An Iranian official on August 8 responded to the signing of a Nato-style joint defence pact by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan by warning the Saudis that the “paper agreement” would not help them.

"The Saudis should know that a paper agreement with Turkey and Pakistan does not bring them security, just as years of unilateral milking of the Americans did not bring them security," Ebrahim Rezaei, a member of the Iranian National Security Commission and a member of parliament, posted on X.

The trilateral agreement states, in an echo of Nato’s Article 5, that an attack on one of the signatory countries would be seen as an attack on all three.

Unveiled in Mecca

The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement between three of the world’s most powerful Sunni Muslim countries was unveiled at a meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the Saudi holy city of Mecca.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, a nuclear power, had already signed a bilateral defence pact last year. But the Saudis remain in a precarious and vulnerable position amid the unresolved US/Israeli war with Iran, with the Iranians threatening to knock out vital oil production and other infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states allied with Washington should US President Donald Trump opt for massive strikes on Iran. Riyadh, presently threatened by military action by the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen and the Red Sea, may have decided that bringing Nato member Turkey into its defence arrangement with Pakistan could help deter the Iranians from hitting Saudi Arabia with lethal military action that could devastate its economy.

A joint statement on the mutual defence guarantees in the deal said they are designed "to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression”, stipulating “that any armed attack against any one of the three States shall be regarded as an attack against them all".

It added: "It further provides for the enhancement of all aspects of defence co-operation among the three States."

Short on detail

Though the proclamations on mutual defence are big, the amount of detail in the pact made public is vanishingly small. The calculations of each of the three countries will surely not be straightforward in the event of an attack on a pact member.

After the agreement was announced, analysts soon got to work on imagining what would happen if, for instance, out and out war between the Saudis and Houthis broke out. Would Turkish forces really be dispatched to the war front? What if Pakistan is once more targeted by India? Would Saudi and Turkish forces and military assets be quickly made available to Islamabad? And if Iran was to respond to US action with a major attack on Saudi Arabia, would Turkish and Pakistani military action soon be seen in the Gulf?

Deterrence, not aggression, is most surely the name of the game in going ahead with the new security architecture, with Iran now knowing that any extensive scaling up of its strikes on the Saudis could have a significantly higher cost.

More arms sales

In the case of Turkey, which as things stand faces no tangible threat of an attack by another country – though its war of words with Israel has intensified since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023 – the pact should deliver more arms sales for its rapidly expanding defence industries.

Burcu Ozcelik, a senior fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), was reported by the BBC as saying that Turkish defence contractors could enjoy "joint production, technology partnerships, procurement and greater military interoperability".

Ozcelik added on X that the agreement “fits the broader US preference for greater regional burden-sharing, regional powers assuming more responsibility for deterrence and security while remaining embedded to different degrees”.

Signed on day of prayer

According to Al-Monitor: “The timing and venue of the signing — on a Friday, the Muslim holy day of prayer, in Mecca — underscore the symbolism of an agreement among three of the Muslim world's leading Sunni states.”

The publication also reported a diplomatic source as saying that, without US buy-in, such defence arrangements tend to be toothless, and any pact that threatens Israel will by default not get US buy-in. The source also criticised the pact’s religious overtones, saying they would not help and remarking: “Anyone with half a brain would have kept Mecca out of it.”

“Converging vision”

In a February editorial, asserting the logic of a Turkish, Saudi and Pakistani pact on mutual defence, Turkey’s pro-government newspaper Sabah said in an editorial that the agreement would be based on "a converging vision".

Sabah added that such an agreement was necessary given Israel's actions in Gaza and the Golan Heights, worsening relations between Gulf capitals and Washington, and separatist activities, terrorism and proxy actions in the region.

"All the three actors are firmly opposed to separatism and terrorism in the region, and they increasingly view sustainable defence-industrial cooperation as a strategic necessity rather than a commercial luxury," wrote the newspaper.

In July, former Pakistani ambassador to the United States Hussain Haqqani wrote an article for GIS on “The emerging Saudi-Pakistan-Turkiye nexus”.

He reflected that for Turkey, joining the tripartite agreement would "secure Saudi capital for its own military manufacturing while pursuing co-production with or sales to Pakistan”.

He added: "Turkey is not leaving Nato. Instead, it is cultivating a parallel partnership to enhance strategic flexibility and bargaining power."