Iran Practised Strategic Autonomy With India. Pakistan Has the Same Right

 Iran built defence and port ties with India. Pakistan’s Makkah pact deserves the same test: judge conduct, not the partner’s religion.

A Facebook Post and Pakistan’s Strategic Autonomy

Late this afternoon in Karachi, I stopped at a Facebook image that claimed Iran had signed a defence agreement with India in 2002. The date was wrong by a year. What caught me was the argument underneath it: Pakistan’s strategic autonomy cannot be judged by a rule that Iran never applied to itself.

The correction matters because the real document is stronger than the meme needs. On 25 January 2003, President Mohammad Khatami and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee signed the New Delhi Declaration, which described a strategic partnership and opened agreed areas of defence cooperation. India’s foreign ministry also recorded that both sides said their defence cooperation was not aimed at any third country.

I would strip away the Facebook post’s religious insult. Calling critics servants of Jews turns a useful strategic argument into prejudice, and it lets opponents escape the harder question. Iran worked with India across a religious divide. Pakistan has the same right to pursue its interests without asking outsiders for ideological permission.

Iran Used Strategic Autonomy Before the Makkah Pact

The 2003 declaration did not treat religion as a border around foreign policy. Tehran saw value in an Indian relationship because both governments wanted wider room for manoeuvre, and New Delhi wanted access westward. The agreement even referred to defence training and official exchanges, language that belongs to cooperation, not diplomatic distance.

Chabahar made the relationship physical. The same 2003 declaration welcomed work on the Chabahar route, and India later deepened its role at the port. On 13 May 2024, India Ports Global Limited signed a ten-year contract with Iran to equip and operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal.

India’s commitment was not symbolic. By November 2024, New Delhi said it had raised equipment assistance for Chabahar to $120 million and committed a $250 million line of credit for port development. The port had handled more than 8.7 million tonnes of bulk and general cargo since Indian operations began in 2018, so the relationship had moved far beyond ceremony.

I have no objection to Iran making that choice. Tehran had every right to work with India when Iranian leaders believed the arrangement served Iranian interests, even when parts of that relationship cut across Pakistani interests. Strategic autonomy becomes meaningless if a state may exercise it only with partners approved by its neighbours.

Pakistan’s Strategic Autonomy Cannot Be a One-Way Rule

On 7 August 2026, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan joined them as Türkiye’s signatory. The official Saudi statement says an armed attack on one member will be treated as an attack on all, but it does not name Iran as the enemy.

Pakistan has since stated the point more directly. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar called the pact purely defensive and said it was not aimed at Iran. Ankara has rejected the claim that the agreement targets Tehran as well, leaving critics to prove an anti-Iran design through conduct, not suspicion.

I take those statements seriously, but not blindly. A treaty acquires its real character through deployment choices and crisis decisions, so Pakistan should be judged by what it does under the pact. Signing a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia does not, by itself, turn Iran into Pakistan’s enemy.

A cautious commentator may avoid the next sentence. I will not. Anyone who accepts Iran’s strategic partnership with India but condemns Pakistan’s defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia on principle is applying a double standard.

Iran does not become anti-Pakistan merely because it operates Chabahar with India. Pakistan does not become anti-Iran merely because it strengthens Saudi defence. Conduct is the test, especially what each government permits its territory or military assets to be used for.

Chabahar Shows Why Geography Beats Slogans

I look at Chabahar from Karachi differently from a commentator sitting thousands of kilometres away. A port agreement on Iran’s coast can acquire strategic meaning in Pakistan very quickly once India enters the picture. From here, the map does not remain on the map; it enters security debates before the ink on a commercial contract has dried.

Pakistan did not call that war. Islamabad understood, sometimes unhappily, that Iran would cultivate relationships outside Pakistan’s preferences. Mature statecraft begins where emotional ownership of a neighbour’s foreign policy ends, and that boundary can feel very uncomfortable.

The same discipline must now run in the other direction. Tehran can dislike aspects of the Makkah pact and ask hard questions about how it will operate. Iran cannot reasonably expect Pakistan to keep its Saudi relationship below a level that Tehran itself never accepted for its ties with India.

Pakistan also has reasons to avoid an anti-Iran posture. In August 2025, Pakistan and Iran reaffirmed a goal of lifting bilateral trade from about $3 billion to $10 billion, and Islamabad described the relationship in strongly positive terms. Turning a difficult neighbour into a permanent enemy would make little sense when trade still depends on daily contact across a shared border.

The Real Red Line Is Use, Not Association

The Makkah pact becomes dangerous for Pakistan only if defence cooperation turns into automatic participation in someone else’s war with Iran. The distinction matters more than the nationality of the states that signed the document. Pakistan can help defend Saudi territory without surrendering its own judgment about how a conflict began.

Iran made a similar argument in 2003. Its declaration with India explicitly said defence cooperation was not directed against a third country. Pakistan should claim the same principle and then live by it, because a principle used only when convenient soon looks like camouflage.

Saudi Arabia has the right to seek stronger protection after repeated regional shocks. Pakistan has the right to decide how much military support it will provide, which is where sovereignty starts to bite. Neither right requires Islamabad to inherit every Saudi quarrel.

The harder issue will arrive during a crisis. If Saudi territory is struck after another power uses Gulf facilities to attack Iran, Pakistan will face an attribution problem before it faces a military one. Treaty language can promise solidarity in advance; it cannot decide the political meaning of the first missile after it lands.

Religion Is the Wrong Instrument for Reading State Behaviour

The Facebook image tries to make its case through Muslim solidarity. I understand the emotion, especially when wars in the region keep pulling Palestine into every political argument. Religion still cannot explain why governments sign port contracts or choose defence partners.

Iran’s own policy proves it. Tehran worked with India because Iranian officials saw national advantage in the relationship, without making religious identity a condition for cooperation. Pakistan can work with its chosen partners for the same reason, but the pact still deserves judgment by conduct.

I would also reject the sectarian shortcut that describes the Makkah agreement as a Sunni front simply because of the identity of its current members. Saudi officials have rejected the description of the agreement as a sectarian bloc, while Pakistan says the arrangement remains open to other states. Credibility will come later, through conduct.

A regional security system built around permanent hostility to Iran would repeat an old Middle Eastern failure. It would make Pakistan’s western border part of somebody else’s ideological map, and every later crisis would arrive with a loyalty test attached. I want no part of that.

The Argument Returns to Karachi

Evening traffic is louder outside my window now, and the Facebook image no longer interests me as a piece of propaganda. Its factual error was easy to fix. The question left behind is harder because people abandon strategic logic very quickly when the partner changes.

Iran chose India where Iranian interests pointed toward India. Pakistan may choose Saudi Arabia where Pakistani interests point toward Saudi Arabia. Neither decision requires automatic hostility between Tehran and Islamabad, because strategic autonomy cannot function as a privilege that one state grants another.

The Makkah pact will deserve criticism if it becomes machinery for an unnecessary war with Iran. It does not deserve condemnation simply because Pakistan signed it. The difference looks simple on paper, but the next regional crisis may expose how little simplicity survives contact with fear.

From Karachi, I see no contradiction in keeping Riyadh close while refusing to turn Tehran into a permanent enemy. Iran has practised the same hard freedom in its relationship with India. The uncomfortable part begins when every capital insists on strategic autonomy for itself and calls the neighbour’s version betrayal.

AI Transparency: I used AI-assisted research and editing to verify public records and refine the language. The argument and final editorial judgment are mine.