The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement
Middle Powers and the Remaking of Regional Security
“Any armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all.“
That sentence has generated more commentary than almost any diplomatic development in the region in recent years, and for good reason. The agreement connects three of the most consequential Muslim-majority states, spanning the Gulf, the eastern Mediterranean, and South Asia, into a formal security arrangement at a moment when the regional order is visibly fragmenting. Whether it represents a durable shift in how security is organised in the Middle East, or a political signal whose institutional foundations remain to be built, is a question that cannot yet be answered. What can be assessed is what the agreement is, what produced it, and what it changes.
The road to Makkah
The events that led to the trilateral agreement.
Decades before the treaty
A bilateral relationship already in place
Pakistani forces trained Saudi personnel, provided military advisory support, and maintained a sustained troop presence in the kingdom, long before any formal pact existed.
September 2025
The Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan sign at Al-Yamamah Palace, committing to collective defence and giving legal form to cooperation that had already been operational for years.
2023
Turkey’s parallel track
Ankara and Islamabad exchange warships and training aircraft. Saudi Arabia places what Turkish officials call their largest-ever defence export order, for Turkish-made drones.
Convergence
Two tracks moving toward each other
The trilateral agreement does not begin a relationship. It merges two bilateral ones that were already drawing closer.
28 February 2026
The United States and Israel strike Iran
The consequences are immediate and severe for the Gulf states that had no part in initiating the confrontation.
The retaliation
Over 700 missiles and drones
Iran strikes Saudi infrastructure and Gulf targets, and closes the Strait of Hormuz, choking energy exports and triggering a global economic crisis.
Under fire
A guarantee that could not be kept in real time
Saudi air defences absorb much of the attack. Washington, fighting its own war, cannot guarantee the protection of its partners as the missiles are still in the air.
The conclusion
A single guarantor is a vulnerability
Riyadh draws the obvious lesson from the war: dependence on one external protector, however capable, is a strategic risk the kingdom will not carry alone again.
What the Three Countries Bring and What They Want
The three signatories enter the agreement with different capabilities and different motivations. Their convergence does not require identical threat perceptions. It requires sufficient common ground, and on the central question of regional security diversification, that ground exists.
The combination is what analysts have described as asymmetric complementarity: the ability to pool different strengths without requiring identical interests or complete strategic alignment. Saudi capital, Turkish technology, and Pakistani military depth form a triangle whose parts reinforce each other in ways that no bilateral arrangement among the three could replicate.
What the Agreement Actually Says and Does Not Say
The full text of the Makkah agreement has not been publicly released. What exists is the joint statement, the official Saudi Press Agency release, and subsequent statements by officials from all three governments. Working from those sources, several things can be said with confidence, and several others cannot.
The agreement establishes a collective defence commitment modelled on the principle that an attack against one is an attack against all. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan described this commitment as technically comparable to NATO’s Article 5. That comparison has dominated coverage of the agreement, and it requires care. NATO’s Article 5 sits inside seventy-five years of integrated command structures, standing forces, joint exercises, codified planning, and institutionalised intelligence sharing. The Makkah agreement has none of that. Fidan himself clarified that a state under attack would first have to request assistance and specify what kind of help it required, whether intelligence, logistics, or troops. Each signatory retains political discretion over the timing, nature, and extent of any assistance provided.
The agreement is a cooperation framework with collective defence language, not a military alliance with automatic and binding operational commitments.
The nuclear question has generated the most speculation. Pakistan’s Defence Minister initially suggested that nuclear capabilities would be available under the pact before walking back that position within days. No signatory has publicly addressed the question since. Nothing in the available text commits Pakistan to extending a nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia or Turkey, and Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine has been developed specifically within a South Asian deterrence framework centred on India. Extending deterrence beyond that framework would be a consequential doctrinal shift for which there is no public evidence. What is true is that Pakistan’s nuclear status is not irrelevant to the agreement’s deterrent value. A potential adversary contemplating aggression against one of the three signatories must factor in, however uncertainly, the presence of a nuclear-armed state within the alliance. That uncertainty is itself a strategic effect, even in the absence of any explicit guarantee.
Egypt’s absence from the agreement illuminates its current limits. Cairo participated in the quadrilateral consultations that preceded the signing and had been discussed as a potential founding member. It did not sign. Egypt maintains a peace treaty with Israel, receives substantial annual military assistance from the United States, has consistently avoided formal military blocs, and views its primary security role as that of a regional mediator. Joining an arrangement whose members include states in active tension with Israel and Iran would have complicated that role substantially. Turkey’s foreign minister suggested Egypt would join at a later stage once technical issues were resolved. Cairo’s own foreign minister said the matter required deep study in light of Egypt’s constitution and legal commitments. The more accurate reading is that Egypt is watching how the agreement performs under pressure before attaching its name to commitments whose practical obligations remain undefined.
Regional Implications
Click a highlighted country to read its reaction
Iran
Iran’s public response was dismissive. A senior member of its parliamentary national security committee wrote that a paper agreement with Turkey and Pakistan would do no more for Saudi security than decades of American guarantees had. The Iranian foreign minister posted a message emphasising Iran’s military readiness while simultaneously calling for Muslim unity. The tone was composed. The Iranian security establishment’s simultaneous actions were less so. In the same week the agreement was signed, the supreme leader appointed new military commanders and folded the general staff into a wartime joint command. The operational logic of a state that views itself as genuinely unconcerned does not include reorganising its command architecture in response.
From Political Signal to Security Institution
The gap between what the Makkah agreement currently is and what it would need to become to deliver durable security effects is substantial. Collective deterrence and collective defence are related but distinct.
What the agreement has
Collective deterrence
A strategic effect: it functions when a potential adversary concludes that aggression against one member could engage the capabilities of the others.
What it is missing
Collective defence
An institutional commitment: it requires mechanisms for intelligence sharing, joint exercises, operational planning, agreed doctrine, and crisis communication.
The institutional track record
Turkey’s foreign minister has mentioned plans for a ministerial committee and a permanent secretariat based in Saudi Arabia. Whether those structures are built, and at what pace, will determine whether the agreement becomes a functioning institution or a political declaration whose deterrent value gradually fades. The experience of previous regional defence arrangements is not encouraging.
Arab League Joint Defence and Economic Cooperation Treaty
Failed to deliver when tested.
GCC Joint Defence Agreement
Failed to deliver when tested.
Pakistan–Saudi bilateral defence pact
Pakistan did not respond militarily when Iran attacked Saudi Arabia in the early months of the war, despite the pact already being in force.
The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement is consequential not primarily for what it commits its members to do, but for what it represents. Three major Muslim-majority states have constructed a regional security arrangement on their own terms, driven by their own threat perceptions, without external sponsorship. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan are not abandoning their existing relationships with the United States, NATO, or other partners. They are adding a layer of security that those relationships have not reliably provided. That is a meaningful development in how regional security is being conceived and organised. The agreement’s long-term significance will be decided by what its signatories build next. A permanent secretariat and a ministerial committee are a beginning. What the arrangement requires, if it is to become more than a statement of intent, is the institutional fabric that transforms political solidarity into operational capability: joint exercises, shared intelligence architecture, agreed contingency planning, and the political cohesion to activate those mechanisms when one member faces a crisis the others might prefer to avoid. None of that is guaranteed. The test, as one analyst observed, is not whether the three countries will fight together. It is whether they can develop enough institutional credibility that they do not have to.