On Wednesday, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a ‘Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement’ in Riyadh, between visiting Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. The agreement came about ten days after the 9 September Israeli airstrike on Qatar, which targeted visiting Hamas leaders.
The timing of the agreement has created the two broad impressions in Pakistan. One is that Riyadh, fearful of Israeli aggression and no longer trusting the United States to protect its allies, has started to look toward Pakistan for protection. And two, that this agreement could lead to a broader security pact in which Pakistan may become a guarantor of Middle Eastern peace.
Such assumptions, of course, rest on Rawalpindi’s projections of confidence after its recent near-war with India, especially with US President Donald Trump making statements about “five jets” being shot down.
Three points, however, are worth keeping in mind. First, Pakistan has helped the Saudi monarchy for decades. Second, this isn’t really about Israel but Iran. And third, this move likely has Washington’s tacit approval. I’ll take up each of these in turn.
Old links with Pakistan
In a sense, there is nothing new about the agreement, as Pakistan has been providing division-strength military security to Riyadh since the 1980s. What is new, however, is the term ‘strategic’, which is supposedly linked to nuclear security—something Riyadh has long desired from Islamabad.
Pakistan, in fact, has secured the Saudi monarchy since the 1960s, when, according to declassified British National Archives data, a visiting General Sher Ali Khan Pataudi highlighted to the Saudis the arrogance of their then Egyptian trainers and encouraged them to consider Pakistan’s military instead. A small unit was then dispatched under General Ayub Khan, who was asked by the Saudis to withdraw Ahmadiyya officers from his contingent, to which he complied.
The need for a greater Pakistani military presence increased further with the siege of Mecca in 1979. During this Wahhabi domestic insurgency, a group of Saudis forcibly took over the Holy Mosque with the intent to change the ruling regime. It was a major event that completely shook the Saudi monarchy and still haunts it to this day. The French played a critical role in the final operation to free the Holy Kaaba. But many Pakistanis later claimed their army had played a central part, which was a narrative that persisted partly because Saudi Arabia was reluctant to highlight non-Muslim involvement in Mecca.
The Siege of Mecca also instilled a fear of involving officers and soldiers from Jordan or Egypt—especially the former, as the Jordanian monarchy could lay claim to being the rightful heirs to the holy cities. It was also after this episode that King Fahd adopted the title ‘Khadim ul Haramain us-Sharifain’ (servants and protectors of the holy cities), to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s cachet in the Muslim world. To summarise, this gave Pakistan considerable leverage. So much so that when General Zia-ul-Haq refused to exclude Shia officers from his contingent, Riyadh did not insist.
Pakistan has continued to perform this task, with a couple of minor problems in between. In 1991, then Army Chief General Aslam Beg refused to send Pakistani troops as part of the American war against Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait. A compromise was eventually reached when the Pakistan Army agreed to secure only Saudi borders and not participate in any other part of the operation. A second issue arose in 2015, when Pakistan’s Parliament voted for a resolution against sending troops to support Saudi Arabia in Yemen. This took the security relationship down a few notches, as the Pakistan Army, under the garb of parliamentary consensus, decided not to indulge Muhammad bin Salman’s war ambitions.
A solution, however, was soon found when Pakistan’s retiring army chief, General Raheel Sharif, was made commander-in-chief of a Saudi counter-terrorism force. Since then, the general has been in Riyadh, taking care of the security of the royalty.
A more critical area where Pakistan was standoffish toward Saudi Arabia—but not entirely by choice—was nuclear security. After Rawalpindi was caught with its pants down, supplying nuclear know-how to countries such as Iran, Libya, and North Korea, General Pervez Musharraf was severely admonished. This episode also meant that he could not entertain Riyadh without a nod from the US. This despite the special treatment given to the Saudis: in 1999, just months after Pakistan’s nuclear tests, Saudi Defence Minister Sultan bin Abdelaziz al-Saud was given a tour of the Kahuta Research Laboratories
Not surprisingly, the general Saudi public has looked up to Pakistan as a kuvah (power), as some Saudi friends told me. A general understanding has been that Riyadh has invested in Pakistan’s nuclear programme, with the expectation of calling on it if required, especially if Iran ever manages to acquire nuclear weapons.
Iran is the real concern, not Israel
This brings me to my second point: the recently signed Pakistan-Saudi defence agreement has little to do with a broader Middle East order or Israel. Rather, it is aimed at building Saudi capacity vis-à-vis Iran. The agreement should be evaluated in the context of a series of recent attacks, starting with the Israeli-American strikes on Iran that sought to destroy its nuclear capability.
Though major damage was inflicted, there is serious doubt that the nuclear weapons programme and its capacity have been eliminated. From the Israeli and American perspective, a downgrade of capability is not sufficient security that Tehran will not push back. What the attack did, however, was make Iran’s capacity less opaque, thus putting greater pressure on Saudi Arabia to acquire a capability for its own security, or one that would place it on par with Iran, if not further ahead in the queue.
It is worth noting that Saudia does not really have a threat from Israel. Despite mentioning Palestine in every Friday prayer in the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, Riyadh has never undertaken any activity to negatively excite Tel Aviv. Unlike Qatar, it was not even involved in talks with groups like Hamas or Hezbollah. But the Israeli attack on Qatar has been used as an umbrella for the acquisition of nuclear security. In the words of Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khwaja Asif, “What we have, and the capabilities we possess, will be made available to (Saudi Arabia) according to this agreement.”
This is the key quote from Defense Minister Asif on Geo (via AP) that nuclear capabilities are one of the capabilities covered by the Saudi-Pak deal. https://t.co/mox9O58WXH pic.twitter.com/anL95kgzmd
— Christopher Clary (@clary_co) September 19, 2025
Despite the nuts and bolts of the agreement not being publicly available, and with Pakistan’s Parliament kept in the dark, the details are likely to be interesting. It is worth wondering whether Pakistan will station a limited part of its strategic force handling nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia, or, as American political scientist Bruce Riedel suggested in 2011, whether Pakistan will provide Riyadh with airborne cruise missiles instead of ballistic missiles that could make Tel Aviv anxious.
An airborne option would mean that any nuclear warhead or nuclear-tipped missile would be fitted to American aircraft in the Saudi Air Force inventory, which leads me to my third point.
US-blessed proliferation?
This agreement is not about Pakistan and Saudi Arabia looking Trump in the eye or Riyadh turning away from Washington. If anything, it can be surmised that the agreement was made with a fair amount of consultation with the Americans, who would have allowed Pakistan this level of proliferation. This could be termed as kosher proliferation.
The agreement may have conceivably come out of Washington’s willingness to outsource the security of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, just as the British had done after 1947. Trump, in fact, as a credible source working on strategic matters claimed to me, is looking to replace his own troops with someone he could depend on militarily. It is worth noting that Pakistan’s recent conflict with India seems to have raised the former’s value internationally. Not to forget that Rawalpindi has always been more willing to put its boots on the ground in the Middle East than New Delhi.
More immediately, the Israeli attack in Qatar, as Israeli writer Barak Ravid recently wrote, seems to have made the US and the West in general convinced of Netanyahu’s increased recklessness and role as a “destabilising” force in a region they need stable and on their side.
The West cannot afford to lose the Middle East. It is therefore in the realm of possibility that they gave a nod for a security umbrella that also serves as a gentle signal to Tel Aviv. This is not to suggest there is a high possibility of a confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Tel Aviv, or between Islamabad and Tel Aviv. Such a conflict, if it ever happened, would draw most Western militaries, including the US, to Israel’s side rather than Pakistan’s.
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An evolving security story
As far as Riyadh versus Tel Aviv are concerned, this agreement performs an additional task of positive narrative-building both in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where sizeable populations are thrilled by the thought of a Muslim ummah or of fighting Israel. For the Saudi monarchy, this signals a level of readiness to fight in case of a threat from Israel. In Pakistan, it provides the satisfaction that the country has now acquired a bigger role in defending the Muslim world, especially the holy land, and is ready to fight the Jewish state.
Of course, for now, no one is talking about the complexities that may arise from the agreement—such as the perception in Beijing, which finds itself watching a qualitative escalation between Tehran and Riyadh, both of which it has good ties with. Any complication in the region could make matters difficult for China. Not to forget the signals received by Tehran—it saw its next-door neighbour fail to respond to an Israeli attack on Iran, but then respond in the case of what was not even a direct threat to Saudi Arabia. Not that Iran is in a position right now to escalate tensions with Pakistan, but this is bound to cast shadows of doubt on bilateral ties.
The least that can be said is that the strategic mutual defence agreement is a major milestone for both the region and Pakistan. It is now an evolving story in which all sides will gradually learn how deterrence may function in the Middle East with subcontracted strategic security.
Ayesha Siddiqa is a senior fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.