The Saudi-Pakistan Defense Pact: A Mutual Defense Deal Already in Doubt

When Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif shared a brotherly embrace in Riyadh in September 2025, it marked the culmination of a deal that, according to a senior Saudi official, had been years in the making. The two nations upgraded an existing security partnership into a formal mutual defense pact. According to CNN, it includes defense industry collaboration, technology transfer, and military co-production, and it guarantees that any aggression against one nation will be treated as an aggression against both, to be answered jointly.

Two details made the agreement impossible to ignore. The first was the mutual defense clause itself, which raised an explosive question: did the deal mean that Pakistan was extending its nuclear umbrella to Riyadh? The second was the timing. Although the senior Saudi official insisted the pact had been in the works for years, the signing came in the immediate wake of Israel’s strike in Qatar targeting senior Hamas leadership, an attack that had ratcheted up calls for an “Islamic NATO.”

Beyond the nuclear and alliance questions, the pact raised broader geopolitical concerns: how it would affect the regional balance of power with India and China, and what it meant for the Muslim world. Yet barely two months after the ink dried, the more pressing question had become whether the pact could function at all. This is an examination of the deal, the geopolitical ripples it created, and whether it may have already failed.

The Nuclear Question

Before assessing whether Pakistan was extending its nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia, it is necessary to understand Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine, the strategic principles on which its weapons program rests. Pakistan has not publicly laid out that doctrine, preferring ambiguity, but it has occasionally issued statements through official channels that offer some insight into its thinking. From everything that is known, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is aimed solely against its long-term adversary, India.

Extending that arsenal to Riyadh, which has no adversarial relationship with India but rather the opposite, would be a significant change for Islamabad. That is why it is worth asking whether such a thing actually happened. After the deal was signed, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif told a local outlet: “Let me make one point clear about Pakistan’s nuclear capability: that capability was established long ago when we conducted tests. Since then, we have forces trained for the battlefield (…) No one should doubt what we have and what the capabilities are that will be available to them under this pact.”

For a country that has traditionally valued ambiguity about its nuclear arsenal and how it might use it, this was a remarkable statement. In Riyadh, the message was heard loud and clear. Ali Shihabi, a Saudi businessman whose commentary is often viewed as a reflection of the monarchy’s official line, told The Washington Post that he welcomes “(the) deterrence that comes from sharing Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella.”

Case closed? Not quite. When things seem this clear-cut in geopolitics, they usually are not. In a subsequent interview with Reuters, Minister Asif said that nuclear weapons were not on the radar of the pact, seemingly walking back his earlier assertion. The Washington Post reported that Islamabad seemed eager to move on from the question of nuclear weapons and focus on other parts of the agreement, with one official saying the issue had been needlessly hyped up.

That walk-back created even more uncertainty. According to Sandeep Unnithan, an executive editor at India Today covering regional security, even without a nuclear clause in the deal, past investigations indicate that several Pakistani warheads have been reserved for Saudi Arabia. “There have been lots of stories in the past (…) which suggest that between four and six Pakistani nuclear warheads have been set aside for the Saudis in case of a contingency,” he said.

Iran, Israel, and the Logic of Insurance

That contingency is the possibility that Iran acquires nuclear weapons, something that seems less likely in the wake of America and Israel’s joint attack on Iranian nuclear facilities earlier in the year and the recent reimposition of sanctions on Tehran, but is not a complete impossibility. To date, intelligence assessments have varied wildly on just how much the strikes set back Tehran’s nuclear program, and whether they may have paradoxically strengthened Iran’s resolve to acquire the bomb. Some analysts suggest the damage has bought the international community several years. Others are far less optimistic, pointing to Iran’s distributed nuclear infrastructure and its technical know-how, which cannot be bombed away.

What is undeniable is that the uncertainty itself is reason enough for Saudi Arabia to want insurance. Whether or not Iran’s nuclear program has been significantly degraded, the kingdom’s military strategists know that nuclear ambitions do not simply disappear because of a couple of setbacks, no matter how large. And when you share a maritime border with your biggest adversary, whose proxies, the Houthis, have been willing to attack you in the past, it is important to have a deterrent if the attacks ever escalate, even if your ally has to walk back its explicit guarantee to maintain strategic ambiguity.

Away from Iran, there is also the question of Israel. Although both Israel and Saudi Arabia share a common enemy in Iran and a common friend in the United States, their relationship remains complicated. Part of that complexity arises from something rarely discussed: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal. Although Israel neither acknowledges nor denies having nuclear weapons, allies and adversaries alike believe it has them.

Since acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel has maintained what Avner Cohen, a professor of non-proliferation studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, calls a “benign monopoly” that gives other countries the lowest possible incentive to go nuclear. This monopoly is one of Israel’s most important strategic advantages in the Middle East. A nuclear-capable Saudi Arabia, even if the weapons themselves remain in Pakistan, would fundamentally threaten that monopoly and erode Israel’s advantage.

This is why, in 2018, Israel attempted to stop a deal between Riyadh and Washington for the construction of nuclear reactors in the kingdom. When that failed, Israel presented the United States with a list of red lines to try to influence the deal’s framework. For Saudi Arabia, this is less a benign monopoly and more an existential imbalance that puts it at a constant disadvantage against Israel.

The fact that Israel felt confident enough to impose conditions on a Saudi-U.S. deal had to have irked Riyadh, and acquiring nuclear cover from Pakistan might shift the balance more in its favor. As Dr. Hasan Alhasan, senior fellow for Middle East Policy at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, put it, “From the Saudi perspective, it is intended to plug the strategic (…) deficit vis-a-vis nuclear-armed Israel.”

The Qatar Strike and the Push for an Islamic NATO

There is also the issue raised at the outset: Israel’s strike in Qatar targeting senior Hamas leadership. It is difficult to overstate what a shock this strike was to the entire Gulf. Here was a nation supposedly protected by U.S. air defense assets, witnessing a close American ally drop a missile on its capital and kill one of its citizens.

In the wake of the attack, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement condemning Israel’s actions and affirming Riyadh’s solidarity with Qatar. Beyond this, Saudi Arabia joined other Muslim nations for an extraordinary summit organized by Qatar. The summit was, in the words of CNN, “an exercise in futility.” It produced a wordy statement and not much else, underscoring that for all the wealth these countries have, it has not translated to hard power.

That was when the calls for an Islamic NATO moved from whispers to frank conversations. Two days after the summit, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed their defense deal, and the calls grew louder.

When Pakistan’s defense minister was asked whether other nations could join the defense pact, he said: “I can say the door is not closed to others.” Pakistan’s deputy prime minister reasserted this claim, revealing that other countries had expressed interest in a similar arrangement. The fact that other countries were seeking a security arrangement with Islamabad does not come as a surprise after what happened at the summit. What was a surprise was Pakistan’s willingness to reveal that they were already in contact, which would seem to suggest that talks had progressed beyond preliminary stages.

Whether these talks eventually result in more security arrangements, or even an Islamic NATO, only time will tell. Most experts, however, believe it likely will not go beyond a few deals.

Why an Islamic NATO Is a Hard Sell

A key reason for this skepticism is that the loudest proponent for an Islamic NATO has so far been Iran which, despite its close ties with Qatar, struck an airbase in the country as retaliation for American strikes on its nuclear facilities. That Tehran would be willing to strike an ally does not bode well for a defense alliance. Beyond its allies, Iran has also attacked other Muslim nations including Iraq, itself a strong proponent of an Islamic NATO. Iran also recently exchanged a barrage of missiles with Pakistan, though the relationship between those two nations is far more cordial than Iran’s relationship with either Saudi Arabia or Iraq.

What primarily makes NATO is two things. One, Article 5, which in a nutshell says that an attack against one NATO member is an attack against all and will be responded to jointly. Two, no NATO member has ever attacked another. This is not to say that all NATO members are best friends holding hands and singing kumbaya; they are sovereign nations with their own goals and foreign policies.

Take Turkey and Greece, for example. Despite both being NATO members, they have a long history of tension and territorial disputes, particularly over Cyprus and Aegean Sea boundaries.

Turkey has also faced criticism from other NATO members because of its decision to purchase the S-400 missile system from Russia. This led to Ankara’s removal from the F-35 program and the imposition of sanctions on Turkish officials. While Turkey has attempted to get back into the F-35 fold, including through a high-level meeting between President Trump and President Erdogan, those efforts appear to have stalled.

An Islamic NATO would have to contend with similar or even greater levels of discord, and the added threat that comes with being in a union with Iran. While an Islamic NATO without Iran is possible, it would run into another challenge, according to Dr. Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London.

In his view, the potential members are more concerned with their own interests than any broader idea of joint-Islamic security, regardless of how much lip service they pay it. “A NATO-style alliance is unrealistic because it would tie Gulf states to wars they do not consider vital to their own interests,” he said. “No ruler in the Gulf wants to be pulled into a confrontation with Israel on Egypt’s behalf, for example.”

If a grand NATO-style partnership among the world’s Muslim nations is not likely, is there an alternative? According to Cinzia Bianco, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, the alternative is the so-called “6+2” format. This would see the six Gulf nations, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, partner with Turkey and Egypt as security guarantors.

Discussions on the 6+2 format were held on the sidelines of the recently completed UN General Assembly meeting, but very little information has come out of that. Bianco noted that this was expected, saying that if the 6+2 format did emerge, it would happen slowly and quietly, and it would not carry the same security guarantees as NATO’s Article 5 or the Saudi-Pakistan partnership. “It’s not really about an Article 5 kind of arrangement though (…) It’s more likely to be about collectivizing security and defense postures and, perhaps most importantly, sends a message of deterrence to Israel,” she said.

These are all predictions, and while they are the best predictions possible given the information available, situations are constantly evolving. By the time the countries involved are ready to unveil a 6+2 partnership, something might happen that fundamentally changes any potential agreement, causing it to include an Article 5-style guarantee. Even if nothing dramatic forces a change, the countries themselves might decide that it is in their best interest to include such a guarantee.

Regional Dynamics: India and China Watch Closely

When Saudi Arabia and Pakistan announced their deal, all eyes turned to India, for two reasons. First, India and Pakistan have what can politely be called a rocky relationship. The two nations seem constantly on the brink of full-fledged war, and for a brief moment earlier in the year, after terrorists attacked a group of mostly Hindu tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, it actually reached that point. Second, India has a far more cordial relationship with Saudi Arabia.

In an interview with Arab News, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Riyadh as a trusted friend and strategic ally, emphasizing how bilateral relations had expanded significantly since the creation of the Strategic Partnership Council in 2019. “Our partnership has limitless potential,” he said. “In a world full of uncertainties, our bond stands strong, as a pillar of stability.”

So it is easy to understand why everyone was curious to see what India would think of the new partnership, given that it functionally meant one of its strongest and most important allies was now obligated to come to the defense of one of its bitterest rivals. India’s initial response was measured, with Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry, telling reporters: “India and Saudi Arabia have a wide-ranging strategic partnership which has deepened considerably in the last few years. We expect that this strategic partnership will keep in mind mutual interests and sensitivities.”

Translated from diplomatic speak, this means India does not expect any changes in Saudi Arabia’s posture toward it because of the pact. Islamabad might have the shiny new ally on paper, but New Delhi has decades of cooperation to point to.

However, while that is what India is projecting to the world, according to the Asia Times, in private New Delhi is anxious that the deal could give Pakistan a leg up in a future conflict and could threaten Saudi investments in the country. As the outlet put it, “India’s anxiety will be less about a war with Pakistan that has Saudi backing and more about the signal it sends: Saudi Arabia now has a formal, rapid-response partner with which India has a long-standing and often bitter rivalry. That complicates New Delhi’s crisis calculus with Pakistan and injects uncertainty into India’s burgeoning energy, investment and connectivity ties with Riyadh.”

For New Delhi, the nightmare scenario is not necessarily a full-scale war where Saudi troops arrive to fight on Pakistan’s side. Instead, Indian strategists worry that the defense pact could embolden Islamabad to take a more aggressive stance in Kashmir or along the Line of Control, calculating that India would hesitate to react out of fear of upsetting Saudi Arabia. There is also, according to Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador now a scholar at the Hudson Institute, the risk that Saudi Arabia could become to Pakistan what America was for its allies during the Cold War: a country with the economic muscle to help Pakistan build its military to compete with India.

Still, not all India observers are alarmed by the deal, because in their view Riyadh will do everything in its power to maintain a balanced relationship with both Islamabad and New Delhi. Michael Kugelman, a foreign policy analyst, went a step further, telling the BBC that despite the deal, Saudi Arabia would not retaliate against India in the event of a conflict with Pakistan.

India is not the only regional power monitoring the partnership. China has its own reasons to scrutinize the Saudi-Pakistan deal, though Beijing’s calculus is entirely different from New Delhi’s. Unlike India, the Chinese government did not issue any official statement once the deal was announced, which, according to John Calabrese, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, was meant to signal to Islamabad and Riyadh that the deal had Beijing’s blessing.

One reason, according to Chinese-government-linked experts, is that Pakistan sits at the heart of China’s regional infrastructure ambitions through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The CPEC is China’s 15-year, $62 billion investment in Pakistan’s infrastructure and the flagship project of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. The project has been the target of several attacks including car bombings in 2023, which led to a strong rebuke from a Chinese diplomat. From China’s point of view, the defense pact gives Islamabad an additional layer of stability and security, thus guaranteeing the safety of its strategic investment.

China’s Defense Industry Wins Either Way

Additionally, according to Calabrese, the pact opens up interesting possibilities for China’s defense industry. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an organization that closely studies global weapon flows, China has provided over 80% of Pakistan’s weapons over the past four years. And this is serious hardware: the JF-17 Thunder fighter jets, Wing Loong drones, and guided-missile systems.

By tying its defense to Pakistan’s through this agreement, Saudi Arabia is essentially buying into a weapons ecosystem that China already dominates. That matters because Riyadh is trying to build up its own defense industry under Vision 2030, its long-term economic plan, but it wants to avoid the political baggage that comes with buying from the West. Pakistan, for its part, is happy to help manufacture Chinese-designed weapons.

So you end up with a fairly straightforward arrangement: China designs the weapons, Pakistan helps build them, and Saudi Arabia buys them. It is a win for Beijing because it gets Chinese military technology into the Middle East without having to navigate a series of diplomatic minefields. With India nervous, China quietly supportive, and the regional balance shifting, you would think the deal would be hailed as a masterstroke of diplomacy. Instead, barely two months after it was signed, serious questions emerged about whether it could actually work.

Has the Deal Already Failed?

In early October 2025, Pakistan launched airstrikes into Afghanistan, reportedly targeting the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. In retaliation, the Afghan Taliban carried out attacks against Pakistani military installations along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Under the terms of the defense pact, Saudi Arabia should have considered the Taliban’s attack on Pakistan as an attack on Riyadh, and joined Pakistan in retaliation. As the framing of this question suggests, that did not happen.

Instead of intervening militarily, Riyadh publicly called for restraint, urging both sides to avoid escalating the conflict. That approach was about as successful at stopping the violence as bringing a strongly worded letter to a gunfight. According to Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British diplomat currently serving as a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Saudi Arabia did not intervene for two reasons.

First, Pakistan did not invoke the pact because, while politically serious, the attack was not an existential threat. Second, Saudi Arabia’s broader geopolitical interests pointed the other way.

“The recent Pakistan-Afghanistan clashes are unlikely to lead to invocation of the Saudi-Pakistan defense pact,” Fitton-Brown said. ”(…) The Saudis, as central players in the Islamic world, will want to be seen as welcoming Afghanistan’s gradual rehabilitation.” Fitton-Brown further argued that even if the pact were invoked, it is unlikely Riyadh would want to be dragged into the conflict.

This underscores why, for some observers, the defense pact might be dead on arrival. In the first instance when it should have been invoked, if for no other reason than to show the world that Islamabad and Riyadh were serious about their partnership, it was not. That brings into question whether the pact will ever be successfully invoked in a future conflict. Fitton-Brown does not see it happening.

In his view, in the two most likely scenarios where the pact could be invoked, Pakistan fighting India or Saudi Arabia fighting Iran, the other country would not want to get involved.

It is a view supported by Gregory Gause, Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at Texas A&M University. In a piece for the Middle East Institute, he wrote: “Would Pakistan go to war against Iran, Israel, or the Houthis in response to a missile and/or drone attack on Saudi Arabia? That is highly unlikely (…) Alienating Iran, an important neighbor, by responding to an Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia (…) would open up the possibility of real tensions on Pakistan’s southwestern border (…) Similarly, would Saudi Arabia put at risk its growing economic ties with India, a major trading partner, in the event of the next border skirmish between Pakistan and India?”

This is the messy reality of geopolitics, where countries will promise to defend each other right up until the point where doing so clashes with their own interests, something that is currently making a lot of members of the real NATO nervous about security guarantees from a certain superpower. None of this is to say that the defense pact will never be successfully invoked. But it does suggest that the odds of it happening are increasingly low.

Still, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia continue to tout their bilateral ties, most recently after a meeting between the top military officials of both countries. After the meeting, the Pakistani army put out a statement saying in part that “the military leadership reaffirmed their resolve to further deepen the strong brotherly ties and enduring defence partnership between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.” It is a nice statement. Whether they can follow through on it when the moment comes is another matter entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the pact actually extend Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia?

The answer is deliberately murky. Defense Minister Khawaja Asif initially told a local outlet that Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities would be available to Saudi Arabia under the pact, and Saudi commentator Ali Shihabi publicly welcomed the deterrence of sharing Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella. Asif later told Reuters that nuclear weapons were not on the pact’s radar. Separately, India Today’s Sandeep Unnithan cited past reporting suggesting between four and six Pakistani warheads may have been set aside for the Saudis in case of a contingency, leaving the question unresolved by design.

Why does Saudi Arabia feel it needs a nuclear deterrent at all?

Two concerns drive it. One is Iran: even after American and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the reimposition of sanctions on Tehran, Saudi strategists know nuclear ambitions do not simply disappear after setbacks, and Iran’s proxies, the Houthis, have already attacked the kingdom. The second is Israel, whose undeclared nuclear arsenal scholar Avner Cohen describes as a “benign monopoly” giving other states low incentive to seek their own weapons. Dr.

Hasan Alhasan of the IISS describes the Saudi goal as plugging the strategic deficit vis-a-vis nuclear-armed Israel.

Why do most experts doubt an Islamic NATO will emerge from this agreement?

Iran, the loudest proponent of such an alliance, struck the Qatari airbase and has attacked other Muslim nations including Iraq and Pakistan in recent years, making it an unreliable alliance partner. Dr. Andreas Krieg of King’s College London argues that Gulf states will not tie themselves to wars they do not consider vital to their own interests, and would not want to be pulled into a confrontation with Israel on Egypt’s behalf. The more plausible outcome, according to Cinzia Bianco of the European Council on Foreign Relations, is a looser “6+2” format with the six Gulf states plus Turkey and Egypt as security guarantors, without a formal Article 5 obligation.

How does China benefit from the Saudi-Pakistan pact?

China stayed publicly silent when the deal was announced, which analyst John Calabrese reads as a signal of Beijing’s blessing. Pakistan sits at the center of China’s $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative, and Saudi-backed stability protects that investment. The deal also creates a commercial arrangement that benefits China’s defense industry, which already supplies over 80 percent of Pakistan’s weapons: China designs the hardware, Pakistan helps manufacture it, and Saudi Arabia buys it, getting Chinese military technology into the Middle East without direct diplomatic friction.

Why do analysts think the pact may already be functionally dead?

When Pakistan launched airstrikes into Afghanistan in October 2025 and the Afghan Taliban retaliated against Pakistani military installations, the defense clause should have obligated Saudi Arabia to treat the attack on Pakistan as an attack on itself. Instead, Riyadh called for restraint. Edmund Fitton-Brown of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies noted that Pakistan never invoked the pact and that Riyadh wants to be seen welcoming Afghanistan’s rehabilitation. Professor Gregory Gause of Texas A&M adds that in the two most likely scenarios for invocation — Pakistan versus India or Saudi Arabia versus Iran — neither party would want to get drawn into the other’s conflict, making meaningful activation increasingly improbable.

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