Editor's note: James M. Dorsey, a special commentator for CGTN, is an adjunct senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. The article reflects the author's views and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan laid down a marker when they signed earlier this month the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement, a mutual defense pact that defines an attack on one signatory as an attack on all. The signing signaled Gulf states' accelerated efforts to diversify the region's security architecture and to reduce, rather than replace any time soon, a US defense umbrella that has proven to be unreliable at best. The Gulf's quest for diversification precedes the Iran war but has gained urgency since the February 28 US-Israeli attack on Iran and the closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia announced, days before the signing of the defense pact, the creation of a Saudi-led 14-nation maritime coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea. Beyond Türkiye and Pakistan, the coalition includes Egypt, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Yemen, and the Comoros.

The new defense pact changes the Middle East's lay of the land, even if it may not have an immediate impact on ongoing conflicts such as the escalating hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group, or on potential future clashes between, for example, Pakistan and India, or Türkiye and Israel. With Pakistan's participation, the agreement reaffirms the increasingly popular notion of a Greater Middle East that stretches into South Asia. By doing so, it theoretically deprives Israel of its undeclared status as the region's only nuclear power.

The new pact serves the signatories' different purposes, allowing them, for example, to benefit from one another's financial, technological, and industrial strengths in areas such as enhancement of their military-industrial complexes, while tiptoeing around conflicts they would prefer to avoid.

Officially, Saudi, Turkish, and Pakistani officials stress that the pact does not target any country specifically and identify Israel, rather than Iran or the Houthis, as the region's primary destabilizer. In practice, the opposite may be true, particularly for Saudi Arabia. The pact fits Saudi Arabia's recent more assertive strategy aimed at turning the tables on Iran. Its purpose is unambiguous as far as the Saudis are concerned.

"The alliance tips the balance of power against Iran… A force with strategic depth, greater military capabilities, 400 million people – four times that of Iran – and more than 1,400 kilometers of land borders overlooking Iran," said Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, an influential Saudi columnist who hews close to the hawkish voices in official Saudi thinking. "The Riyadh-Ankara-Islamabad alliance aims to create a balance that deters Iran from thinking about advancing toward the Gulf region, as well as targeting Jordan, Syria, and Yemen. Expanding the scope of the war will cost Iran's leadership dearly." However, this optimism has yet to be tested.

For all practical purposes, the pact expands the bilateral Saudi-Pakistani defense agreement signed last year to include Türkiye. Under the original bilateral agreement, Pakistan deployed troops, air defense systems, and fighter jets to bases in the kingdom close to the Saudi-Yemeni border. Yet, in an indication of the agreement's limitations, the Pakistanis are not expected to participate in operations on the Yemeni side of the border.

The fact of the matter is that Türkiye and Pakistan may not share Saudi Arabia's primary focus on Iran. More likely, they will tread cautiously regarding any direct confrontation with Iran. Gas imports from Iran account for up to 13% of Türkiye's total gas imports under a 25-year agreement that expires this year.

Moreover, the land borders shared by Türkiye, Pakistan, and Iran, which Al-Rashed highlighted as an asset, could prove to be a double-edged sword. Baloch militants seeking greater autonomy, if not independence, straddle the 909-kilometer-long border that separates Pakistan's province of Balochistan from Iran's Sistan and Baluchistan. The militants intermittently attack targets in Iran from Pakistani territory.

Finally, Türkiye and Pakistan, like Iraq, Azerbaijan, or Armenia, are equally unlikely to close their ports to Iranian shipping and land borders with Iran to accommodate US President Donald Trump's most recent focus on economic pressure to force Iran to return to the negotiating table on his terms.  

"Iran's neighbors will not take that step so long as their diplomatic outreach and economic engagements continue to offer a means of managing the insecurity created by the Trump administration's oscillation between calls for a deal and threats of catastrophic airstrikes," Iran scholar Esfandyar Batmanghelidj said.

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