Washington, DC – The administration of United States President Donald Trump has offered no official response in the hours since Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan signed a landmark mutual defence agreement in Mecca. The muted reaction, which persisted into Saturday, likely underscores the multilayered — and still emerging — implications of the new deal for US strategy, according to analysts.
Considered by many to lay the groundwork for what could be one of the most significant power shifts in the region, the pact has sparked intense debate. One provision is said to call on signatories to treat an attack on one as an attack on all, reminiscent of NATO’s Article 5. Some analysts see the agreement as a reflection of growing wariness towards an unpredictable US government, while others have argued that, while US actions have indeed fostered the conditions that accelerated the deal, the pact fits neatly within US strategic aims of greater burden-sharing among allies.
In the near term, many experts agree the pact will likely have the greatest impact in the diplomatic sphere. The push for greater regional cooperation with Israel has been the linchpin of the Trump administration’s designs for the Middle East, dating back to his first term. “Ironically, the US and Israel entered the war [with Iran] hoping to reshape the regional balance of power in Israel’s favour and accelerate regional integration through initiatives like the Abraham Accords,” Sina Toosi, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Policy, told Al Jazeera.
“Instead, one of the first major post-war developments is the emergence of a defence initiative among three major Muslim-majority powers,” Toosi added, explaining that the mutual defence pact is likely a setback for US-led integration efforts. The full details of the agreement have not yet been released. Only a joint statement on Friday has addressed the core tenets of the partnership, which aims to bolster collective security in an increasingly volatile environment.
The central pledge of the agreement “stipulates that any armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all”, according to the statement. The pact builds on a previous mutual defence agreement with a similar provision, reached between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in September 2025. In the wake of the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, Israel has led multiple war efforts, including against Iran, Lebanon and a genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Officials in Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad have taken pains to stress that Friday’s agreement is meant to supplement, not supplant, any other alliances. Saudi Arabia, for instance, said the deal “does not represent any orientation toward building a military axis or sectarian/religious bloc”. “The agreement does not come at the expense of the Kingdom’s strategic and strong relations at the Gulf, Arab, and international levels,” it said.
The country has been the target of a large number of Iran’s retaliatory attacks since the US-Israeli war began on February 28, and more recently, it has seen increased strikes from the Houthis in Yemen and Iran-aligned armed groups in Iraq. Meanwhile, Turkiye’s presidential communication directorate said the strengthened partnership “is not an alternative” to the country’s membership in the 32-country NATO bloc.
Indeed, experts have said the agreement does not appear to have any bearing on any NATO commitments, although it complicates the regional landscape. Turkiye has the second-largest standing army in NATO, as well as access to advanced military technology that remains vital to the alliance. Despite assurances that the pact is not a regional re-orientation, some observers have connected the new deal to a perceived decline in American influence.
They argue it represents a clear, if nascent, weakening of Washington’s strategic sway. “The basis for our alliance in the Middle East, in the Persian Gulf, and certainly with NATO and with our partners is being tested,” one analyst noted. “How badly remains to be seen. It may only be stirred, not shaken. But it’s something that we need to worry about.”
That is particularly true after Trump retroactively made joining the Abraham Accords a condition for the sale of nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, according to defence analyst Alex Alfirraz Scheers. “I think the fact that the president of the United States basically said that the Saudi nuclear cooperation agreement was contingent on the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords certainly sounded alarms all across the Gulf,” Alfirraz Scheers told Al Jazeera. “[It showed] the Abraham Accords are now being used for coercive purposes.”
Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the pact removes any ambiguity about Riyadh’s position. “This makes it crystal clear that the Saudis are not going to join the Abraham Accords as long as the Palestinian issue remains unresolved,” she said. The strategic recalibration suggests that while the US remains a dominant player, its partners are increasingly seeking independent security guarantees.
Ultimately, the long-term viability of the Saudi-Turkiye-Pakistan pact will depend on how the signatories manage their competing interests and how Washington chooses to respond. As the dust settles, the regional order appears to be moving toward a more multipolar framework, where traditional alliances are supplemented by ad-hoc security arrangements that prioritize national survival over bloc-based loyalty.
But that premise remains so far untested.
It came just days after Israel launched an air strike on the Qatari capital Doha, exacerbating concerns about Washington’s ability to control one of its closest allies.
Experts have further cautioned that the strengthening of defence ties between the trio does paper over their individual, and at times diverging, interests.
That strategy was energised in the early 1980s upon the founding of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and it grew amid the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, part of Washington’s so-called “global war on terror”.
The US has about 50,000 troops stationed across 19 sites in the Middle East, with US-controlled bases in Turkiye, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE, and a presence at bases in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Iraq and Israel.
Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt are among the countries in the region that the US has designated as “major non-NATO allies”, underscoring the importance of their military and economic ties.
“The US-Iran war accelerated a transformation already under way,” Obaid argued in a column for Al Jazeera.
He pointed out that hosting US bases has made several Gulf states targets for attacks during the ongoing war with Iran.
“Iranian retaliatory strikes exposed the vulnerability of the US basing structure in the Gulf and forced the repositioning of substantial combat forces,” Obaid said.
The loosening bonds can also be seen on the US side.
Successive administrations — including those led by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden — have attempted to pivot away from the Middle East, pursuing instead a renewed emphasis on China and the Asia Pacific.
While Washington’s “intelligence relationships, military power, technology and economic influence will remain formidable” in the region, Obaid predicts the US presence will wane.
“Several American bases will eventually close, as they have lost strategic utility,” he wrote.
But that desire has generally not extended to withdrawing military forces in the Gulf, she explained.
With efforts to end the five-month war in Iran repeatedly stalled, any short-term change in the US military posture remains unlikely.
Obviously, it’s not really the time to pull US troops or commitments,” Aydintasbas said.
“On the other hand, we’ve also seen the limits of US deterrence in the region in the form of Iranian attacks on US allies and Iran’s continuing ability to inflict pain on US allies and global trade, despite its weaker military model.”
Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), also said she would “resist reading this as evidence of a post-American Middle East”.
“If anything, it fits the broader US preference for greater regional burden-sharing, regional powers assuming more responsibility for deterrence and security while remaining embedded, to different degrees, within a US-centred security architecture,” she wrote in a post on the social media platform X.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, however, derailed any recent progress on the effort, which was already criticised for sidelining the issue of Palestinian peace and statehood.
But experts say the Pakistan-Turkiye-Saudi Arabia deal puts the prospect of expanding the Abraham Accords further out of reach, if not sounding a death knell altogether.
Brian Osgood contributed reporting.