Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan are now mutual defense partners

Saudi Arabia has joined NATO’s second-largest army and the Muslim world’s only nuclear-armed state in a mutual defense pact. The Kingdom, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement in the holy city on Friday, binding the three to treat an armed attack on any one of them as an attack on all, per a joint statement carried by Reuters. Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman signed alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif. The stated aim: strengthen collective deterrence and deepen defense cooperation across the board.

The language is engineered to sound like NATO, and its architects are not hiding it. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called the accord technically the same as NATO’s Article 5, and said talks to finalize it had run two years and eight months, predating the current war.

The pact lands six days after Riyadh convened representatives of 43 countries to launch a Saudi-led Red Sea maritime coalition. It trilateralizes the bilateral strategic mutual defense agreement the Kingdom signed with Pakistan in Riyadh last September.

Why it matters

The Kingdom is expressing doubt about the American umbrella, in public. After months of Iranian missile fire and Houthi strikes on Gulf exporters, regional confidence in Washington as sole guarantor has visibly thinned. The Atlantic Council reads the pact as Riyadh confronting the limits of US deterrence and buying leverage against an emboldened Tehran.

The threat is not abstract: The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said 11 civilians were injured by Houthi shelling in Najran on Thursday, and the group claimed a fresh strike on a Saudi base in eastern Yemen the day the pact was signed.

Each partner brings something Riyadh cannot buy off the shelf. Turkey fields NATO's second-largest military and has become a defense supplier to the Kingdom, which agreed to buy Turkish drones in 2023 in what Ankara billed as its largest-ever arms export. Pakistan has trained Saudi forces for decades and is the only nuclear-armed Muslim state — a fact that has driven much of the global framing. Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy Rayed Krimly said the agreement is not a military axis, not a sectarian bloc, and not tied to nuclear ambitions or an arms race, and that it neither replaces nor cancels the Kingdom's existing Gulf, Arab, and international commitments.

Everyone with a signature on it insists it is not aimed at Iran. Fidan told Anadolu the alliance targets no country so long as no member is attacked. Ankara separately stressed it does not contradict its NATO obligations.

Tehran was unconvinced: Iranian MP Ebrahim Rezaei dismissed it on X as a “paper agreement” that will not deliver the security Riyadh failed to get from decades of leaning on the US, per CNN. The subtext both sides understand: another major attack on the Kingdom could now, in principle, pull in a NATO army and a nuclear power.

What Riyadh has actually signed, for now, is a framework. As with the maritime coalition, no member has committed forces; Fidan said the three will decide the degree and form of support case by case, through consultations, and that operational details wait on the first meeting of a NATO-style ministers’ committee.

What's next

Watch three concrete markers. First, the standing up of the ministers’ committee and the Saudi-based secretariat, which will convert principle into machinery. Second, expansion — Fidan says Egypt is a candidate once unspecified technical matters are resolved, which would turn a trio into a bloc. Third, whether the pact changes Iran's behavior at all, and whether it hardens or eases the terms of the Hormuz shipping arrangement Tehran is negotiating with Oman.