The Mecca pact is not just another regional alliance

Executive Director of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.

Riyadh and its neighbours appear increasingly unwilling to tie strategic security to a single guarantor. The alternative is a wider network of partnerships that diversifies options, capabilities, and room for manoeuvre.

Read this way, the pact does not mark the end of the United States-led order. It marks the start of preparation for a more pluralistic one — a system in which regional powers produce security rather than import it. It is, in effect, an insurance policy against a world where the US is less present and less predictable.

The pact has all the potential to jump-start a major transformation of regional security.

Events of the past decade have changed the calculus in the Gulf. The question is no longer the magnitude of American power, but the predictability of its use.

A state can buy tens of billions worth of US weapons, host bases and troops, and cultivate deep ties with Washington — then discover in a crisis that the decision to act is determined by American domestic politics and geopolitical calculations largely unrelated to allied security.

Gulf capitals have now concluded that partnership, however deep, is not an automatic guarantee of protection.

The resulting strategy is straightforward: keep the alliance with Washington, but build options beyond it. This is not a defection from the American camp to the Chinese, Russian, or Turkish one. It is an attempt to move past the logic of camps altogether. It is also a reflection of a region preparing itself for a likely US withdrawal in the future.

The most sensitive dimension of regional security in this scenario concerns the balance of power. If the American role recedes, the danger lies in who may fill the vacuum it leaves behind.

Iran has spent decades building regional influence beyond its borders and continues to direct missiles and drones at Gulf and Arab capitals. Israel has demonstrated military and intelligence superiority that has enabled force projection across the region. At the same time, it continues to pursue occupation and settlement policies and military action against Arab states.

Diminished American weight could leave the region inside an order whose rules are set by two actors alone: Israel and Iran.

The Mecca pact is best understood as an early attempt to build a third pole — a bloc that does not need to fight either power, but one that has enough weight to deny either a monopoly over the region. The objective is not victory. It is the prevention of hegemony.

Iran cannot be written out of the Gulf equation. Turkiye’s ties to Tehran mix cooperation and rivalry; Pakistan shares a long border with Iran and will not open a permanent front. The alliance’s most useful function is therefore deterrence: raising the cost of any attack on a member.

For decades, the Gulf was a security consumer. It bought advanced weapons, hosted foreign forces, and relied on Western-designed intelligence, communications, and protection networks. The model worked in many respects, but carried a structural flaw: final decisions came partly from the outside.

What the Mecca pact could do is accelerate defence localisation. The agreement is meant to go beyond a standard military alliance and build capacity at home.

The pact brings together three regional powers with complementary strengths: Saudi Arabia offers capital, geographic position, political weight, and a substantial defence market; Turkiye contributes an advanced military-industrial base, particularly in drones, missiles, naval platforms, and electronic systems; Pakistan adds a large and experienced military, significant strategic capabilities, and the distinction of being the pact’s only nuclear-armed member.

The pact’s value will be measured in integration: joint air defence, early warning, intelligence, munitions, cyber defence, and a joint command able to function under fire.

Just as important will be defence cooperation that evolves from purchasing Turkish and Pakistani systems to co-producing and co-developing them in Saudi Arabia.

The maritime dimension will also be crucial.

Gulf security no longer begins at the region’s borders. It stretches from the Gulf to the Red Sea and from the Strait of Hormuz to Bab al-Mandeb arteries where the majority of regional energy trade and a significant share of global commerce move.

If the pact matures into organised maritime cooperation, it could underpin arrangements to protect ports, shipping, and energy routes without total dependence on Western fleets. That is precisely the capability the region needs to hedge against future US retrenchment.

The region has never lacked agreements; it has lacked shared political foundations. The Arab coalition in Yemen established in 2015 eventually faltered after divergent views of the war clashed. The Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition, also set up in 2015, assembled an impressive roster of participants but failed to translate numbers into unified capability.

Bringing states together is not the same as aligning their interests.

The Mecca pact could become the first serious building block of a more autonomous regional security order. The outcome will be determined not by defence budgets or membership numbers. It will be determined by the answer to one question: are the signatories genuinely willing to bear the cost of defending one another?

If yes, the region may finally begin building a balance that does not rest entirely on power arriving from across an ocean.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.