Rabat sees the Mecca pact as a bargaining network, not NATO

Summary

In a September 2026 policy brief for the Rabat-based Policy Center for the New South, Ferid Belhaj, a former World Bank vice-president for the Middle East and North Africa, examines the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan on 7 August 2026. Belhaj argues that the agreement borrows the language of NATO's Article 5 but lacks the joint command, joint planning and interoperability that make it credible. The first Strategic Political and Defence Committee, which met in Istanbul on 31 August, agreed to set up a permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia. The author counts this as progress, but also reads it as an admission that credibility still has to be built.

The central evidence in the brief is September's Houthi attacks. Pakistan said on 10 September that no military response under the pact was being discussed. Türkiye first confined itself to condemnation, then said on 19 September that it could help meet Saudi military needs. The author treats this graduated response as proof that alliance commitments kick in step by step through bargaining, not automatically. The US, despite two direct requests for help from the crown prince, did not join in; it provided intelligence support and on 17 September approved a possible $24.3bn sale of 48 F-35s. Belhaj concludes that the US is losing its monopoly in the region far faster than its superiority.

The author stresses that the three countries' threat rankings do not overlap. For Pakistan the primary threat is India; for Türkiye, Russia, Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean; for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen. He recalls that the 1955 Baghdad Pact, later known as CENTO, proved ineffective for the same reason, and that Pakistan's parliament refused to join the Yemen intervention in 2015. In his view, the pact can make sense not as a military bloc but as a network of co-operation on drones, missile defence and joint defence production.