Islamabad:
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman were one of the world leaders who attended the Arab-Islamic summit in Doha earlier this week. The two leaders met on the sidelines of the rally. The Saudi crown prince, who also has the Prime Minister’s portfolio, told his Pakistani counterpart that he was ready to welcome him in Riyadh in two days.
This raised eyebrows as to the need for Prime Minister Shehbaz to go to Saudi Arabia when he had already met MBS in Doha. At the time, no one, except those at the helm – in Riyadh and Islamabad – knew what was in store. Two days later, there was another surprise.
When the Prime Minister’s plane entered Saudi airspace, it was escorted by the F-15 Jets of the Air Force Saudi. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have a long -standing relationship, but in recent times it has not been common for the Pakistani Prime Minister to obtain this kind of reception.
As he landed in Riyadh and later arrived at the Saudi Palace for the meeting with the Crown Prince, it was obvious that something extraordinary was going to happen. Even before the meeting of the meeting between the two leaders, the messages were relayed to the Islamabad authorities to enlighten all the government’s buildings with the national flags of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Similar orders have been given to the Saudi authorities in Riyadh.
Just before midnight Wednesday, after the meeting between the Prime Minister and the Saudi Crown Prince came the big news.
The Prime Minister and the de facto Saudi sovereign signed a “strategic mutual defense agreement”. The pact has the potential to reshape the regional security dynamics at a time when the Middle East undergoes deep upheavals, according to experts.
Under the agreement, any assault against Islamabad or Riyadh would be considered an attack on both. The two countries can have long-standing defense links, but the last agreement goes beyond the traditional cooperation that the two states have long maintained.
While Riyadh officials stressed that the agreement is not an answer to a single event, the moment makes it difficult to ignore it the backdrop of increasing instability in the region.
Defense ties between the two countries are not new. For decades, Pakistani military coaches were stationed in the kingdom, while Riyadh came with Islamabad during repeated financial crises. What distinguishes the last pact is its formalization of joint deterrence, a clause generally associated with military alliances.
The agreement suggests that the two parties seek to raise their relationship beyond transactional arrangements in a more restrictive security partnership. The optics surrounding the visit of Shehbaz strengthened this message: his plane was escorted by Saudi jets, and the presence of the army chief, Marshal Syed Asim Munnir, underlined the participation of the army in the agreement.
For Islamabad, the agreement signals both opportunities and risks, according to observers. On the one hand, it provides a more in -depth commitment with a rich ally which has been on several occasions as an economic rescue buoy in Pakistan. On the other hand, commitment to joint defense could lead to Pakistan in conflicts far from its borders, which successive governments sought to avoid, in particular after resisting Saudi pressure to join the Yemen war in 2015.
However, Pakistan can also calculate that the growing diversification of Riyadic’s defense, investments in the production of indigenous weapons and closer links with China, could be exploited to its own advantage.
In addition, it is important to note that the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran has helped the cause of Pakistan. In the past, Islamabad was suspicious of standing explicitly with Tehran or Riyadh due to broader implications. In fact, one day before the historical agreement signed between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Ali Larijani, superior assistant of the Iranian supreme chief, met the Saudi crown prince of Riyadh. It is believed that the Saudi chief trusted the Iranian official of the imminent agreement with Pakistan.
Islamabad officials also stressed that after the Iran-Israel war in June, there was a huge good will about Pakistan in Tehran. Therefore, they were of the opinion that the Pakistani-Saudi defense pact would not disturb Iran.
Geo-strategic experts say that Pakistan’s strategic capacity is focused on India and not to achieve religious or ideological objectives.
They also say that neither Pakistan nor KSA have aggressive ambitions against any country; Consequently, any confusion created in this regard is based on hypotheses with malicious objectives.
The defense pact will also revive the ancient traditional links between the two countries. In recent years, Saudi Arabia seems to have moved away from Pakistan and came closer to India. There will now be a strategic change in favor of Pakistan because Riyadh would be more receptive to Islamabad’s concerns. Consequently, it is not surprising that India quickly reacted to the Pak-Saudi pact, insisting that he studies his implications for the region.
At a broader level, the Pact highlights how the Middle East states recalibrating their alliances in the midst of the American engagement of change in the region. With Washington increasingly reluctant to act as a Gulf safety guarantor, Riyad seems determined to make alternative mechanisms to protect his interests.
By aligning with Pakistan in such an explicit defense framework, Saudi Arabia draws not only from the vast labor and the military expertise of Islamabad, but also sends a signal to the allies and adversaries that it extends its safety umbrella.
Although the real test of the agreement will only come in the event of a crisis, its announcement alone recalls how turbulent the regional environment has become.
India says to analyze the pact
India said on Thursday that it analyzed the “implications” after Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with nuclear arms signed a mutual defense pact on Wednesday, considerably strengthening a security partnership for several decades a week after Israel’s strikes on Qatar turned the diplomatic calculation in the region.
The spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs, Randir Jaiswal, said in an article on X that India was aware of development and that it would study its implications for the safety of New Delhi and for regional stability.
“We will study the implications of this development for our national security as well as for regional and global stability. The government remains determined to protect the national interests of India and to ensure complete national security in all areas.”
The press release added that the Indian government was already aware that development, which declared “formalizes a long -standing arrangement between the two countries”, was under study.
The Saudi agreement comes for months after Pakistan fought a brief military conflict with India in May.
A high Saudi official, who spoke under the cover of anonymity, recognized the need to balance relations with Pakistan and India, also a nuclear power.
“Our relationship with India is more robust than it has ever been. We will continue to develop this relationship and seek to contribute to regional peace, the way we can.”
Pakistan and India fought three great wars since the two countries were sculpted from British colonial India in 1947.
After both having acquired nuclear weapons in the late 1990s, their conflicts were more limited due to the danger that nuclear assets come into play.
(With an additional reuters input)
