On 17 September 2025, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a ‘strategic mutual defence’ pact, pledging to support one another should either face aggression from a third party. The deal represents a significant shift in the strategic landscape of the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, a ‘vital U.S. partner,’ no longer looking exclusively on Washington for its defence guarantees. Few further details have been made public regarding the agreement, but both sides certainly made the decision with a view to the war in Gaza, prior to its conclusion. At the same time, Riyadh and Islamabad each bring their own regional tensions under the agreement’s purview, which could see it called into action sooner rather than later. Major questions also remain about the pact’s potential nuclear dimensions, with neither side in any hurry to dispel the notion that Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent now extends deep into the Middle East. At the very least, the arrangement raises concerns about nuclear proliferation in the region.
For Riyadh, this defence pact achieves two interconnected objectives. Previously, Saudi Arabia’s route to nuclear protection seemed linked to the U.S. and eventual normalisation with Israel. Events of the past two years have evidently set any such agreement back years. Not only does this pact with Pakistan seemingly bring Saudi Arabia under the South Asian country’s nuclear umbrella, but it also stands as a deterrent for Israel. At the time of its signing, Israel had already conducted military operations within the borders of Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Qatar. For Riyadh, strikes on Doha would have been the most concerning, especially as the U.S. did little more than issue verbal condemnation for an attack on a major non-NATO ally. The lack of response from Washington evidently prompted Riyadh to urgently recalculate, or at the very least diversify, its global alliances, opening the door for Islamabad to enter the frame.
In many ways, Pakistan is the most logical option for Saudi Arabia’s new security partner and nuclear guarantor. Since the war in Gaza began, Pakistan was unequivocal in its opposition towards Israel, repeatedly voicing its discontent at military action taken by the IDF, both in Gaza and elsewhere. Similarly, Pakistan has used its platform at the UN to propose the creation of an Arab-Islamic task force intended to push back against Israel. For Islamabad, such an initiative would go someways towards realising its long-term ambitions of adopting a greater role in the Middle East and the Islamic world more broadly. Reaching an agreement on a mutual defence pact with Saudi Arabia could mark the first step in establishing this broader defence organisation with allies in the Muslim world.
However, the Saudi-Pakistan pact is the culmination of decades of bilateral relations, more so than it is the first act in establishing an Islamic NATO. In this time, Islamabad has found itself dependent on Riyadh at various points to revive its struggling economy in the face of sanctions and global isolation. Amid a nuclear arms race with India in the late 1990s, Saudi Arabia offered support to Pakistan pre-empting U.S. sanctions that would be imposed following a nuclear weapons test. When the U.S. blocked private loans and cut off trade credits for Pakistan in the wake of its tests on 28 May 1998, Riyadh provided 50,000 barrels of oil per day to alleviate the financial strain that had been placed on Islamabad. The Pakistani ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time, Khalid Mahmood, has since suggested that this support from the Saudi royals, worth nearly three and a half billion dollars, emboldened Pakistan to conduct a second test two days later.
This partnership has now come full circle. Saudi Arabia hedged its bets in 1998, supporting Pakistan in direct contradiction to its purported commitment to nuclear non-proliferation. Now it is reaping the rewards. Riyadh is not the sole beneficiary of the deal, however, and this development arrives at a pivotal moment for Islamabad. Having already seemingly mended ties with the U.S. under the second Trump administration, Pakistan is attempting to reduce its over-reliance upon China. This makes a military agreement with Saudi Arabia especially significant, considering the recent conflict with India and the fact that Pakistan has received no such assurances in its ‘all-weather’ friendship with China. Pakistan’s ailing economy will also see the benefits of this upgraded partnership, as Saudi Arabia seeks to invest in Pakistan’s Reko Diq mining project. Islamabad will enjoy greater energy and economic security as a result of this military arrangement.
Iran was likely on alert as news of this pact began to emerge from Saudi Arabia in the middle of September. Just over a week after Riyadh and Islamabad came to their agreement, the UN reimposed economic and military sanctions on Tehran after it failed to fulfil commitments on its own nuclear programme. Yet, if Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian was troubled about the status of his country’s nuclear programme, in light of long-time rival Saudi Arabia’s new nuclear deterrent, he showed no indication of it when addressing the deal. Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Pezeshkian welcomed the agreement, calling it the ‘beginning of a comprehensive regional security system.’ Privately, however, there will be a degree of wariness in Tehran.
In some ways, Iran is the other shared strategic adversary of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, having traded missile strikes with the former at the start of last year and sharing decades-old hostilities with the latter that have only recently began to cool. Yet, Iran’s relations with Pakistan overcame the sudden escalation in January 2024, and its rapprochement with Saudi Arabia has proved resilient. At most, therefore, Iran is only a secondary consideration, and Israel’s role as a key motivating factor behind this pact must not be diminished.
As Pakistan is afforded more importance in the Middle East, there will be growing concerns in the U.S. over nuclear proliferation in an increasingly volatile region. There is also the possibility that Israel begins to view Pakistan as a more tangible threat to its security and survival. The two countries have been no strangers to confrontation within the confines of the UN, however, until now, there have been no suggestions of either side taking escalatory steps against the other. In the short term, Israel may seek to deepen its already strong relations with India to counterbalance Pakistan’s growing stature in the Middle East, and warn Islamabad against further, provocative posturing.
Fortunately, however, Trump’s proposed peace plan for Gaza has come at the right time, with the ceasefire reducing regional tensions at least in the short term. Although, the Saudi–Pakistan defence pact may mark a new axis of cooperation, it also reopens the nuclear question that has long haunted the West and now risks bleeding into the Middle East. For all of Riyadh’s strategic hedging and Islamabad’s search for prestige, the implications for nuclear proliferation are profound and potentially destabilising. Israel has demonstrated repeatedly that it will act pre-emptively when faced with what it views as existential threats, and there is little that can be done to deter it from doing so again if it perceives Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella extending toward the Arabian Peninsula. The coming years will determine whether this pact becomes a stabilising deterrent or the first spark in a dangerous new chapter of regional brinkmanship.
[Photo by Prime Minister’s Office, Pakistan]
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
Marcus Andreopoulos is a Senior Research Fellow at the international policy assessment group, the Asia-Pacific Foundation, and a Subject Matter Expert with the Global Threats Advisory Group at NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. Marcus is currently pursuing a PhD in international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
