Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr |No Need For Indians To Lose Sleep Over Pakistan’s New Pact With Saudis, Turkey

The Mecca defence agreement that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince/Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman reached with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday is something that is multi-mirrored. It appears in several images to viewers from different points. India is wary of Pakistan and Turkey, but not of Saudi Arabia. It is already the case that Ankara is supplying military drones to Islamabad, and this came to light during Operation Sindoor in May 2025. If there is an outbreak of war between India and Pakistan, Saudi Arabia can only give financial help to Pakistan, and Turkey can continue its supply of military drones. That is unlikely to tilt the military balance in favour of Pakistan. The tripartite defence alliance is not something that India needs to lose its sleep over.

Israel interprets the defence agreement as aimed against it, though Israeli diplomats and intelligence agencies know better than to believe in this naïve view. It is the case that President Erdogan’s Turkey is strongly supportive of the Palestinians and it is vehemently opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel. Pakistan does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, and Islamabad’s support for Palestinians is part of its Islamist tokenism. Saudi Arabia supports the Palestinians in principle though it is not averse to doing business with Israel.

It is clear that Saudi Arabia sees the defence alliance as a strategy to counter Iran. Iran’s attacks on its Arab Gulf neighbours in response to the United States-Israel attack this February made Riyadh aware of its vulnerability. It has been found that the United States does not want to come out in defence of its Gulf Arab alliance partners, though they are paying the price for hosting American military bases in their territories. The United Arab Emirates has formed an undeclared military alliance with Israel. The Saudis are not willing to depend on Israelis, though Israel will only be too willing and happy to be part of a defence alliance with Saudi Arabia. Riyadh’s military pact with Turkey and Pakistan is an ostensible gesture that the richest oil economy in the region is not alone nor isolated. None of Gulf Arab countries are too comfortable with Saudi Arabia, which is the big brother in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The question really is whether Pakistan and Turkey will go to war with Iran if there are hostilities between Tehran and Riyadh. Pakistan and Turkey have friendly ties with Iran. In case of military contest, it will be a deadlock between Iran and Turkey and Iran and Pakistan.

The Mecca agreement is carefully worded. It is called a defence agreement. That is, it holds good if any of the three countries are attacked. Iran is unlikely to attack either Turkey or Pakistan. Tehran, for all the zeal of its ayatollahs calling the shots supported by the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), will not directly attack Saudi Arabia. It would not even attack Israel, which is the ideological enemy of the Shia regime. The defence agreement seems a symbolic statement of three Sunni Islamic states, and it is an indirect stance against Shia-oriented Iran. Symbolism has its uses at a rhetorical level, but it does not carry much weight on the ground.

Similarly, Israel will not attack Saudi Arabia, because the Saudis don’t pose a military threat to Israel. Whatever his anger of Israel’s actions in Gaza and West Bank, Mr Erdogan will not launch a war against Israel. Pakistan will not commit the mistake of attacking far-away Israel.

The case of Turkey poses a special problem. If Turkey were to be attacked, it is not just Pakistan and Saudi Arabia who would have to rush to the side of Ankara, but also the whole of Nato. Turkey is a member of the Western military alliance. An attack on one of its members will pull in the remaining 20-odd European countries into the conflict. Israel is the only country that could be seen as a potential military threat to Turkey. Tel Aviv, however, cannot break ranks with the US and Europe to indulge in a military misadventure against Turkey.

It is, however, hard to ignore the invisible hand of the United States in this exercise of military alliance-building. The Americans would not want to be dragged into a war in the region. They have learnt that lesson from the ongoing hostilities. It is now acknowledged that Benjamin Netanyahu had successfully persuaded US President Donald Trump to enter the fray. American intelligence and military experts are accepting the folly of doing so. Washington is keen to create a network of regional military alliances in West Asia to counter Iran as long as Iran is under the control of the Shia clerics.

The Americans are at a loss to formulate their global strategy. Iran is an ideological opponent but it is not the ideological enemy. The United States, Europe and Israel are opposed to Islamism of the variety symbolized by Mr Erdogan in Turkey and the clerics in Iran, but they do not want to declare a war against Islam as the West did against Communism during the Cold War. The majority of Muslim-majority countries in Asia and Africa are in the American camp. The Americans are unable to take a firm stance against China. They are not willing to play the anti-Communist card against China. Beijing has become too critical in economic terms to boycott or even attack the second largest economy in the world. A multi-polar world spawns a lot of confusion. This is reflected in the alliances -- military and economic -- dotting the many regions. The Saudi Arabia-Turkey-Pakistan defence pact reflects this confusion.