For decades, Pakistan quietly helped bolster Gulf security by deploying troops, training military officers and cultivating close intelligence ties with the energy-rich Arab monarchies.
Now it is embracing a far more visible role, fraught with new risks. As Gulf states confront escalating attacks from Iran and its Houthi allies in Yemen, they are deepening security cooperation with nuclear-armed Pakistan, building on that country’s mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia. Islamabad has already deployed thousands of troops, fighter aircraft and air defense units to the kingdom, home to Islam’s holiest sites.
“It is very significant and symbolic that you have the second most populous Muslim country, and the only one that has nuclear weapons, now joining the defense of other Muslim countries,” said Amin Tarzi, a professor of strategic studies and chair of Middle East studies at the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Virginia.
Pakistan’s expanding role comes despite mounting security pressures at home. The country of 240 million is battling deadly insurgencies, tensions with neighboring Afghanistan and India, and instability along the more than 600-mile border it shares with Iran across the restive Balochistan region on the southeastern edge of the Iranian Plateau.
Smoke rises from an oil facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, on July 27 after Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels said they targeted several crude oil supply and transportation sites in the kingdom/Reuters.
Analysts say Islamabad stands to benefit as Gulf monarchies increasingly question the United States’ security guarantees after enduring waves of Iranian drone and missile attacks after Tehran’s war with Washington and Israel erupted in February.
Iran’s Rival
Yet Islamabad’s growing military role emerging role could place it on a collision course with neighboring Iran, experts say. Relations between the two countries have improved in recent years, particularly after Islamabad helped mediate the memorandum of understanding that led to a temporary hiatus in the war between the U.S. and Iran. But now Pakistan is taking a firmer stance against the Iran-backed Houthis, who have targeted Saudi shipping and energy infrastructure.
Tarzi said Pakistan’s expanding role undercuts Tehran’s longstanding claim that it is protecting the region from outside powers such as the U.S. and Israel.
To be sure, Tehran has also undercut its own claim. Kuwait has faced repeated Iranian attacks since the war started, prompting it to ratify a 2023 defense cooperation agreement with Pakistan on July 26. The agreement paves the way for expanded military cooperation, including defense technology, training and intelligence sharing.
Kuwait and Pakistan are also discussing a broader defense partnership that could elevate the South Asian country into a leading Gulf security partner while strengthening economic and energy ties.
“With the security of the entire Gulf in flux, these countries are looking for new avenues of safeguarding their security, and Pakistan is part of that,” Tarzi said.
Pakistan appears determined to demonstrate that commitment.
After Iran disrupted Gulf oil and gas exports through the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis intensified efforts to threaten shipping through the only viable maritime alternative, the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and last week announced a blockade of commercial shipping bound for Saudi Arabia. In response, Pakistan declared that it “reserves its right to take all necessary measures, including lawful use of force, in the exercise of self-defense to protect its maritime assets and national interests.”
Tarzi said even a limited Pakistani military response could complicate Iran’s security calculations by raising tensions along the two countries’ volatile shared border.
“And that the destabilization will of course be very large for Iran to have, even if it’s very symbolic and short term,” he told MBN.
Since the early 2000s, Iran and Pakistan have battled insurgent separatist groups operating across the Baluchistan region, which spans Pakistan’s Balochistan province and Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province.
Tehran has long accused Islamabad of harboring members of Jundullah and later Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni militant group drawn largely from Iran’s Baluch minority. Pakistan, meanwhile, has accused Iran of sheltering elements of the secular Baloch separatist insurgency fighting Pakistani security forces.
The tensions boiled over in early 2024 when the two countries exchanged cross-border strikes, each saying it had targeted militants operating from the other’s territory.
By the end of that year, however, the neighbors had quietly reached an understanding on managing cross-border militancy. Pakistan handed over a senior Jaish al-Adl figure, while Iran transferred to Pakistan a prominent Baluch nationalist ideologue who was reportedly seeking medical treatment in the country.
In April, Pakistan played an important role in facilitating a ceasefire between Tehran and Washington. Together with Qatar, it then helped bring the two sides together to sign the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding on June 17, outlining a framework for resolving the conflict through negotiations.
Islamabad’s role was primarily motivated by self-interest: As home to the world’s second-largest population of Shia Muslims after Iran, it sought to avoid domestic unrest. The killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei provoked angry, violent protests in Pakistan, some of which attempted to overrun U.S. diplomatic missions.
Iran has to tread carefully as it encounters its southeastern neighbor’s more robust international stance.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has engaged in risk-taking behavior towards Pakistan before,” said Farzan Sabet, an Iran expert at the Geneva Graduate Institute, but it has taken a more restrained stance toward Pakistan now, even if it acts against the Houthis.
That reflects a broader effort to avoid widening the conflict in a disadvantageous way, Sabet told MBN. “For the time being, Tehran would prefer not to open another front against adversaries that can do significant damage to it, like Israel or Pakistan,” he said.
Backfilling U.S. Security
Experts say Pakistan’s expanding security role is partly enabled by Washington’s effort to reduce its military commitments in the Middle East. Asfandyar Mir, a South Asia analyst at the Stimson Center in Washington, sees an opening for Islamabad as the Gulf becomes less secure.
“If Pakistan can step up in a way that backfills some of the security roles that the U.S. can offload or not take on additional responsibilities, it will be a welcome development,” he told MBN.
Mir said Islamabad is likely to limit defense cooperation beyond its longstanding security relationship with Saudi Arabia, and any expansion of that commitment elsewhere in the Gulf will take time.
“They will fight for the Saudis if Iran attacks the kingdom,” he said, pointing to the longstanding deployment of Pakistani military personnel and assets in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, meets with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in April 2026/Reuters.
Tarzi argues Pakistan could emerge as a complementary security guarantor alongside the United States, now that Tehran has shown it can impose high costs on Gulf Arab states despite decades of U.S. security guarantees.
“By bringing in a second layer, the threat level to Iran will rise if they have their neighbor to the southeast, a nuclear neighbor for that matter, involved,” he said.
Gulf Expectations
Gulf analysts, however, see Pakistan’s role as constrained. In Jeddah, Saudi commentator Khaled M. Batarfi said Riyadh does not see its partnership with Pakistan as an alliance aimed at Iran, but rather “as a defensive partnership aimed at strengthening deterrence and regional stability.”
Pakistan’s economic challenges, its complex relationship with Iran, its ties with both the United States and China, and its rivalry with India all limit the scope of security cooperation, he said.
“Riyadh views Pakistan as an important partner within a diversified security framework — not as a substitute for Saudi Arabia’s own capabilities or its other international partnerships,” Batarfi told MBN.
Gulf states recognize Islamabad’s interest in maintaining workable relations with Tehran while preserving close ties with Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners, Batarfi added.
“Pakistan would be prepared to contribute to Saudi Arabia’s defense if the Kingdom came under direct attack,” he said. “Participation in offensive military operations inside Iran, however, is highly unlikely except under the most extraordinary circumstances.”
In Kuwait, Gulf security scholar Zafer M. Alajmi said officials increasingly see Pakistan as a relatively safe security partner that offers some relief from the country’s exclusive reliance on Washington. He said closer defense ties would be transactional, with Islamabad expecting Kuwaiti investment in energy and infrastructure, as well as employment opportunities for Pakistani workers.
“Any Pakistani commitment would likely be limited to training, air defense, and military equipment, rather than the deployment of large combat forces,” he said.
Still, Alajmi said Kuwait would like to replicate Saudi Arabia’s mutual defense arrangement with Pakistan. “Kuwait wants Pakistan to provide a protective shield against drones and missiles, as well as military assistance that includes air defense systems, fighter aircraft, and armed drones,” he said.
In Washington, Tarzi said Pakistan also sees a larger strategic benefit in expanding its Gulf role. By strengthening its regional influence beyond South Asia, Islamabad hopes to break out of the strategic deadlock with India, whose relations with Pakistan have remained frozen since the May 2025 military confrontation that brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.
“Pakistan most likely is trying to get out of being stuck in a situation of onlylooking east towards India,” he said. “It would rather become a more regional power.”
