Can ‘Islamic NATO’ reign in both Israel and Iran?

The Mecca pact links Riyadh, Ankara, and Islamabad in a new security framework that could reshape regional deterrence The signing of the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan may eventually be remembered as one of the more consequential geopolitical developments to emerge from the current Middle Eastern crisis. Signed in Mecca by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the agreement establishes a remarkably clear principle of collective defense, under which an armed attack against any one of the three states is to be regarded as an attack against all. The parties have not yet disclosed how this commitment would operate in practice, what level of military assistance it would automatically trigger, or whether common command and planning mechanisms will eventually follow, but these uncertainties do little to diminish the political significance of the arrangement. For the first time, three of the most influential states of the broader Muslim world have formally connected their national security in a framework that potentially combines Saudi financial and political weight, Turkish military-industrial power, and Pakistan’s enormous armed forces and nuclear status. Officials from the three countries have been careful to avoid portraying the agreement as the birth of an aggressive military bloc. Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz stressed that it was not directed against any particular country, while Turkish officials described the pact as purely defensive and underlined that it did not cancel Ankara’s existing obligations to other partners. Saudi Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy Rayed Krimly went even further, rejecting the idea that Mecca represented either a sectarian military axis or the beginning of a nuclear arms race. Such statements are understandable, particularly at a moment when the region is already struggling with a war involving Iran, Israel, and the United States, yet the significance of the agreement lies less in what its signatories formally say it is directed against than in the profound transformation of the security environment that made such a treaty necessary in the first place.

Read more Have Pakistan, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia just launched an ‘Islamic NATO’? The end of exclusive reliance on Washington There is little surprise about the emergence of this alliance. The military confrontation that followed the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28 changed not only the balance of military power in the Middle East but, importantly, the perception of security among America’s traditional partners. Iranian missiles striking Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, attacks threatening regional infrastructure, and the blockade of energy shipments exposed a basic weakness in the security model on which much of the Gulf had relied for decades. Enormous purchases of American weapons, the presence of US military bases, and long-standing political alignment with Washington had been treated almost as an insurance policy against precisely this sort of strategic vulnerability, yet when the region descended into a wider confrontation, membership in the American security system did not prevent Gulf countries from becoming direct targets or protect their economies from the consequences. This does not mean that Riyadh is preparing to abandon Washington, nor does Turkish participation in the agreement imply an attempt to replace NATO. What is changing is the belief that one external security guarantor can remain sufficient in an increasingly unpredictable international system. The Mecca agreement represents less a break with the US than a hedge against excessive dependence upon it, and in that sense it forms part of a broader process of strategic 'sovereignization' in which regional states are trying to diversify their defense relationships, strengthen