Pakistan Wanted to Balance Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Gulf War Is Making That Harder

 

Pakistan has long balanced its ties with Iran and Saudi Arabia. The widening Gulf conflict is testing how much strategic room Islamabad still has.

A Warning From Islamabad

On 8 September, I read a statement from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry that would once have looked routine. Islamabad condemned Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and declared "complete solidarity" with the kingdom. The wording mattered more this time. Pakistan now belongs to a three-country defence arrangement that treats an armed attack on Saudi Arabia as an attack on Pakistan and Türkiye as well.

A day later, the diplomatic language acquired harder edges. Reuters reported that Pakistan had conveyed a Saudi message to Iran urging Tehran to use its influence to restrain the Houthis after attacks struck an airbase and oil infrastructure in southern Saudi Arabia. Seventy-three people had been wounded in the earlier wave of attacks. Iran's response, according to a senior Iranian official quoted by Reuters, was that Tehran did not control the Houthis.

From Karachi, I find the Pakistani role more consequential than the exchange of warnings itself. Islamabad has spent years trying to preserve workable relations with both Riyadh and Tehran. Geography demands one relationship. Money, defence cooperation and decades of strategic history reinforce the other.

The Gulf war is now testing whether Pakistan can continue separating them.

The Agreement Changed the Equation

Pakistan's relationship with Saudi Arabia did not suddenly become strategic in 2026. Defence cooperation stretches back decades. Pakistani military personnel have trained Saudi forces, while Saudi Arabia has repeatedly occupied an important place in Pakistan's economic and diplomatic calculations.

Something nevertheless changed on 17 September 2025.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed the Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry publicly stated that the agreement sought to strengthen joint deterrence and that aggression against either state would be considered aggression against both. The arrangement formalised a relationship that had previously contained much more strategic ambiguity.

Then came another change.

On 7 August 2026, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement. Its publicly announced collective-defence clause is unusually clear: an armed attack against one of the three states "shall be regarded as an attack against them all." The three governments said the purpose was collective deterrence and expanded defence cooperation.

By the end of August, the agreement was already acquiring institutions. Foreign and defence ministers met with senior military leaders in Istanbul on 31 August. They agreed to establish a secretariat in Saudi Arabia, initially headed by a Pakistani secretary-general for three years, while promising deeper defence-industry cooperation and joint technology development.

That matters. A political declaration can disappear after the summit photographs are taken. A permanent secretariat, committees and military coordination begin turning diplomatic language into security architecture.

Pakistan therefore enters the present Saudi-Houthi crisis under different conditions from those it faced during the Yemen war a decade ago.

2015 Offered Pakistan an Escape Route

The historical comparison is uncomfortable.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia wanted Pakistani participation in its military campaign in Yemen. Pakistan's Parliament debated the crisis and adopted a resolution calling for neutrality while also expressing support for Saudi territorial integrity. Islamabad managed to distinguish between defending Saudi Arabia and entering the Yemen war.

That distinction protected Pakistan's relationship with Iran.

The strategic logic was straightforward. Pakistan shares a roughly 900-kilometre border with Iran. The two countries have security problems along that frontier, but neither gains from turning it into another permanent confrontation. Pakistan also has its own sectarian history to consider whenever Saudi-Iranian rivalry intensifies.

Saudi Arabia sits inside a different Pakistani calculation. Millions of Pakistanis have worked in the kingdom over the decades. Economic assistance has repeatedly accompanied the relationship, while military ties run much deeper than ceremonial visits between political leaders.

For years Islamabad managed the contradiction through ambiguity.

Pakistan could reassure Riyadh that Saudi territorial security mattered while telling Tehran that it would not participate in an anti-Iranian military bloc. The Makkah agreement has narrowed the space available for that manoeuvre.

Not eliminated it. Narrowed it.

The distinction is important.

Collective Defence Does Not Mean Automatic War

Headlines can easily outrun the legal facts here.

The Makkah agreement says an armed attack against one member will be regarded as an attack against all three. Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has now gone further in political terms, saying that unprovoked aggression or spillover into Saudi Arabia could make the arrangement operational. Reuters reported that Pakistani officials still described any potential Pakistani military role as defensive and confined to Saudi territory.

Nothing in the publicly released text I could verify establishes an automatic Pakistani declaration of war against the state or armed group responsible for an attack.

The operational details remain important precisely because they have not all been made public. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in late August that operationalisation of the Makkah agreement remained at an early stage. Earlier, when journalists questioned whether Parliament had approved the pact, the ministry said Pakistan's executive holds the authority to conclude such agreements under government procedures and that the required internal procedures had been followed.

International law adds another boundary.

Article 51 of the UN Charter recognises the inherent right of individual and collective self-defence when an armed attack occurs. States exercising that right must report the measures they take to the Security Council. International Court of Justice jurisprudence also subjects self-defence to necessity and proportionality.

The agreement therefore creates a serious security commitment without giving us enough public evidence to say that every missile landing inside Saudi Arabia automatically sends Pakistani aircraft into combat.

Politics may become more important than legal mechanics anyway.

Once three governments publicly announce that an attack on one counts as an attack on all, repeated attacks begin testing the credibility of the promise.

Deterrence works only when adversaries believe words may eventually produce action.

The Houthis Have Found the Weak Point

The Houthis appear to understand the pressure they can create.

Their latest attacks have reached Saudi cities and strategic infrastructure. Reuters reported attacks involving ballistic missiles and drones against southern Saudi locations, including Khamis Mushait and Jazan. Saudi forces have responded militarily in Yemen as the conflict intensifies.

The problem extends far beyond the Saudi-Yemeni frontier.

Reuters reported on 10 September that Houthi forces were advancing in western Yemen in a struggle that could strengthen their position around Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow passage connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. The danger has become more acute while shipping around the Strait of Hormuz is already under severe pressure from the wider Iran conflict.

Pakistan consequently faces several pressures at once.

Riyadh wants its new security arrangements to possess credibility. Tehran wants to prevent the regional war from producing a stronger Saudi-Pakistani-Turkish military alignment. Islamabad still wants room to mediate and prevent escalation.

Those objectives do not fit together comfortably.

Pakistan's message to Tehran exposes the problem. Islamabad is effectively asking Iran to help prevent circumstances in which Pakistan's own defence commitments become harder to avoid.

Diplomacy has become a form of strategic self-protection.

Pakistan's Iranian Problem Is Geographic

Maps have a way of humiliating grand strategy.

Saudi Arabia can think about Iran across the Gulf. Türkiye approaches Iran through regional competition and overlapping security interests. Pakistan lives beside it.

The Pakistan-Iran border runs through difficult terrain in Balochistan and Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province. Militancy has already produced cross-border tension. In January 2024, Iran struck targets inside Pakistan; Pakistan answered with strikes inside Iran before both governments moved rapidly to restore relations.

That episode revealed something important.

Islamabad will retaliate when it believes its sovereignty has been violated, but it also understands the cost of allowing confrontation with Iran to develop its own momentum. A hostile western border would create a strategic burden Pakistan has little reason to invite.

Saudi security commitments pull in the opposite direction.

If Houthi attacks continue striking Saudi territory, Islamabad cannot endlessly treat the Makkah clause as ceremonial language. Defence Minister Asif's comments have already made that harder. The question will shift from whether Pakistan supports Saudi sovereignty to what support means when deterrence fails.

Air defence assistance is one possibility. Intelligence and technical support offer another. Pakistani forces could protect Saudi installations without entering Yemen or attacking Iran.

Reuters reported Pakistani sources saying precisely that the three partners had agreed their troops would not enter Yemen and that Pakistan had made no decision to join retaliatory strikes.

Such limits give Islamabad room.

They do not give it unlimited room.

The Real Test Has Not Arrived Yet

I would resist the dramatic claim that Pakistan has already chosen Saudi Arabia over Iran. The evidence does not support it.

Pakistan is still attempting diplomacy. Its public position describes the defence arrangement as defensive, while officials continue stressing de-escalation. The agreement itself does not identify Iran as an enemy.

But strategic ambiguity becomes expensive once missiles begin testing it.

For years Pakistan could maintain close Saudi defence relations and cordial Iranian ties because the two relationships did not always demand contradictory actions at the same moment. The expanding Gulf conflict is beginning to change that condition.

A Houthi missile hitting Saudi territory is no longer only a Saudi-Yemeni event. It now lands, politically, inside an agreement bearing Pakistan's signature.

That is why Islamabad's warning to Tehran deserves more attention than another Middle Eastern diplomatic exchange. Pakistan is trying to stop the regional conflict before somebody asks it to give operational meaning to words its prime minister has already signed.

From Karachi, the uncomfortable question is no longer whether Pakistan wants to choose between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

It is how long events will allow Pakistan to avoid being forced closer to one side.