Not long ago, a Gulf state signing a regional defense pact that does not involve the US would have been seen in Washington as diplomatic theater — a reluctant hedge, even a strategic miscalculation, but nothing more. That era is coming to an end.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement, pledging that an attack on one is an attack on all. It brings together the Arab world’s only G20 economy, NATO’s second-largest army and the Muslim world’s only nuclear state through a unique defensive pact. Speculation about the alliance’s real weight resonated in Tel Aviv, Tehran and beyond. However, the reality is that this bold pact, still in its infancy, is more about messaging and deterrence than anything else at this stage.
Much of the agreement’s language is vague, most likely deliberately. What the Makkah Agreement actually is, at this stage, is a message — sent simultaneously to Tehran, Tel Aviv and to Washington itself. The fine print reveals little about the emerging military setup or how it will function. It reads more like a signal flare built into a joint security network. It tells Iran that an attempt to redraw the Gulf’s geography by force will not be tolerated. And it tells Israel — whose airstrike on Doha last year was read by Gulf states as a demonstration of the “Greater Israel” agenda — that a repeat now carries a cost measured in more than words of condemnation.
Reconciliation with Iran remains a distant possibility, if not a prerequisite for regional stability. But since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s appetite for grabbing Palestinian and Arab territory has grown unchecked, convincing the signatories that a defiant Israel — one on the verge of burying the two-state solution for good — must now be confronted by key regional players.
Neither Tehran nor Tel Aviv is meant to read the Makkah Agreement and see an army mobilizing. They are meant to read it and recalculate. That is what a warning shot is for.
Tehran and Tel Aviv are not meant to read the agreement and see an army mobilizing. They are meant to read it and recalculate
Osama Al-Sharif
The numbers explain why Riyadh felt the warning was overdue. Since Feb. 28, when American and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader and reignited an open-ended war that is now six months old, the bill has run past $37 billion. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates the US has burned through roughly two-thirds of its Patriot interceptor stockpile and about half its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense supply. Interceptors have already been pulled from Ukraine, Japan and South Korea and redirected to the Gulf.
But this is more than a question of finite munitions. It is also about how the US has miscalculated the outcome of its war of choice and how President Donald Trump has been goaded to wage war by a self-serving Benjamin Netanyahu.
Iranian strikes reached far beyond military targets, hitting civilian infrastructure across the Gulf — airports, fuel facilities and financial districts — even as Tehran insisted it was aiming only at military installations. The World Bank cut its 2026 Gulf growth forecast from 4.4 percent to 1.3 percent.
For three decades, the US security umbrella over the Gulf was treated as a fixture, never in doubt — an article of faith rather than a choice. This war has exposed it as a liability. Iranian officials openly cited US military bases in the Gulf as justification for striking their neighbors.
That is the genuine conviction driving Riyadh, which views the current war as a precursor of what could follow, both strategically and geopolitically. The agreement reflects a historical reading of the region that runs deeper than any specific calculation about Iranian or Israeli intent: that after Afghanistan, after Iraq and now after Iran, Washington’s hunger for open-ended military entanglement in the Middle East has reached its limit and a war-weary American public and administration will look for the exit the moment this conflict allows one.
Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan — all close US allies — are not waiting to find out when that will happen. They are building the architecture for the day it does.
Simplistic labels like “an Islamic NATO” or a “Sunni pact” miss what makes this significant. This is three hedges stitched into one strategic entity, preparing for a post-Iran war region — one likely to leave the Gulf states more vulnerable and less safe than before, even as it emboldens both Iran and Israel. The bottom line: the region can no longer outsource its security when what was billed as a premium US insurance policy has proven flawed.
Regardless of how this war ends, the pressure will mount to learn the lessons of a US-led military campaign that has gone awry
Osama Al-Sharif
The new pact should be seen as another block laid into the foundations of an emerging regional security architecture, one that can be expanded in the future. Saudi Arabia already has a mutual defense pact with Pakistan from September 2025 and a Gulf Cooperation Council framework dating to 2000. Shortly before the Makkah event, Saudi Arabia convened a 43-nation naval coalition in Riyadh aimed at protecting international maritime navigation. That reflects a deep understanding of what regional security should now look like.
None of this amounts to a rupture with Washington and it should not be read as one. All three signatories remain close American allies and none has signaled a desire to change that. What has changed is the definition of that relationship from a security angle. The new rationale is not that America should leave — it is that the region can no longer afford to wait and see whether America stays or if it is in the region’s interest that it does so.
That shift in posture arrives just as Israel and the US approach elections that could redefine each country’s approach to the Middle East. Netanyahu is campaigning on never-ending wars and the rejection of a Palestinian state to secure another term. Trump’s Republican Party is likely to lose the House of Representatives, with the Iran war and economic strain both driving voters away.
Looking further ahead, to 2028, the next US president — from either party — will almost certainly reset America’s ties with Israel and the wider region around a foreign policy doctrine that puts American interests first, with restrictions on foreign military adventures. The Iran war will be remembered as the harbinger of that inward-looking policy.
Riyadh can read the polls and decode the visceral shifts underway inside the US, both at the grassroots and at the decision-making level.
Washington is not expected to pack up and leave the region anytime soon. But regardless of how this war ends, the pressure will mount to learn the lessons of a US-led military campaign that has gone awry. Washington will simply change what it is willing to be there for: a partner and an ally, but no longer necessarily entrenched.
The Makkah Agreement is the sound of these countries quietly building the architecture for the day the call to Washington goes unanswered.
Reference Link:- https://www.arabnews.com/node/2654245