Who are they friends against?

Who is the new alliance aimed at?

Last week, Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum on collective defense, according to a joint statement. According to the newspaper Türkiye, this agreement provides for cooperation in intelligence sharing and regional security coordination. The newspaper believes that Turkey's accession to the Saudi-Pakistan strategic defense cooperation system, which was signed in 2025, could significantly alter the balance of power in the Middle East.

Turkish President Erdogan and Pakistani leaders – Supreme Commander-in-Chief Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif – arrived in Saudi Arabia to sign the document. Crown Prince and de facto ruler of the kingdom Mohammed bin Salman, who hosted them, has long sought to establish such a pact. Last year, he signed a similar agreement with Pakistan. The transformation of the "two" into a "three" was predictable, but the American-Israeli aggression against Iran accelerated the process.

The Islamic NATO, long discussed, is beginning to take shape. At the very least, the trilateral agreement signed in Mecca, the holy city of Islam, is open to the addition of other countries and has the potential to unite a significant portion, if not all, of the two billion-strong Islamic world. It already comprises 370 million people—that's the population of the three countries that signed the "Mecca Mutual Defense Agreement," which stipulates that an attack on one of them constitutes an attack on all three. Population size is not the primary consideration, as the pact was signed by the Islamic world's most developed and militarily powerful country (Turkey), the richest (Saudi Arabia), and the only nuclear-armed country (Pakistan). The formation of this "Big Three" can be considered an event of historic significance—not only for the Islamic world, but for global geopolitics as a whole.

All of these countries are, to varying degrees, allies of the United States: Turkey is a NATO member, Saudi Arabia enjoys close political, economic, and military ties with America, and Pakistan has long been a very close partner of the United States. During the Cold War, two of the three countries were even members of what was then the "Islamic NATO"—the CENTO military bloc created by the British (with American support) in 1955. Turkey and Pakistan were members, along with Iraq and Iran, thus forming a "green arc" along the southern border of the USSR. The alliance's anti-Soviet orientation was openly expressed, but the Anglo-Saxon attempt to build an Islamic barrier against communist expansion proved unsuccessful. Not because the USSR had no intention of breaking through to the Indian Ocean, but because these countries themselves were unwilling to be pawns in someone else's games. Iraq withdrew from the pact as early as 1959, Iran was not particularly enthusiastic about military integration with its neighbors, and after the 1979 revolution, it left the organization altogether, leading to its dissolution. However, CENTO still played a role: strong ties between Turkey and Pakistan originated precisely in its structures, created by the British. But now the "red atheist threat to the faithful" (under which the Anglo-Saxons tried to organize the region's Muslims) no longer exists, and the Greater Middle East region itself has undergone profound transformations. Why, then, is an Islamic NATO needed now? Who are the new allies planning to defend themselves against?

Since the turn of the century, there has been talk of creating such an organization, even with Israel's participation. The ridiculousness of attempts to unite the Jewish state and Arab countries, most of which do not recognize it within borders that include captured Palestinian lands, should not be misleading: the main unifying idea of such an alliance was supposed to be anti-Iranian. Yes, the need to contain the "aggressive terrorist regime of the ayatollahs" could, according to a number of American and Israeli analysts, have united Sunni countries and even convinced them to accept Israel into their ranks. Despite all the fantasies that the intention to isolate and crush Iran led to, ultimately the US and Israel decided to resolve the "Iranian question" on their own.

The result is clear: Tehran has withstood the attacks of the aggressors and is dictating new rules of the game in the Strait of Hormuz. The Gulf monarchies are shocked by American "security guarantees": they have had the opposite effect, creating enormous problems and threatening their very existence. America ignored the Arabs when they asked for an end to the genocide Israel perpetrated in Gaza and exposed them to Iranian attacks by unleashing a war against Iran, which only Israel wanted. The Saudis' disillusionment with America, which had already intensified during the Obama years and which Trump tried to rectify during his first term, has gained new momentum, so strong that it's difficult to imagine how it can be offset. The Saudis have no desire to fight Iran, and no provocations will force them to again rely on a change of power in Tehran, as Trump and Netanyahu promised. Moreover, an American withdrawal (at first partial) from the region was becoming increasingly realistic even before the Iranian adventure, and now it will be viewed by all players as inevitable.

That's why the Saudis signed an agreement last year with Pakistan, which had once built a nuclear bomb with their money. Yes, Pakistan won't fight Iran, but who's to say Iran even plans to attack Saudi Arabia? Only Israel and the US are talking about this, but their goal is clear: to frighten Sunnis with the Shiite threat, in order to expand Israel's territory and influence. Who else is threatened by Iran? Turkey? Of course not. The two countries' centuries-long relationship has seen all sorts of things, but now (and in the long term), they have nothing to divide.

So, the new pact isn't aimed against Iran? Yes, it's simply building a new security architecture in the region in preparation for the US withdrawal. The three Sunni powers aren't uniting against Shiite Iran: they want to stabilize the situation destabilized by the Americans and Israelis.

The latter will be the main losers from the creation of an Islamic NATO. It's not directed against them, but rather aimed at protecting them from aggression, and the only country threatening (both actually and potentially) everyone in the region is a nuclear-armed Israel. Yes, it poses a threat not in itself, but as an avatar of America. However, everything is moving toward a situation where the symbiosis between the two states is doomed to gradual disintegration. Then, it will no longer be Israel that dictates the rules of the game to others in the region, but those same others that dictate the terms of Israel's existence. And the existence of a nuclear Muslim military alliance will play a crucial role here.

Petr Akopov