An untested promise

The Houthis rejected the charge within hours. The spokesperson for their military wing declared that the real targets of the group were oil installations and military sites of Saudi Arabia “far from the holy places.”

The denial came even as the group’s position has hardened on the ground: The Houthis have in recent days swept down Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including the port city of Mokha, and seized islands overlooking the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes and a chokepoint. Saudi cities like Abha and Yanbu, along with Aramco’s (Saudi’s biggest oil company) facilities, have come under Houthi attack. They have vowed not to let any Saudi oil pass through the strait.

Six weeks earlier on August 7, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan had stood in that same city and signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement; a main clause of the agreement said that an attack on one of them will be considered an attack on all three — the idea behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (Nato’s) Article 5.

The signing was celebrated across all three capitals, with landmarks in Istanbul, Islamabad and Riyadh lit up in the colours of the Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani flags. However, recent attacks on Saudi Arabia’s southern cities and oil infrastructure have put the kingdom in a precarious position, one where the pact’s central promise is being tested only weeks after it was made.

That immediacy is what makes the pact worth examining.

“My own sense is that they [the signatories] recognise the fact that they are at a very early stage of their military cooperation. They will need to think through several implications of what they have embarked upon, “Talmiz Ahmad, former Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), said.

Pakistan, a long-time security partner of Saudi Arabia, did not want to get involved in any Saudi retaliation, and the Kingdom reportedly sought military help from the United States (US) to deter the Houthi threat.

According to Ahmad, Pakistan’s reluctance boils down to its domestic sectarian concerns. “Pakistan has more than 20 per cent Shia population. They are not interested in getting involved with a Sunni-Shia conflict (Houthis are Zaidi Shias while Saudi Arabia is majority Sunni). I think that at this stage, the Pakistanis are not interested, and I cannot even see what useful role they can play in the Houthi conflict.”

The pact has come at a time when the threat landscape in the region has expanded rapidly — Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have come under attack from Iran and the Houthis. The United States (US)-led war against Iran has entered its eighth month, and Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria has triggered anxieties in neighbouring states — even those with strong militaries like Turkiye, which is a Nato member.

“Turkiye benefited immensely from being a Nato member and having a customs union with the European Union. It wants to create a parallel security and economic bloc to its south and east to build stability in the region,” Barın Kayaoğlu, assistant professor at the Ankara Social Sciences University in Turkiye, said.

“So, Turkiye is now looking for, not so much an alternative, but a complement to Nato.”

Turkiye’s own actions, backing the takeover of Syria’s government by Ahmed al-Sharaa and its military activities in the country, have put it under the risk of confrontation with Israel, which has captured large swathes of Syrian territory along the occupied Golan Heights.

Saudi Arabia faces a different set of threats — from regional rival Iran and its allies the Houthis. Iran has directly targeted US bases like the Prince Sultan Air Base and Saudi oil facilities. Saudi oil revenue, the lifeblood of its economy, has been drastically affected by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

An alternative oil supply route through the East-West pipeline, also known as the Petroline, has given no comfort. It managed to stabilise oil revenue for a while, but it, too, had to be shut down when it came under increasing attacks from Houthi drones and pro-Iranian factions based in Iraq. Saudi’s primary security guarantor, the US, reportedly refused to intervene on its behalf, as it is itself actively engaged in war with Iran.

Saudi oil exports face a grim situation, as both the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al Mandeb Strait are now being attacked by Iran and the Houthis. (There are implications for India, too, with a significant share of its crude imports and its container trade with Europe passing through the same chokepoints).

“Iran has been attacking the regional targets primarily on account of the provocation initiated by the Americans. If the Americans had not initiated the conflict, none of these actions would have taken place,” Ahmad said.

The immediate trigger for the pact is said to be the Israeli strikes in Qatar’s capital, Doha, last year, which targeted several members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas who had gathered for a meeting.

“When Israel struck Doha last September, on the soil of a state hosting the US Central Command, Washington neither prevented nor punished it. Every Gulf capital drew the same conclusion overnight: If Qatar can be hit with impunity, the US security guarantee is conditional,” Dr Sreshtha Chakraborty, assistant professor at Bennett University and research fellow at the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies (CAPSS), said.

“For seventy years the organising anxiety here was Iran. Today it’s increasingly Israel’s expansionist reach. That shared threat is what every previous framework lacked and why three middle powers who don’t otherwise align could finally be on the same page,” she added.

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement is not the first of its kind in West Asia. The first major attempt was the 1955 Baghdad Pact, which united Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom, with the US acting as a core associate member. However, this framework fractured after a violent 1958 military coup in Iraq overthrew the monarchy, forcing Iraq’s exit. The alliance completely collapsed following the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

A later, localised attempt was the 1984 Gulf Cooperation Council Joint Defence Pact, which brought together Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain under the Peninsula Shield Force. Despite its goal of unified deterrence, its operational effectiveness was compromised by Saudi-UAE rivalry.

“Every attempt failed for the same three reasons: It leaned on an outside patron, or it was framed as an anti-Iran bloc that not all members believed in, and it was sabotaged by rivalry within the Gulf. What's changed is that all three obstacles have been dislodged at once,” Chakraborty said.

“Israel is the countervailing risk: It responded to the accord with silence, but Israeli politicians have warned since February about an emerging ‘Sunni axis’, describing Turkiye as the new Iran. Iran, interestingly, has played it cool: Its foreign ministry said Iran has “no reason to fear” the pact, framing it instead as a response to Israeli ambitions. But it’s already generating Israeli and Egyptian counter-pressure,” she added. 

For all their common security concerns, all three partners under the Mecca Pact have very different qualities to offer.

“The three countries also possess complementary capabilities: Saudi Arabia brings considerable financial and economic resources. Turkiye has a large, experienced military, Nato experience, and an increasingly sophisticated defence industry, and Pakistan contributes substantial conventional military capabilities as well as its status as a nuclear-armed state,” Reza Parchizadeh, an Iranian-American scholar and managing editor of Voice of America’s Farsi (Persian) service, said.

The religious rhetoric behind the Mecca Pact is hard to miss: “We should overcome the difficulties facing the Islamic world as soon as possible,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in September while addressing a youth programme. The joint statement issued by the three governments grounds the pact in “the enduring bonds of brotherhood and Islamic solidarity that unite them”.

Despite the scale of the promise, experts feel the label “Islamic Nato” does not fit, at least not yet. “I would hesitate to describe this as a West Asian Nato. The pact has a collective-defence commitment, but it does not yet possess Nato’s integrated command structures, extensive institutional machinery, or decades of military interoperability,” Parchizadeh said.

“There are 57 members in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), of which 48 are Muslim-majority. Only three are in the Mecca Pact. It is not a ‘Sunni Nato’ either,” Kayaoğlu said. However, it is expected that other nations might soon join: Erdoğan has been explicit that the pact isn’t meant to stop at three members.

“Our vision is not limited to three countries. We want it to expand further and, if possible, one day bring all countries in the region under this framework. This would be one of the most important steps toward achieving lasting regional stability,” he told the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat days after the signing. In a separate interview with Al Jazeera, Erdoğan called Egypt’s accession “possible”, describing it as one of the options being considered for the pact’s expansion.

Not everyone is convinced Egypt will take him up on it. “Egypt has been mentioned many times. Egypt is very reluctant to join any military arrangement. It fought earlier in 1948, 1967 and in 1973. It does not want to get involved in any other war. It does not know what will be expected of Egypt militarily in the context of ongoing conflicts. It has a peace agreement with the Israelis. Obviously, they would not like to see any situation where Egyptian troops will be involved against the Israelis,” Ahmad said.

There is a similar mismatch with Qatar, despite its close ties to all three signatories. “Qatar’s role is not military. It is a political and diplomatic role. There is no advantage to Qatar in joining this particular element,” Ahmad said.

 For now, most of the region’s other Arab states are sitting on the sidelines basically watching the evolution of this new arrangement rather than rushing to sign on.

Ahmad doesn’t read the collective-defence clause as a threat aimed at India. “For India, the collective-defence provision deserves serious attention, but I do not think it should automatically be interpreted as the creation of a Saudi-Turkish security guarantee for Pakistan against India. The publicly available language does not specify particular adversaries or establish that every confrontation involving one member would automatically produce an identical military response from the others,” he said. 

 “Saudi Arabia and Turkiye have their own substantial relations with India and their own calculations concerning South Asian security. A future India-Pakistan crisis would confront both governments with interests that are quite different from Pakistan’s. I would therefore regard the pact as a new strategic variable for India rather than, at present, an immediate three-country military threat,” he added.

This assurance has been voiced by foreign experts as well, who argue that none of the three signatories has signed up to inherit each other’s regional quarrels.

“Turkiye and Saudi Arabia will not fight the Taliban or India for Pakistan. Likewise, Pakistan and KSA will not fight Greece or the  PKK for Turkiye, and Pakistan and Turkiye will not fight Iran or the Houthis for Saudi Arabia,” Kayaoğlu said.

A genuine concern for India is not the clause itself.

“The genuine concerns are second-order and medium-term with capital flowing to a fragile Pakistani economy, the precedent of Gulf states hedging through Pakistan, and the (currently speculative) nuclear-umbrella question,” Chakraborty said.

Meanwhile, India has been warming its relations with Iran. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian made an official visit to India after eight long years, making a stopover at New Delhi in September for the 18th Brics summit. He also had bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi said that the two leaders had discussed “the prevailing situation in the region” and that “India remains steadfast in its commitment to the pursuit of enduring peace.”

Separately, he urged Pezeshkian to prioritise dialogue, freedom of navigation and regional peace in West Asia.

Pezeshkian expressed his desire to maintain existing strategic agreements between the two countries, namely cooperation on the Chabahar port, the International North-South Transport Corridor, and trade routes to Central Asia and Afghanistan. In addition, the president accused the US and Israel of practicing “state terrorism”.

It was reported that Indian diplomats struggled during the summit to reach agreement on language regarding the war with Iran in the final Brics declaration.

Meanwhile, India’s investment project in Chabahar port remains suspended since the US sanctions waiver expired in April.

A piece published in The Diplomat  argued that India’s Gulf partnerships need to be deepened beyond diplomacy alone: “India needs to upgrade its existing relationship with individual countries of the region by security and defence relationships, which would be in sync with India’s main regional defence and security aim of ensuring the open and free sea lines of communication through the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman.”

“India’s counter is its own leverage: Its relations with the other Arab states (UAE, Qatar) are expansive,” Chakraborty said. But set against the Mecca pact, the contrast is instructive. As Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan lock themselves into a formal

collective-defence framework, India’s approach in the region has been to keep every channel open.