As Donald Trump continued his attacks on Iran earlier this month, a deal that could radically reshape security in the Middle East was quietly being done in Saudi Arabia. On 7 August, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defence agreement, a Nato-style mutual defence pact that states an attack on any one of the group will be considered an attack on all. The timing is significant.
All three countries have been the target of Iranian retaliatory attacks across the Middle East since US-Israeli strikes killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in February. Turkey boasts the second largest army in Nato (second only to the US), while Saudi Arabia is the second-most oil rich nation on the planet. Pakistan is a nuclear power that has also acted as a broker between the US and Iran throughout the ongoing conflict.
But although Trump praised the agreement on Sunday as an example of the countries “finally being able to defend themselves in a more meaningful way”, experts say the agreement marks a major shift in the global world order - away from the US. Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the EU’s European Council on Foreign Relations, says that the realignment can be seen as “a response to the conflict and a way for some of these actors to try and secure themselves”. Israel has recently launched strikes in several countries including Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen and Qatar, according to Acled data analysed by Al Jazeera, as well as continuing attacks in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Tel Aviv’s “hegemonic ambitions” are increasing threat perceptions on the ground, he adds. Trump has also shown no hesitation in threatening to attack his allies, saying he would “bomb the s**t” out of Oman on Monday. Reflecting on the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords signed in 2020 to normalise relations between Arab states and Israel, he explains that the “central weakness of the US vision is that it did not have a place for the Palestinian question.” “It did not have a vision for non-Arab state actors.
This agreement signals a post-Abrahamic regional reordering and represents the failure of the Abrahamic vision but it is still not inherently anti-Israel.” All three countries have expressed a reluctance to normalise relations with Tel Aviv with both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan effectively banning Israeli citizens from entering the country. But despite this, Lovatt believes that the three countries are seeking to find common ground on security issues rather than outright rejecting the US. Signatories to the Abraham Accords, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, have faced backlash in the Arab world for normalising relations with Israel.
While Iran’s proxy network, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Palestine, is transparently the most hostile towards the west, experts say the Mecca group represents a middle ground: seeking partnership with Washington but showing suspicion towards Israeli ambitions in the Middle East. However, the US will be eager to position the announcement as an example of countries sharing the burden of defence with less dependence on Washington - in keeping with Trump’s demands. If they had partnered with Russia or China it would be different.
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