The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, or the Mecca Pact, was signed on Aug.7 by leaders Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The agreement was heavily modeled off NATO’s Article V, asserting that “any armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all.” So are Turkey and Pakistan obliged to take military action now that Saudi Arabia has been attacked by Iran proxies?
Not exactly. The resemblance to Article V may be more cosmetic than structural at this point. The pact has not yet been formally ratified by the legislatures of the signatory states, noted Dr. Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston and co-director of the Middle East Energy Roundtable, pointing also to uncertainty about the specific provisions the agreement contains. He sees the pact as a framework for closer defense and security cooperation rather than a trigger mechanism, noting that synergies among the three signatories may become visible over time.
While the kingdom continues to take hits from Iran and its proxies in Iraq and Yemen, the pact has not produced any military intervention by Pakistan and Turkey, both of which have had less formal defense partnerships with Saudi Arabia for years.
Pakistan is choosing mediation over military intervention, Turkey is choosing capability without commitment.
The signals out of Islamabad have been contradictory. Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif initially warned that any attack on Saudi Arabia could activate the Mecca Defense Alliance. Within a day, Islamabad walked that back: on Sept. 10, Pakistan said it was not considering an immediate military response under the pact and would act when the “time comes.” The next day, Khan was even more direct, telling Reuters that no military response to the Houthi attacks was currently under discussion.
For its part, the Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks but offered no indication that Turkey would act in response to them.
Member Hesitations
Pakistan’s cautious stance is not new. In 2015, its parliament rejected a proposal to join a Saudi-led coalition battling Yemen’s Houthi rebels. A decade later, with Pakistan still managing an internal militancy, the incentives to avoid an open-ended commitment to fighting in Yemen are as strong as ever.
And now there is a more immediate reason for Pakistan’s caution: its direct neighbor, Iran. Islamabad has spent the past year seeking to balance its role as Riyadh’s defense partner with its efforts to maintain a channel to Tehran. Pakistani officials worry the Houthi threat could draw Islamabad into a wider war, particularly because between 8,000 and 13,000 Pakistani soldiers are already deployed in Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen.
Islamabad has positioned itself as a mediator, warning Iran to rein in its Houthi allies and holding talks with Iranian officials on de-escalation. Reuters quoted a Pakistani official saying Islamabad wants to keep a low profile because the stakes are high and it does not want to damage relations with Iran.
Turkey’s hesitation to help the kingdom against the Houthi attacks raises more questions. Turkey is in a geopolitically strategic position. The country maintains a military presence in the Horn of Africa, including its largest overseas military facility in Somalia. Ankara signed a defense agreement with Mogadishu in 2024 that includes naval capacity-building.
Turkey’s ambitions help explain both its reach in the region and its reluctance to take action on Saudi Arabia’s behalf. Ulrichsen noted that the Mecca Pact brings together three regional “middle powers” facing common security challenges. It is intended to supplement rather than replace existing security and defense arrangements. That puts it in line with Ankara’s pursuit of greater regional influence without accepting automatic military obligations.
The United States has also demonstrated the limits of its own commitment to Saudi military requests. On Thursday evening, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called President Donald Trump twice, Axios reported, urging him to launch strikes against the Houthis. Trump declined, with a U.S. official saying Washington was focused on protecting core national security interests, including freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, while empowering regional partners to manage regional security challenges. U.S. officials also met Houthi representatives in Oman, according to Reuters, days after the group seized a strategic stretch of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. The meeting, held at the U.S. Embassy in Muscat and reportedly facilitated in part by Oman, underscores Washington’s preference for managing the threat without being drawn directly into a Yemen war.
The Red Sea Power Grab
As the war in Iran has exposed the volatility of the Strait of Hormuz, the pattern is amping up in the Bab al Mandeb. By Sept. 11, the Houthis had seized the Red Sea port of Mokha and Perim Island; on Sept. 14, they captured the Greater and Lesser Hanish islands, extending their control toward the African coast. Separately, a Sept. 10 drone strike shut Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline, which Riyadh attributed to Iran-aligned Iraqi militias rather than the Houthis.
A defense pact tells you what its signatories will do when tested.
Saudi Arabia is therefore facing attacks from two Iran-aligned actors while the Mecca Pact remains inactive. The Houthi threat itself is not new, Ulrichsen said. What has changed is the environment: The truce that had held since 2022 has broken down, while the Houthis now possess more advanced drones and weaponry than during their post-2015 war with Saudi Arabia. The alliance is therefore confronting an old threat in a more dangerous form.
None of this means the Mecca Pact is dead on arrival. Its value may become visible over time, particularly if it develops into a more institutionalized security framework. But so far, Pakistan is choosing mediation over military intervention, Turkey is choosing capability without commitment, and Saudi Arabia turned to Washington before invoking the agreement it signed in Mecca.
A defense pact tells you what its signatories will do when tested. So far, the Mecca Pact has revealed more clearly what each member will not do.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MBN’s editorial stance.
