Will Pakistan-Saudi-Turkiye alliance actually create a new regional order?

It was a historic announcement. On Friday, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a mutual defence pact , building on a similar agreement between Riyadh and Islamabad last year.

But the Mecca Joint Defence Pact, as the agreement is known, has raised questions about the shifting power dynamics in the Middle East region.

Experts have speculated that the deal may mark the beginning of a wider regional alliance that sits between Israel and Iran, wary of both.

While the signatories seek to project a message of strength and unity in the face of regional threats, they have also been cautious about framing the pact as a deterrent.

Analysts note that the three countries have been cautious not to antagonise regional adversaries. It remains unclear the extent to which the pact would force its members to defend their alliance partners.

“We haven’t seen the Mecca declaration yet. We believe it says an attack on one should be considered an attack on all — and ‘should be’ is the operative phrase because that does not mean ‘necessarily’,” Harlan Ullman, the chairman of the Killowen Group advisory firm, told Al Jazeera.

The threats are not distant. Pakistan has been engaged in a border conflict with Afghanistan since February, and it exchanged fire for several days with fellow nuclear power India in May 2025.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has repeatedly come under attack from Iran and its allies since the outbreak of the United States-Israeli war against Iran in late February.