether Makkah acquires real substance. The three states possess unusually complementary assets: Saudi financial power and energy centrality, Turkish defence technology and manufacturing, Pakistani manpower, military experience and an expanding production base.
Its success should therefore not be measured by whether it becomes NATO. That would be the wrong ambition. A useful Makkah framework would deter attacks, integrate selected military capabilities, secure maritime and energy infrastructure, expand defence-industrial cooperation and strengthen the diplomatic bargaining power of its members while leaving room for engagement with Iran, India, China, the United States and other regional actors.
For Pakistan, this distinction is crucial. Its recent diplomatic gains have come from being difficult to place in a single geopolitical box. Becoming indispensable is more valuable than becoming predictable. External activism, however, cannot substitute for internal economic strength, political stability and security. No state can indefinitely project strategic relevance abroad while carrying serious fiscal vulnerabilities and confronting terrorism at home.
Saudi Arabia seeks security for economic transformation. Türkiye seeks greater autonomy without leaving NATO. Pakistan seeks strategic space and international relevance without sacrificing its multiple relationships. Their interests overlap, but they are not identical. That may prove an advantage: alliances constructed around one permanent enemy frequently become prisoners of that enemy; arrangements built around shared resilience can survive changes in threat perception. Makkah Accord thus represents neither the arrival of a “Muslim NATO” nor the end of American primacy in the region. It is an experiment in regionalised deterrence in a post-monopoly security order.
Its promise lies in turning vulnerability into cooperation. Its danger lies in allowing rhetoric to outrun capability or military commitments to outrun political judgment. The real achievement will come if three states with different alliances, economic structures and strategic anxieties can demonstrate that greater defence capacity need not produce greater appetite for war. In the present Middle East, where the 60-day diplomatic clock has run out and the Strait of Hormuz remains a weapon as much as a waterway, that would be a strategic contribution of considerable consequence.