For years, Iran has told its neighbors that the Middle East should rely less on the United States for its security. On Aug. 7, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan took a step toward doing just that. Iran, however, was not included.
The three countries signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, under which an armed attack on one would be treated as an attack on all three. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan later compared the provision to NATO’s Article 5. The pact will have a ministerial committee and a permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia.
For years, Iran has told its neighbors that the Middle East should rely less on the United States for its security. On Aug. 7, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan took a step toward doing just that. Iran, however, was not included.
The three countries signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, under which an armed attack on one would be treated as an attack on all three. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan later compared the provision to NATO’s Article 5. The pact will have a ministerial committee and a permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia.
Just how effective this new agreement proves and how ready its members are to come to one another’s defense remain to be seen. Iran may be tempted to put this to the test in the hopes of revealing the pact’s weakness. But there is a real risk that doing so would only deepen its regional isolation.
When Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a defense agreement in September 2025, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian welcomed it as the beginning of a “comprehensive regional security system” among Muslim countries.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made a similar case in May 2025. In an article for the Tehran Dialogue Forum, he argued that regional states should build their own security arrangements rather than depend on outside powers. “Lasting peace in West Asia can only be achieved by empowering its regional actors,” he wrote. “Iran has consistently called for inclusive, homegrown mechanisms to address regional challenges.”
In fact, Iran had initially hoped that the restoration of diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in 2023 could offer a foundation for such a mechanism. But the rapprochement remained mostly a way to manage tensions between the two countries. It did not produce a common security system.
In February, the outbreak of war made the issue more urgent for Tehran. Iran attacked U.S. military facilities across the Persian Gulf, and it also struck territory belonging to Arab states with missiles and drones. At the same time, Persian Gulf governments kept channels with Tehran open and tried to prevent Washington from widening the war.
In this context, Iran renewed its call for regional security. On June 28, Araghchi said that the Persian Gulf’s security architecture should be reconsidered and called for a new framework that would include all regional states while excluding the presence or interference of extra-regional powers.
Yet Iran’s neighbors drew a different lesson from the war. Instead of embracing a security architecture with Tehran, they sought out their own alignment. To be clear, the Mecca pact is not simply an anti-Iran alliance. Fidan has said that it is not directed against Iran or any other specific country, and negotiations had been underway for almost three years. Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia also have concerns about Israel and doubts about the future of U.S. security commitments.
Still, there is no denying that this alliance has been driven, in part, by concerns over Iran’s activities. While Iran sees much of its military posture as protection against the United States and Israel, its neighbors, not surprisingly, see the same missiles and proxies as threats to their own security. Saudi Arabia has been hit by Iranian missiles and now faces a renewed Iranian-backed threat in the Red Sea.
The question now is how Tehran will respond. The day the pact was signed Araghchi again called for Muslim unity and greater regional self-reliance. However, Ebrahim Rezaei, a member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, was more directly critical, arguing that a “paper agreement” with Turkey and Pakistan would not bring Saudi Arabia security.
Indeed, the pact’s history and language suggest that there is some ambiguity over just how strong its mutual defense provisions are. Tehran may well seek to test that ambiguity.
Fidan has already said the three countries would consult after an attack and decide the “degree, form, and format” of support that each would provide. That could mean direct military action, but it could also mean air defense, intelligence, weapons, or troop deployments.
Pakistan’s earlier agreement with Saudi Arabia offers a precedent. This agreement left open whether Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent could extend to Saudi Arabia, something that Islamabad has never fully clarified. When Iran struck Saudi Arabia, Pakistan did not directly enter the war, but it did send thousands of troops, fighter aircraft, drones, and air-defense systems to the kingdom.
If fighting with the United States resumes and Iran strikes Saudi Arabia again, the response from Turkey and Pakistan will be an early indicator of the pact’s strength. Likewise, renewed Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia would force Turkey and Pakistan to decide not only what form of support to offer but how directly to hold Iran accountable.
The risk for Tehran is that, even if the combined response is underwhelming, testing the pact could ultimately strengthen and expand it. Turkey is already calling for it to expand, and Egypt has been discussed as a possible future member. The more Iran’s neighbors feel threatened, the more Iran will end up isolated.
For Tehran, pursuing detente with Riyadh could prove a more useful strategy. Relations with Saudi Arabia have improved since 2023, and even during the war, Riyadh kept diplomatic channels open. A senior Saudi official said this week that contacts with Iran and mediation efforts were moving “in the right direction,” even as the kingdom prepared for possible new attacks.
Iran also has room to work with Turkey and Pakistan. Both have close political and economic ties with Iran, and both have played important roles in mediation during the war. Their interests and threat perceptions are not identical to Saudi Arabia’s. Iran can use those relationships to try and prevent the pact from developing into a broader alignment centered on containing Iran.
The path that Iran chooses may hinge on a broader policy debate taking place in the country. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament, has argued that the war has changed regional relations and that Iran should respond by strengthening ties with its neighbors. In a March interview with the Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, he said Tehran was ready for “lasting security agreements” with regional countries and repeated that regional security should be provided without foreign interference.
Amir-Hossein Sabeti, a hard-line lawmaker closely associated with Saeed Jalili, represents a different view of how Iran should secure itself. He described the June agreement with Washington as the result of a “miscalculation” by Iranian officials and argued that relying on diplomacy with the United States will neither prevent another war nor guarantee Iran’s security. He called for strengthening Iran’s military leverage and the “resistance front,” warning that otherwise “more and more severe wars” will follow.
The Mecca pact may never become a Middle East NATO, and its first real crisis could expose serious limits. But Iran does not need to wait for that test to see what has changed. The country’s leaders spent years asking regional states to take more responsibility for their own security. They are beginning to do so. Whether the system they build eventually includes Iran, or increasingly serves to protect them from it, will depend in large part on what Tehran does next.
