Saudi defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan is a verdict on American reliability

Commentators predictably reacted to the news of the signing of a mutual defence pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan on August 7 by reaching for the label “Islamic Nato”. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement stipulates that an armed attack on any one of them would be treated as an attack on all. Jerusalem went a step further, describing the alliance as an anti-Israel alliance.

But the Nato comparison is the wrong framing. Three of America’s own partners have bound themselves together – and the most consequential audience for what they signed sits not in Tehran or Tel Aviv but in Washington. The agreement reads, in effect, as a verdict on American reliability.

On paper, the combination is formidable. Turkey fields Nato’s second-largest army and a drone industry that has reshaped modern battlefields. Saudi Arabia brings the Gulf’s deepest reserves of capital. Pakistan adds a large, combat-experienced military and the Muslim world’s only nuclear arsenal. Analysts point to genuinely complementary assets here: Turkish technology which is short of markets, Pakistani manpower short of financing, Saudi wealth short of manpower.

This pact did not appear from nowhere. It extends a Saudi-Pakistani agreement of September 2025, signed days after Israel’s strike on Hamas targets in Doha, Qatar, and was made more urgent by the US-Israeli war...

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