The Mecca Defence Pact…a new NATO?

Yesterday, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed an agreement which deserves considerably more attention than another Middle Eastern summit normally receives. Under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, an armed attack on any one of the three countries is to be regarded as an attack on all three. In other words, three important regional powers have created a collective-defence commitment extending from the eastern Mediterranean through the Gulf towards South Asia. 

At first glance, it is tempting to call this an Islamic NATO. I think that is both too dramatic and not nearly interesting enough.

It is too dramatic because NATO is much more than a sentence in a treaty saying that an attack on one is an attack on all. NATO has an integrated military command structure, decades of joint planning, extensive interoperability and, ultimately, American military and nuclear power sitting behind it. We do not yet know how an attack on one of the Mecca signatories would work in practice, how military decisions would be made, or how far each government would actually be prepared to go in a crisis.

But calling it an Islamic NATO also misses what may be genuinely significant about the agreement. The really interesting question is not whether Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey have created another NATO. It is why three countries which already have extensive relationships with the United States have decided that they need another security arrangement at all.

And once we ask that question, the Mecca agreement becomes part of a much larger story about the changing international system.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had already signed a mutual-defence agreement in September 2025. The relationship intensified dramatically during the subsequent regional crisis, with Pakistan deploying thousands of troops, fighter aircraft and air-defence capabilities to Saudi Arabia while simultaneously acting as an intermediary with Iran. Turkey had been discussing joining the arrangement for months before yesterday’s agreement formalised the tripartite structure. 

Saudi Arabia therefore appears to be doing something increasingly characteristic of important middle powers. It is not necessarily abandoning its traditional security partner. It is acquiring alternatives.

For decades the basic architecture of Gulf security was remarkably straightforward. However complicated the politics became, the United States ultimately possessed overwhelming military power and acted as the external guarantor of the regional order. Saudi Arabia bought enormous quantities of American weapons, hosted or cooperated with American forces and existed within a broadly American security system.

Yet reliance on a single guarantor creates a rather obvious vulnerability. What happens if the guarantor’s interests change?

For Saudi Arabia that question ceased to be theoretical some time ago. The limited American response to the attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure in 2019 raised questions in Riyadh about how automatic American protection really was. Chatham House has argued that subsequent regional events reinforced the incentive for Saudi Arabia and other states to diversify their security relationships rather than simply assume Washington would always intervene on their behalf. 

The Mecca agreement can therefore be understood partly as an insurance policy.

That distinction matters. If I insure my house with two companies rather than one, I have not necessarily decided that I hate the first insurance company. I have decided that depending entirely upon it creates a risk.

And this is where Turkey becomes fascinating.

Turkey is not drifting somewhere on the margins of the Western alliance. It possesses one of NATO’s largest armed forces and has been a member of the alliance since 1952. Yet a NATO state has now simultaneously entered a separate mutual-defence agreement with two states which are outside NATO.

There is no contradiction in international law which prevents this. Nor does the Mecca agreement somehow extend NATO’s Article 5 guarantee to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. If Saudi Arabia were attacked, Turkey’s obligations under the Mecca agreement would not magically oblige the United States, Britain or France to go to war.

Politically, however, something interesting has happened.

Turkey now sits inside overlapping security systems.

For most of the Cold War we became accustomed to thinking about international politics as a series of boxes. A country belonged to the Western bloc or the Soviet bloc. Turkey was NATO. Poland was Warsaw Pact. Membership told us a great deal about a country’s strategic orientation.

The emerging international system is becoming considerably messier.

Turkey can remain a committed member of NATO while buying Russian S-400 air-defence systems, developing relationships across Central Asia, expanding its influence in Africa, cooperating with Gulf states and now entering a collective-defence arrangement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Ankara has also explored closer engagement with BRICS. Chatham House has described precisely this behaviour as strategic hedging: Turkey is not necessarily choosing a different camp so much as increasing the number of relationships through which it can pursue Turkish interests. 

That distinction may be one of the most important changes in twenty-first-century geopolitics.

We keep asking which side countries are on.

Increasingly, their answer is: why should we have only one?

India provides perhaps the clearest example. It participates in the Quad alongside the United States, Japan and Australia while simultaneously belonging to BRICS with China and Russia. It buys Russian energy and weapons while deepening strategic cooperation with Washington. This can look inconsistent only if we assume that countries are required to organise themselves into ideological blocs.

From Delhi, it can look perfectly consistent. India is on India’s side.

Turkey increasingly behaves similarly.

And Saudi Arabia is learning to do the same.

This is why I think the Mecca agreement becomes much more interesting if we stop looking at it simply through the Middle East and zoom out to the map of Eurasia.

More than a century ago, the British geographer Halford Mackinder attempted something extraordinarily ambitious. He wanted to understand how geography shaped global power.

In his famous 1904 paper, The Geographical Pivot of History, Mackinder argued that technological change was transforming the strategic significance of the enormous Eurasian landmass. The age in which European maritime powers could dominate the world largely through control of the oceans was being challenged by railways, which allowed continental powers to move people, resources and military force across territory on a scale previously impossible.

His ideas subsequently developed into what became known as Heartland Theory.

The simplified version is normally expressed through Mackinder’s later dictum that whoever ruled Eastern Europe could command the Heartland, whoever ruled the Heartland could command what he called the World-Island of Europe, Asia and Africa, and whoever commanded the World-Island could potentially command the world.

Taken literally, this is far too deterministic. Mackinder could not foresee aircraft, nuclear weapons, container shipping, satellites, cyber warfare or drones. Geography does not hand world domination to whichever government happens to control a particular patch of Eurasia.

But underneath the determinism lies an idea which remains remarkably powerful.

Technology changes.

Governments change.

Alliances change.

Geography is rather more stubborn.

Look at the Mecca agreement geographically rather than ideologically.

Turkey sits at one of the world’s great strategic junctions, connecting Europe, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus and the Middle East. Control of the Turkish Straits gives Ankara influence over maritime access between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

Saudi Arabia occupies the Arabian Peninsula between the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, close to some of the world’s most important energy resources and maritime trade routes.

Pakistan sits between South Asia, Central Asia and the Arabian Sea. It borders China, India, Afghanistan and Iran, possesses nuclear weapons and provides China with access towards the Indian Ocean through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Gwadar.

Connect the three on a map and the Mecca agreement begins to look different.

It creates a strategic relationship stretching across the southern approaches to the Eurasian landmass, from the eastern Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea.

And sitting immediately beside this arc is Iran.

Yet there is another map we need to place over Mackinder’s map, because Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are not merely three Muslim states. All three are Sunni-majority states, while Iran is the world’s pre-eminent Shia power.

That does not make the Mecca agreement a Sunni alliance against Shia Iran. Geography, security interests and relations with Washington probably tell us considerably more about why the agreement exists than theology does. Pakistan in particular has compelling reasons to maintain workable relations with Tehran, while Saudi Arabia has spent recent years attempting to reduce rather than intensify direct confrontation with Iran.

But strategic intentions are only half the story. What matters is also how an agreement looks from the other side.

From Tehran, Iran now faces a mutual-defence relationship connecting three Sunni-majority powers to its west, south-west and east. One of them is a member of NATO. Another possesses nuclear weapons. The third possesses extraordinary energy wealth and sits at the centre of the Arab Gulf.

Iranian policymakers do not need to believe that the agreement was created specifically to attack Iran to conclude that their strategic environment has deteriorated.

And here the security dilemma reappears. If Iran responds by deepening its military relationships with Russia, China or Shia-aligned actors across the region, the three Mecca powers can interpret precisely that response as evidence that their new security arrangement was necessary in the first place.

Sectarian identity therefore does not need to cause the geopolitical rivalry to amplify it.

That distinction matters. The Middle East is not divided neatly into Sunni and Shia camps, and treating it as though it were produces terrible analysis. But neither can we pretend that religious identity disappears when governments calculate threats.

Maps of power overlap.

The physical map places Iran between Turkey and Pakistan and opposite Saudi Arabia. The alliance map places Turkey inside NATO. The institutional map places Iran inside BRICS. The nuclear map gives Pakistan a capability none of the others possesses.

The sectarian map places three Sunni-majority powers around the principal Shia power in the international system.

***The remarkable thing about the Mecca Pact is that all of those maps now intersect.***

Instead of merely:

Turkey is in NATO. Iran is in BRICS. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia has oil.

I’d now go:

Turkey is in NATO. Iran is in BRICS. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia has oil. And three Sunni powers have just formed a defence pact around the world’s most powerful Shia state. Coincidence? Perhaps, but geopolitics is what happens when you put all the maps on top of each other.

That makes Iran perhaps the most interesting country not included in the agreement.

The obvious interpretation is that a pact joining Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan creates a new Sunni security alignment directed against Shiite Iran. There is certainly a basis for that interpretation. Saudi-Iranian rivalry has shaped Middle Eastern politics for decades, and the current regional crisis makes Iranian power an unavoidable part of the calculation. Some analysis of the new agreement is already asking explicitly whether it can deter Iran. 

But again, reality is more complicated.

Saudi Arabia has spent recent years trying to manage rather than simply intensify its rivalry with Tehran. Pakistan has maintained important relations with Iran and has simultaneously acted as an intermediary during the recent Iran conflict. Turkey also has every reason to prevent the emergence of an uncontrollable regional war on its borders.

So the agreement need not have been designed simply as an anti-Iranian alliance to have profound consequences for Iran.

Geography does some of the work regardless of intention.

Iran now looks west towards Turkey, south-west towards Saudi Arabia across the Gulf and east towards Pakistan. Three important states surrounding the Iranian strategic environment have entered a mutual-defence relationship.

The Iranian response could therefore take several forms. Tehran could seek accommodation with the new grouping because the costs of confrontation have risen. It could deepen relationships with neighbouring states in an attempt to prevent the agreement acquiring an explicitly anti-Iranian character. Or it could conclude that the strategic environment around it is becoming more threatening and respond by moving still closer to Russia and China.

And that takes us to BRICS.

Iran became a full member of BRICS in 2024 alongside Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates. The significance of that enlargement was not that BRICS suddenly became an anti-Western NATO. It didn’t. BRICS contains countries with dramatically different political systems, interests and relationships with Washington.

Its significance was that the geography and economic weight of the organisation were changing.

The original BRICS concept joined Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Expansion brought the grouping much further into the Middle East. Iran’s membership is particularly significant because Iran occupies one of the great geographical crossroads of Eurasia. It connects the Gulf with Central Asia and the Caucasus while sitting between the Arab world and South Asia.

This matters if we return to Mackinder.

The great geopolitical contest of the twenty-first century may not be a straightforward struggle for territorial control of his Heartland. But the connectivity of Eurasia matters enormously. Pipelines matter. Railways matter. Ports matter. Energy corridors matter. The ability to trade without passing through infrastructure or financial systems controlled by a geopolitical competitor matters.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative makes sense partly in these terms. So does China’s investment in Pakistan. So does Russia’s interest in north-south transport corridors involving Iran. So does the growing interest in trading arrangements which reduce dependence upon Western-controlled financial infrastructure.

BRICS therefore matters not because it has become a coherent military alliance but almost because it hasn’t.

It is an alternative network.

And networks are becoming as important as blocs.

Iran can belong to BRICS with Russia, China and India while negotiating with the United States. India can belong to BRICS while participating in the Quad with America. The United Arab Emirates can deepen relationships with China while maintaining extensive Western security relationships. Turkey can remain in NATO while exploring BRICS engagement and simultaneously signing the Mecca defence agreement.

Even Saudi Arabia’s position illustrates the ambiguity. Riyadh has been courted by BRICS but has been cautious about converting that relationship into an unambiguous geopolitical alignment.

Perhaps we are therefore asking the wrong question when we ask whether BRICS is replacing the West.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey may not want anybody to replace the West.

They may want choices.

For most countries, a multipolar international system offers something a bipolar system does not: bargaining power.

If Washington is your only plausible security partner, Washington has enormous leverage over you. If Washington, Beijing, Ankara, Islamabad, Moscow and others can all provide different combinations of weapons, investment, energy, infrastructure or diplomatic support, you acquire leverage over them.

Strategic autonomy becomes possible because alternatives exist.

This is why I would be cautious about interpreting every new non-Western institution as evidence of an emerging anti-American bloc.

Something subtler may be happening.

The American-led international order is not necessarily being replaced by a rival order. It may instead be becoming less exclusive.

The distinction is enormous.

China does not need Saudi Arabia to become anti-American in order to benefit from greater Chinese influence in Riyadh. Russia does not need Turkey to leave NATO in order to benefit when Ankara acts independently of Washington. BRICS does not need India to become an American adversary in order to limit America’s ability to divide the world neatly into friends and enemies.

From the perspective of these middle powers, refusing to choose may itself be a form of power.

Turkey is especially important because it demonstrates just how far this can go. Ankara can enjoy the deterrent benefits of NATO while developing an independent defence industry and constructing security relationships outside the alliance. Rather than abandoning one geopolitical architecture for another, it can occupy several architectures simultaneously.

Pakistan can do something similar. It has an extraordinarily close strategic relationship with China, a complicated but continuing relationship with the United States, deep ties with Saudi Arabia and now a formal trilateral defence relationship involving Turkey.

Saudi Arabia can maintain its American relationship while improving relations with China, cooperating with Russia through energy politics and seeking additional security through Pakistan and Turkey.

This is not neutrality.

It is diversification.

And there is an economic analogue. A sensible investor rarely puts his entire portfolio into a single asset because dependence upon one source of return creates risk. States increasingly appear to be applying portfolio theory to geopolitics.

The twentieth-century alliance model asked: who is your guarantor?

The emerging model increasingly asks: how many relationships can you maintain without being forced to choose between them?

That does not mean this strategy is risk-free.

Overlapping commitments create ambiguity, and ambiguity can become dangerous very quickly during a crisis.

Suppose Saudi Arabia were attacked by an Iranian-backed actor. At what point would the Mecca agreement require Turkish or Pakistani military intervention? What if Iran itself became directly involved? Turkey would then have obligations under one security arrangement while remaining part of NATO, whose other members might have completely different preferences.

Or imagine a future confrontation involving Pakistan and India. India is a major member of BRICS alongside China and Russia. Pakistan now has a collective-defence relationship with Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Would Riyadh really risk its enormously valuable relationship with India because of a Pakistani conflict? Would Turkey?

Treaties look wonderfully clear until governments have to implement them.

This is why the comparison with NATO has limits. NATO’s credibility developed over decades through institutions, planning, military integration and repeated political reaffirmation. The Mecca agreement has made a very large promise. We do not yet know how much political and military machinery sits behind it.

But promises themselves alter strategic calculations.

Iran now has to take the possibility of Turkish and Pakistani involvement into account when considering a confrontation with Saudi Arabia. India has to consider whether Pakistan’s security relationships have changed. Washington has to consider what Turkey’s participation says about the evolution of its own alliance system.

And China will be watching all of this with considerable interest.

Pakistan is one of China’s closest strategic partners. Saudi Arabia is an increasingly important Chinese economic and energy partner. Turkey occupies precisely the geography through which any serious attempt to increase Eurasian connectivity must pass.

None of this means China created the Mecca agreement or controls it.

That would repeat the old mistake of assuming that middle powers must secretly belong to somebody else’s bloc.

The more interesting possibility is that they are learning to exploit competition between the great powers.

And perhaps this is where Mackinder remains most useful.

His specific predictions matter less than his insistence that we look at the map.

The map tells us why Turkey will always matter disproportionately to its economic size. It tells us why Iran has been strategically important to empires for centuries. It tells us why Pakistan matters simultaneously to China, the Gulf and South Asia. It tells us why Saudi Arabia’s importance extends beyond simply possessing oil.

Political alignments can reverse in a generation. Iran was once one of America’s most important regional partners. China and the Soviet Union went from communist allies to bitter rivals. Turkey spent much of the Cold War as an unequivocal southeastern anchor of the Western alliance.

The mountains, seas, straits and trade routes remained where they were.

That is the useful part of Heartland Theory for the twenty-first century. Not the idea that whoever captures a particular piece of territory automatically rules the world, but the recognition that geography continually creates opportunities and constraints which political leaders cannot wish away.

And when we combine that insight with BRICS and the Mecca agreement, something quite important emerges.

We may be moving away from an international system in which geopolitical alignment is principally about membership of exclusive blocs and towards one in which power comes partly from the ability to participate in multiple networks simultaneously.

BRICS is one network.

NATO is a much more developed military alliance.

The Mecca agreement is another emerging security network.

China’s Belt and Road creates infrastructure networks. American alliances across Europe and Asia create security networks. Energy relationships create another layer altogether.

The same country can occupy several of them.

Which brings us back to Turkey.

Turkey is in NATO.

That fact remains enormously important.

But it no longer tells us everything we need to know about Turkish foreign policy.

Iran is in BRICS.

That doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about Iran either.

Pakistan is closely aligned with China while retaining relationships with America and the Gulf. Saudi Arabia remains deeply connected to the United States while deliberately widening its strategic options.

Perhaps the most important geopolitical divide of the next twenty years will therefore not simply be West against BRICS, or America against China.

It may be between states which possess choices and states which do not.

The more alternative sources of security, capital, energy, technology and diplomatic support a government possesses, the harder it becomes for any single great power to coerce it.

That is why yesterday’s agreement in Mecca matters.

It may prove to be largely symbolic. Collective-defence promises are easy to make when nobody is attacking you, and considerably harder to honour when missiles are actually flying.

But even if the agreement never becomes anything resembling an Islamic NATO, it tells us something important about the direction in which international politics is moving.

Saudi Arabia does not necessarily want to abandon America.

Turkey does not necessarily want to leave NATO.

Pakistan does not want to become merely a Chinese satellite.

They want room to manoeuvre.

And Iran, sitting geographically between many of these emerging relationships, now has to decide whether the changing architecture around it makes accommodation more attractive or alternative partnerships with Russia and China more necessary.

Mackinder would recognise the importance of the geography, although almost everything else would astonish him.

More than a century after he placed Eurasia at the centre of his geopolitical map, the countries around its southern approaches are constructing relationships which cut across the categories through which we have traditionally understood international politics.

The great powers remain enormously important.

But the countries between them are becoming rather better at playing more than one game at once.

Perhaps that is the real significance of the Mecca agreement.

It isn’t that a new bloc has suddenly appeared to challenge the old one.

It is that the age of having to belong exclusively to one bloc may itself be disappearing. ***Which I believe is an amazingly good thing.***

That though,  leaves Washington with a rather uncomfortable question.

What happens to a superpower’s influence when its allies realise they don’t actually have to choose sides?

Your thoughts..?