> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.counterpremise.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Makkah Three may need a +1 - URL: https://www.counterpremise.com/the-makkah-three-may-need-a-1/ - Published: 2026-08-18T16:19:19.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-19T15:33:56.000Z - Author: Aymar Pirzada *Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have promised to defend one another. The pact looks like a hedge against Iran. Its greater significance may be that stronger regional deterrence can make accommodation with Tehran safer.* Three leaders signed the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement last Friday. The most consequential country in the room may have been the one that wasn’t there. Iran was absent in person, but difficult to imagine absent from the proceedings. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, agreed that an armed attack on any one of their countries would be treated as an attack on all three. The obvious story is easy to tell. On 28 February, the United States and Israel attacked Iran. Tehran retaliated within hours, firing missiles at Gulf Arab states hosting American forces. Five months of strikes and counter-strikes have since battered energy infrastructure and disrupted vital shipping routes. Now three of the Muslim world’s most powerful states—one the Gulf’s financial heavyweight, one commanding Nato’s second-largest military, one nuclear-armed—have promised to defend one another. On its surface, this looks like an anti-Iran alliance built for containment. Listen to its architects, though, and the picture becomes stranger. ### The alliance that won’t name its enemy Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister, has [compared](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/turkey-pakistan-saudi-arabia-defence-pact-technically-same-natos-article-5-2026-08-08/?ref=counterpremise.com) the pact’s mutual-defense provision to Nato’s Article 5\. But asked whom the alliance was actually aimed at, he was unusually plain: “Any country that does not attack us is not a target for us.” Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, has likewise called the agreement “[purely defensive](https://apnews.com/article/c0ea694adb501d0b50e65dfcd5870796??ref=counterpremise.com),” while Erdoğan says the alliance can expand, with [Egypt](https://www.arabnews.com/node/2654841?ref=counterpremise.com) among the possibilities being considered. Iran, meanwhile, has declined to behave like a country being encircled. Tehran says there is “no reason to be concerned” that the agreement is directed against it. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei instead called Makkah [evidence of a “shift”](https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-says-it-not-concerned-new-mecca-joint-defence-agreement??ref=counterpremise.com) in how regional states think about security: away from dependence on foreign powers and towards their own capabilities—an approach, he noted, Iran has long advocated. He has also said such cooperation could benefit the region if it becomes [inclusive and grounded](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/iran-says-no-reason-fear-pakistan-turkey-saudi-security-pact-2026-08-10/?ref=counterpremise.com) in regional realities. The caveat is substantial. Tehran argues that any regional security order must confront what it regards as the threat from Israel. But its response still complicates the simple bloc-versus-bloc story. The idea of something broader also predates Makkah. In January, while negotiations were still under way, Fidan was already talking about an inclusive regional security platform rather than another rival camp. Iran, he argued, could eventually fit into such an order—but only by building trust with its neighbours and giving up policies that made them fear it. Any regional pact, he said, should eventually become “[all encompassing](https://www.mfa.gov.tr/disisleri-bakani-sayin-hakan-fidan-in-al-jazeera-english-e-verdigi-mulakat-29-ocak-2026.en.mfa??ref=counterpremise.com).” Six months later, machinery is beginning to follow rhetoric. Ankara says foreign and defense ministers and military chiefs will form [permanent coordination mechanisms](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/turkey-pakistan-saudi-arabia-will-form-political-military-mechanisms-coordinate-2026-08-13?ref=counterpremise.com). Joint land, naval and air exercises are planned, alongside cooperation on air defense, unmanned systems, electronic warfare and artificial intelligence. This remains an untested alliance. But it is getting harder to dismiss Makkah as either ceremonial solidarity or a simple anti-Iran coalition. ### Pakistan is already testing the premise By May, Pakistan had [deployed roughly 8,000 troops](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-deploys-jet-squadron-thousands-troops-saudi-arabia-during-iran-war-2026-05-18/?ref=counterpremise.com) and 16 aircraft to Saudi Arabia, including JF-17 fighters and drones, alongside an HQ-9 air-defense system. At the same time, Islamabad was mediating between Tehran and Washington in efforts to stop the war. Pakistan was helping deter Iran while talking to it. That apparent contradiction is the point. Turkey is now occupying similar ground: Erdoğan has [championed](https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/663830/world/erdogan-urges-trump-to-continue-talks-with-iran-offers-support??ref=counterpremise.com) Makkah while urging renewed talks with Iran and offering Ankara’s support for de-escalation. By the time the three leaders met in Makkah last week, Saudi Arabia had equally tangible reasons to want both. Its efforts to avoid deeper involvement in the war had not stopped attacks by Iran-aligned forces. On Sunday—just two days after the pact was signed—a Houthi drone struck Saudi Aramco’s [Jazan refinery](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fire-extinguished-aramco-facility-jizan-saudi-arabia-says-2026-08-09/??ref=counterpremise.com). The group had already declared a naval [blockade](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/saudi-red-sea-oil-exports-go-dark-houthi-attack-threat-grows-2026-08-12/?ref=counterpremise.com) of the kingdom. The strike also exposed an ambiguity Makkah will eventually have to resolve: if an Iran-aligned militia attacks a member, when does proxy aggression become an attack by the state backing it? Collective defense is easier to promise when the aggressor has an address. Riyadh is responding by strengthening deterrence without abandoning diplomacy. But restraint carries its own risk. Saudi Arabia’s opponents know how badly the kingdom wants to avoid a wider war. As one Middle Eastern official put it to Reuters: “[They are abusing that](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-bets-defensive-alliances-deter-slide-into-war-2026-08-12/?ref=counterpremise.com).” Much of Iran’s leverage in the present crisis rests on that reluctance to widen the war. Threats to shipping, energy infrastructure and Gulf states raise the cost of confrontation precisely because those governments have powerful incentives to restrain Washington rather than join it. An expanded Makkah architecture changes that equation. The harder Saudi Arabia becomes to intimidate—and the greater the risk that coercion against one state pulls Turkey, Pakistan or eventually other regional powers closer together—the less profitable coercion becomes for Tehran. Deterrence can therefore work on both sides of the prospective bargain: giving Riyadh greater confidence to accommodate Iran while giving Tehran greater reason to seek accommodation rather than impose it. ### What happens when the shield becomes the target? The war has exposed another vulnerability too. American bases, weapons and guarantees have long helped protect Gulf states from Iran. Yet when Washington and Israel confront Iran directly, the infrastructure designed to provide security can also expose host states to retaliation. That does not make Washington an adversary, or Iran less dangerous. Turkey remains a Nato member; Saudi Arabia remains deeply tied to US defense. Ankara itself says Makkah is intended to [complement existing alliances](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/turkey-pakistan-saudi-arabia-will-form-political-military-mechanisms-coordinate-2026-08-13/?ref=counterpremise.com), not replace them. But alliance and alignment of interests are not one and the same. Suppose the United States or Israel attacks Iran using access, facilities or airspace in a Makkah state. Iran retaliates against that state. Has Iran attacked one member—and therefore all three? Or has a member helped initiate the confrontation to which Iran is responding? An Article 5-style promise cannot settle that ambiguity. And this is no abstract hypothetical: the present war has already demonstrated how quickly attacks on Iran can expose Gulf states hosting American forces to Iranian retaliation. A wider regional bargain could put boundaries around the problem. Iran would have to accept meaningful restraints on attacks against participating states, including those conducted through aligned armed groups. Hormuz could no longer function as leverage whenever confrontation escalates. Even amid the present confrontation, however, Iran and Oman have been [negotiating](https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/iran-says-agreement-reached-with-oman-on-strait-of-hormuz-shipping-routes/4028346??ref=counterpremise.com) arrangements governing navigation through the strait. The talks remain entangled with Tehran’s broader demands of Washington and are nowhere near a regional settlement. But they offer a small demonstration that access to Hormuz can be subjected to negotiated rules rather than treated only as an instrument of coercion. Its neighbours would have obligations too. Their territory and airspace should not be available for offensive attacks against another state participating in the wider arrangement. That restriction would apply regardless of whether the outside force seeking such access was American or Israeli. That need not mean abandoning American forces or existing alliances. It would mean drawing a difficult but important line between forces stationed for defense and permission to use national territory to wage an offensive war. Now there is something for both sides to trade. Saudi Arabia gets stronger protection from Iranian missiles, proxies and maritime coercion. Iran gets greater assurance that neighbouring territory will not become the launchpad for another attack. Gulf states get something increasingly valuable: more control over which wars they become part of. ### From three to 3+1? Iran should not become the pact’s fourth signatory tomorrow. It may never make sense for Tehran to receive the same mutual-defense guarantee as its original members. The more plausible destination is an architecture around Makkah: its collective-defense core connected eventually to wider reciprocal guarantees that include Iran. The alternative to Iranian coercion need not be Iranian isolation. Nor must regional states choose between vulnerability to Tehran and dependence on outside powers whose interests will not always be their own. Months of war have also given Tehran reasons to look for an exit. Iran has absorbed strikes on military and energy infrastructure without securing the regional order it wants. A bargain negotiated with its neighbours could offer something capitulation to Washington cannot: a way to trade coercive leverage for recognized security guarantees without presenting the result at home as submission. The stronger Makkah becomes, the harder it should be for Iran to extract concessions by threatening individual Gulf states. But that same strength could make it easier to offer Tehran something coercion cannot: a place in a regional order that protects its security while constraining its ability to threaten its neighbours. That leaves a different contest over the region’s future: between an order shaped by Iranian coercion, one still dependent on American power, and one built increasingly by regional states willing to constrain—and protect—one another. Iran was not in the room in Makkah last Friday. The pact may matter most if it eventually gives Tehran more to gain from the order being built around that room than from threatening it from outside.