Pakistan Steps Into A Wider Role As Mecca Pact Officials Meet In Tehran

Eurasia Review | Saad Hafiz

Senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, the three Makkah Joint Defence Agreement members, met Iranian counterparts in Tehran on 26 October for their first joint high-level meeting since Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia intensified. Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin represented the pact.

Pakistan’s mediation, which began after U.S. and Israeli strikes opened the war on 28 February 2026, produced the 14-point Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding. Presidents Donald Trump and Masoud Pezeshkian signed it remotely in mid-June, but it had largely fallen apart by early July. The blockade has run well beyond 100 days. Analyst Saad Hafiz maintains that the meeting widens discussion of collective defence but cannot force Washington or Tehran to compromise on nuclear constraints, sanctions or the blockade. He sees the meeting as keeping open a chance to manage the next phase of a conflict now past eight months.

Comment

A mutual-defence clause and a mediation role pull the same three states in different directions. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed in August, treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. Its ministers met in Riyadh earlier in October and agreed ways to move forces quickly to Saudi Arabia. Yet they then faced Iran, whose officials say only that they will examine a pact Islamabad and Ankara call not aimed at Tehran.

The strain would show if a Houthi strike on Saudi territory caused serious damage and Riyadh invoked the clause. Pakistan and Turkey would then weigh a treaty obligation against a channel that depends on being acceptable to Tehran. Iran’s willingness to keep examining the pact could last only as long as no member is called to act under it. Munir’s reported five Tehran visits since June rest on that acceptability, and the Makkah clause is the commitment that could test it.

The source does not say whether the continuing Houthi missile and drone attacks already count as an attack under the clause. It also gives no detail of the deployment arrangements agreed in Riyadh. Until both are documented, how far the Makkah pact’s collective-defence clause reaches remains open.

Strategic Question for Discussion

What happens to Pakistan’s Tehran channel if Riyadh invokes the Makkah pact’s collective-defence clause after a Houthi strike, and which member’s reaction would shape Iran’s response most?

My assessment is that the channel would survive a limited invocation but not a sustained one. Iran has so far said only that it will examine the pact, so the pattern suggests its tolerance depends on whether Pakistani forces are visibly committed to Saudi defence. Pakistan holds the mediator’s role and shares a border with Iran, which points to its reaction carrying the most weight.

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