Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkiye have formalized a new mutual defense pact, sparking intense discussions about a shifting security landscape in the Middle East. Signed in Mecca this past Friday, the agreement stipulates that an external armed attack against any of the three nations will be treated as an assault on all. This development arrives five months into an ongoing conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran, which has significantly disrupted maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and across the region.
The three nations have been careful not to antagonize any regional or international actors while finalizing what they described as the result of years of hard work and negotiations. Despite the potential for regional friction, the signatories maintain that the pact is a necessary evolution in their diplomatic and defense cooperation.
In Tehran, the reaction has been largely subdued. Officials have focused their public commentary on the benefits of regional and Muslim cooperation, framing the agreement as evidence of a declining role for the United States in the Middle East. This perspective is being viewed by some in the Iranian establishment as the beginning of the collapse of US security hegemony in West Asia and the Persian Gulf.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addressed the development on Friday, suggesting that when Muslim nations stand together, “we can face every challenge by malicious outsiders head-on.” In a separate post on X, he emphasized the necessity of regional autonomy, stating, “Time to rely only on ourselves and embrace true brotherhood,” without directly mentioning the trilateral agreement signed hours earlier.
However, Iran certainly sees reasons for long-term concern, according to Hamidreza Azizi, a researcher and analyst on Iran and Middle Eastern geopolitical dynamics. The associate at the Clingendael Institute noted that the timing of the pact is critical, as it follows months of conflict in which Saudi Arabia has faced persistent attacks from Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen and various armed groups in neighboring Iraq.
“From Tehran’s perspective, the concern is therefore not only that the pact could strengthen Saudi deterrence, but that it could eventually facilitate coordinated pressure on Iran in Yemen, Iraq, and even economically through Turkiye and Pakistan,” Azizi explained. He added that for now, these elements represent a post-American security order in the Middle East.
The security environment remains volatile. On Sunday, the Houthis claimed a successful drone strike on the Saudi Aramco refinery in Jizan. Saudi Arabia confirmed that a fire was extinguished without inflicting casualties, though officials did not explicitly mention the cause of the incident.
Separately in Yemen, Houthi missiles and drones struck the Saudi-backed and internationally recognized government’s Red Sea port of al-Makha. Authorities reported at least seven people killed, 15 wounded, and severe infrastructure damage. The Yemeni group, which has also been targeting or turning back Saudi-linked ships in the Red Sea, claimed they were targeting weapons depots.
While Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not released a formal statement on the deal, Hossein Noushabadi, a director general for parliamentary and legal affairs, told the state-linked ISNA news service that the ministry views the agreement primarily through the lens of a diminishing direct US presence in the region.
Azizi suggests that Tehran’s priority will likely be to avoid turning the pact into an explicitly anti-Iranian coalition. He believes Iran will attempt to preserve individual relations with each of the three countries while continuing to argue that regional security should be organized by regional states rather than external powers.
“If those states come to see the pact as providing meaningful protection against Iran or Iran-aligned groups, that would make Iranian membership even more difficult,” Azizi noted. Some experts suggest that Iran might eventually seek membership in the pact in the distant future, though such a move would require a sustainable end to hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz and across the broader region.
Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North African Programme at Chatham House, noted that the trilateral pact reflects both short- and long-term security concerns for Riyadh, Islamabad, and Ankara. “They are driven together to forge greater diplomatic and defense cooperation in reaction to US unreliability, Israeli revisionism, and Iranian retaliation,” she told Al Jazeera.
Political scientist Vali Nasr said he does not believe the pact is currently a threat to Tehran.
“This is also as much a balance to the Abraham Accords as a direct challenge to Tehran,” he added, in reference to the US-pushed regional normalisation effort with Israel, which US President Donald Trump last month tied
However, a roadmap is still missing,” Ebrahim Azizi, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said in a more hawkish viewing of the pact.
They have stressed the pact, which does not identify a specific threat, is not targeted against any country – particularly Iran – and does not abrogate or replace any existing agreements with others.
“It appears that, in the not-too-distant future, a new regional security order based on cooperation among regional states will replace the power structures imposed by extra-regional actors, heralding the end of the prevailing security and geopolitical paradigm and West Asia’s departure from the sphere of vital US interests,” added the official, who is a former Iranian envoy to Oman.
“This is also as much a balance to the Abraham Accords as a direct challenge to Tehran,” he added, in reference to the US-pushed regional normalisation effort with Israel, which US President Donald Trump last month tied with a civil nuclear deal sought by Saudi Arabia.
Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University of Qatar, also agreed that decision-makers in Iran do not immediately feel threatened by the pact, especially since they have maintained cordial relations with both Pakistan and Turkiye even under trying circumstances.
“Ultimately, this pact is not that new, nor is it something that, at present at least, has a great deal of substance beyond its symbolic significance.
Not all inside Iran are content with the pact, however, with some hardline lawmakers and media arguing that it could ultimately be directed against the “resistance front” of Tehran-backed armed forces across the region, and degrade Pakistan’s credibility as a main mediator between Iran and the US and others.
“It’s clear that Arab states finally understand security cannot be imported; it must be built within the region.
“Warning: Miscalculation is a historical mistake.
Iran has proven that every error comes at a cost.
Balance is the only way forward,” he wrote on X.
Ebrahim Rezaei, another member of the commission, also wrote on X that “a paper agreement with Turkiye and Pakistan” will not bring Saudi Arabia security, “just as years of one-sided dependence on the Americans did not bring them security”.
“Over the longer term, however, if the arrangement evolves from a balancing coalition into a broader regional security architecture, the question of Iranian participation could look quite different.”
Egypt has already been floated as a candidate, but that could be a complex decision for Cairo to make.