Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed a treaty last week promising to defend each other if any one of them is attacked. That is the promise the United States has been making to these countries for decades.
The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement was signed on Aug. 7 at Al-Safa Palace in Mecca by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The joint statement says an attack on one "shall be regarded as an attack against them all."
That one sentence is nearly all we know. The three governments have not published the treaty text. There is no joint command, no rule for how new members join, no agreement on stationing troops in each other's countries.
To see why these three signed, start with what happened in Doha last year. Israeli aircraft bombed a Hamas delegation in the Qatari capital on Sept. 9, 2025, killing five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer. The group was reading an American ceasefire proposal at the time.
It was the first time Israel had struck Qatar. Qatar hosts Al Udeid, the biggest US military base in the region. The White House said the bombing "does not advance Israel or America's goals," and said the US military had told President Donald Trump it was coming. Washington knew, and did nothing.
Eight days later, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed their own mutual defense agreement in Riyadh. Eleven months after that, Türkiye joined them in Mecca.
One sentence and three signatures do not sound like much. But that is about all NATO was in April 1949. The joint commands and permanent headquarters took another ten years to build.
The question everyone is asking is who this pact is meant to stop. None of the three will say. Erdoğan wrote on X that the deal rests on "collective deterrence" and that Türkiye still wants to solve problems through talks. Sharif called it a "historic endeavour" for the region's security.
The other two went further. Saudi deputy minister for public diplomacy Rayed Krimly wrote that the agreement is not meant to build a military bloc or a religious one, and has nothing to do with nuclear weapons or an arms race. Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar wrote that the pact is purely defensive and "not targeted against any country."
Nobody denies things that nobody has accused them of. The reason the three governments will not name an enemy is simpler than diplomacy. Each of them is worried about a different country.
For Türkiye, that country is Israel, and this is not guesswork. At a cabinet meeting on Feb. 22, Netanyahu described a "hexagon" of alliances Israel would build against what he called a radical Shia axis and an emerging radical Sunni axis. He named India, Greece, Cyprus, and unnamed Arab, African and Asian states.
Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett had already told a conference that "a new Turkish threat is emerging," and that Israel needs to act against Türkiye at the same time as Iran. In July, Netanyahu lobbied in Washington against selling F-35 fighter jets to Türkiye, telling reporters the country "is governed by a man who calls openly for the annihilation of Israel."
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has said Israel is deliberately turning Türkiye into its next enemy. Whatever else is true, Ankara did not start this fight and did not start it this year.
Saudi Arabia is worried about something else. Since the Iran war began with American and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28, Iranian missiles and drones have hit targets across the kingdom, including oil refineries, killing two civilians and wounding 12. A Houthi strike set the Jizan refinery on fire on July 25.
Riyadh has also never recognized Israel, and it was negotiating over doing so before the Gaza war. Yoel Guzansky, who runs Gulf research at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, has said the new pact does not completely close that door.
Pakistan has said both things, through the same man. In a television interview in September 2025, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif was asked whether the deterrence Pakistan gets from nuclear weapons would be extended to Saudi Arabia. What Pakistan has, he answered, would be made available under the agreement.
He took it back within days, saying nuclear weapons were not on the radar. Asked about it at a weekly press briefing, Foreign Office spokesman Shafqat Ali Khan would say only that Pakistan's nuclear doctrine has evolved and continues to do so.
Then, one day after the Mecca treaty, Asif called for a united military front against Israel, which he called a threat to the whole Muslim world. His own foreign minister had just said the pact targets nobody.
So this is not three countries building an anti-Israel bloc. It is three countries facing three different threats who reached the same conclusion about the same protector. Israel's actions are what pushed that conclusion into the open.
Doha is where it became impossible to ignore. If an American ally country hosting roughly 10,000 American troops can be bombed by another American ally, with Washington told in advance and doing nothing, then the American guarantee is a favor rather than a commitment.
Riyadh worked that out in eight days. Ankara worked it out over a year of Israeli politicians calling it the next target. Pakistan has been hedging for decades.
Whether this treaty turns into a real alliance is something we can check. Watch for the Turkish parliament ratifying it, for the text being published, for rules on new members, for a joint planning staff, for combined air and missile defense drills.
The practical obstacles are large. Saudi Arabia flies American equipment, Pakistan flies Chinese and domestic equipment, Türkiye flies NATO and Turkish equipment. Their systems cannot talk to each other, and none of the three keeps supplies stored in the others' countries.
There is also a precedent for this kind of promise not being kept. In April 2015, when Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were as close as they have ever been, Pakistan's parliament voted unanimously to stay out of the Yemen war instead of sending the combat troops Riyadh asked for.
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