A defence agreement signed this week between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan reflects a profound shift in political and strategic thinking. Primarily precipitated by the dangerous repercussions of Israel’s war on Gaza, this shift has occurred across the vast geopolitical space extending from South Asia to westernmost North Africa.
Observers were taken by surprise, on 17 September, when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan signed a “Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement” in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
This was about a week after the Israeli airstrike on Doha, targeting leaders of the Palestinian Hamas movement. The resistance leaders had assembled in the Qatari capital to discuss US proposals for a ceasefire in Gaza, a plan now completely obliterated, after two years of Israeli aggression.
According to Agence France-Presse, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told a local radio station that, under the new agreement, his country’s nuclear programme would be available to Saudi Arabia if needed. The Economist noted that observers and Pakistani diplomats have often remarked in recent years that Saudi Arabia could benefit from the “Pakistani nuclear umbrella,” especially amid growing concerns over the Iranian nuclear programme.
Qatar and Egypt – with US support – have been mediating between Israel and Hamas. They succeeded in brokering two ceasefire agreements in Gaza, which enabled the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian political prisoners. This is why the attack against Doha is so widely seen as an attack on diplomacy, rather than just Hamas. Killing envoys flies in the face of the most basic norms and principles of international political and diplomatic practice.
Agreements such as the one just concluded between Islamabad and Riyadh do not occur overnight. They are generally rooted in cumulative groundwork carefully laid out by two countries over many years. According to the Saudi state news agency (SPA), the mutual defence agreement “stems from a historic partnership that goes back nearly eight decades… and is based on bonds of brotherhood and Islamic solidarity, shared strategic interests, and close defence cooperation between the two countries.”
Riyadh and Islamabad began to build their ties following Pakistan’s independence in 1947. The first landmark was the 1951 Treaty of Friendship, a cooperation agreement that initially focused on the protection of Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Medina. In the 1960s, Pakistani forces were deployed to Saudi Arabia, against the backdrop of concerns related to Egyptian intervention in the Civil War in Yemen at the time. Saudi-Pakistani relations deepened following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when tension between Riyadh and Tehran escalated sharply.
During Operation Desert Storm (1990–1991), Pakistan deployed a military division in Saudi Arabia, tasked with protecting the holy sites. In 2016, Pakistan joined the Saudi-led Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT). By 2018, more than 1,000 Pakistani officers were in Saudi Arabia in military training or advisory capacities. For decades before this, thousands of Saudi officers received training in Pakistan.
The closeness of Pakistani-Saudi ties is reflected demographically: more than 2.5 million Pakistani nationals live in Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh, for its part, has offered Islamabad financial assistance and concessional oil grants, enabling it to weather recurring economic crises. Such economic support alongside military funding helped Pakistan build significant military capabilities. In fact, the Western media have cited European and American diplomats describing Saudi Arabia as a “silent financier” of Pakistan’s nuclear programme.
Pakistan is the only Muslim-majority nuclear power. It has an arsenal of more than 170 warheads and a variety of delivery systems, according to the Arab Defence online news portal, on track to becoming one of the five strongest nuclear arsenals by around 2030.
Saudi Arabia said it is considering increasing its investments in Pakistan to US $25 billion across various sectors while the Saudi Fund for Development is contemplating raising its deposit in Pakistan’s central bank to $2 billion before its renewal deadline. This is in addition to billions’ worth of other Saudi investments in Pakistan’s mining and petrochemical sectors, according to Bloomberg.
Since the Gulf region, under Saudi leadership, became the guarantor of global energy security, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have enjoyed US protection. However, according to The Economist, several significant developments have eroded those countries’ confidence in the US. The first blows came with the Iranian-backed Houthi missile strikes in Saudi Arabia in 2019 and in the UAE in 2022. Neither of these attacks prompted a strong US response.
Nor has the United States offered Saudi Arabia a nuclear umbrella, whether against Iran or Israel, in contrast to the recently signed Saudi-Pakistani mutual defence agreement. It should be stressed, however, that this agreement is not officially aimed at any particular country. Washington has certainly done nothing to compel the far-right government in Israel to cease its genocidal assault on Gaza. Indeed, it used its veto in the Security Council to allow the slaughter to continue, even as the civilian death toll exceeded 65,000, and the number of wounded 160,000, with 90 per cent of residential and government buildings destroyed, and the UN officially declaring a famine in the enclave after months of an inhuman blockade.
Having led the Arab coalition’s war against the Houthis in Yemen, Saudi Arabia does not wish to repeat that experience regardless of the political context. Meanwhile, Pakistan and India recently went face-to-face in a four-day military confrontation in which the two nuclear powers exchanged drone and missile strikes.
The crisis began with an attack on tourists in India during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Saudi Arabia last April, forcing him to cut short his trip to Riyadh. New Delhi blamed Islamabad for the attack, and although Pakistan denied any connection with the incident, tensions escalated until fighting broke out a month later.
The two countries have fought several wars, the first in 1946–1947 upon Pakistan’s secession from India, and again in 1960 and 1971, not to mention numerous border clashes, most notably the two-month Kargil battle in 1999, which preceded the military coup that brought General Pervez Musharraf to power.
It is believed that Saudi Arabia played a key role in defusing the latest Indian-Pakistani conflict. Saudi Arabia is also a major supplier of oil to India. It is the third largest exporter of crude to the country according to India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and India’s rapidly-growing economy depends on this supply to meet its energy needs.
Will the Saudi-Pakistani mutual defence agreement push India towards closer ties with Israel? The possibility cannot be discounted. But New Delhi is currently more preoccupied with the tariffs Washington has imposed on Indian exports to the US, even though Prime Minister Modi regards himself as a close friend of Donald Trump’s and their respective administrations share a far-right ideological orientation.
At the same time, New Delhi has other crucial strategic factors to consider, not least the various dynamics of the emerging Russian-Chinese rapprochement, and India’s connection to both countries via BRICS.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has not been Pakistan’s only Arab supporter. Other GCC states have helped finance Pakistan’s Defence Ministry for decades. This raises the question of whether other countries might eventually join the mutual defence agreement, giving it greater scope and strength.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 25 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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