The Joint Defence Agreement between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye is a consequential strategic development in the Muslim world. By stipulating that an armed attack upon one of the three would be regarded as an attack upon all, the agreement has moved beyond diplomatic symbolism and introduced an explicit principle of collective deterrence.
Yet the pact’s greater strategic value may lie not simply in its capacity to deter aggression, but in its potential to operate as a regional safety valve – raising the cost of conflict while creating political space for de-escalation before crises become wars. That possibility becomes still more significant if Iran is eventually brought within the framework. The agreement also raises an increasingly important question: deterrence against whom?
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has compared the mechanism technically to Article 5 of the Nato treaty while emphasising that it is not directed against Iran or any particular country. Pakistan has similarly described the agreement as defensive.
A defence pact need not publicly designate an enemy, but deterrence cannot exist entirely in the abstract. What threats is the pact expected to deter? State aggression? Proxy warfare? Missile and drone attacks? Threats to maritime routes? Or aggression from any source whatsoever?
Recent tensions involving Turkiye and Israel sharpen the question. Israeli aircraft struck Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18, shortly after a Turkish delegation had visited the facility. Ankara condemned the strike. It was not an attack on Turkish territory, but showed how rapidly Israeli and Turkish strategic interests can collide.
Iran cannot realistically be ignored in any serious regional security equation. Geography makes that impossible. It borders Pakistan, dominates one side of the Persian Gulf, possesses substantial conventional and missile capabilities, and exercises influence across the wider Middle East. Any architecture intended to produce durable regional stability while permanently excluding Iran would contain a contradiction at its foundation.
Iranian participation would do far more than add another member. More importantly, it could enable the Makkah Pact to function as a genuine strategic safety valve. Bringing one of the region’s principal centres of military and political power inside the framework could simultaneously strengthen deterrence and reduce pressures generated by rival blocs. Iran would acquire a stake in the stability of the system, while Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan would gain a mechanism through which differences could be managed before escalating into confrontation.
This way, the arrangement could evolve from an alliance among broadly aligned Muslim states into an indigenous system of collective security in which competing regional powers accept that their security is interdependent.
Alliances traditionally deter outsiders by combining strength against them. A regional security architecture attempts something more difficult: it gives potential rivals incentives to moderate their behaviour because they acquire a stake in preserving the stability of the system. Iran’s inclusion could therefore provide both stronger deterrence and stronger incentives for peace. Aggression against a participating state would confront broader political, economic and military capabilities, while regional powers would have more to lose from destabilising an order to which they belonged.
There would, of course, be complications. Iranian membership could only be credible if participation carried obligations as well as guarantees. A collective-defence system cannot function if one participant, directly or through aligned armed groups, threatens another while claiming protection from external aggression. The architecture would therefore require consultation, restraint of proxies, dispute-resolution mechanisms and agreed definitions of aggression. Collective security must impose disciplines upon insiders as well as deter outsiders.
Yet therein lies its potential importance. The purpose should not merely be to construct a larger military bloc, but to make conflict more expensive and accommodation more rewarding.
For Pakistan, this presents an unusual diplomatic opportunity. Islamabad maintains close strategic relations with Riyadh and Ankara while sharing a long border and important interests with Iran. Pakistan has little interest in importing Middle Eastern rivalries into South Asia. Its strategic choice is whether it becomes a participant in somebody else’s regional design or helps construct a more autonomous framework capable of bridging competing blocs.
Pakistan should therefore favour an inclusive evolution of the Makkah agreement. Bringing Iran into structured dialogue with Saudi Arabia and Turkiye would reduce pressure on Islamabad to choose between important relationships, while allowing Pakistan to act not as the appendage of one camp, but as a bridge among the principal centres of Muslim power.
There is also the larger question of the US. For decades, Middle Eastern security rested heavily upon American power. That structure has not disappeared, but Washington now distributes strategic attention across Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East. The Makkah agreement may therefore represent not American withdrawal but the regionalisation of the American security burden.
Iran’s eventual inclusion, however, would alter even that interpretation. A trilateral arrangement among three states with substantial Western defence relationships can be seen as an additional layer of an existing order. A framework incorporating Iran would be qualitatively different, possessing a degree of strategic autonomy that an externally sponsored alliance could not easily reproduce.
This need not make the pact anti-American or anti-Israeli. Regional autonomy should not be defined by hostility. Its defining principle should be that aggression is unacceptable irrespective of its source. And that returns us to the central question: against whom is the Makkah Pact directed?
Perhaps the strongest answer its members could eventually give is: against aggression itself, from whatever quarter it comes. If that principle is applied selectively, the pact risks becoming another alliance in an already divided region. If applied consistently, and if Iran is eventually brought inside rather than kept outside, it could become something more consequential.
The real strategic significance of the Makkah Pact may therefore lie neither in creating another military bloc nor in identifying another adversary. Properly developed, and with Iran included in the regional equation, it could become a strategic safety valve for a region in which deterrence has too often existed without corresponding mechanisms for accommodation.
Iran’s inclusion would not merely enlarge the pact; it could complete the equation – strengthening deterrence while giving the principal regional powers a common interest in preventing confrontation.
The ultimate test of the Makkah agreement may therefore be deceptively simple: whether it becomes an alliance against somebody, or a collective mechanism against aggression itself. If it achieves the latter, its greatest strategic contribution may not be its capacity to wage war, but its ability to make war less likely.
The writer is the author of ‘Honour-bound to Pakistan in Duty, Destiny and Death: Iskander Mirza, Pakistan’s First Elected President’s Memoirs from Exile’. He can be reached at: [email protected]
