Political Analysis and Global Affairs

  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 Reute...

A Russian visitor's experience of Pakistan reveals a gap between personal contact and wider Russian public opinion. A Russian visitor in Pakistan reflects a growing gap between personal experience, public perception, and Moscow’s increasing interest in Pakistan. A Russian visitor walked around Pakistan in shalwar kameez. When someone asked where he came from, he replied, “Chitral,” turning an ordinary encounter into a small joke about identity. The Russian view of Pakistan interested me more than the joke because the man speaking fluent Urdu had spent enough time here to compare an imagined Pakistan with the country he actually encountered. He first came to Pakistan in 2019 and later returned several times before settling here. His university teachers had already introduced him to Pakistan in a favourable way, so he did not arrive expecting the worst. Direct experience strengthened an opinion that had started in a Russian classroom, which makes his story more useful than the famil...

  Pakistan’s strategic paradox: Defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye and renewed military relevance have increased Pakistan’s geopolitical weight, but economic weakness and institutional constraints raise a harder question: can Pakistan convert strategic importance into lasting national power A few days ago, I was reading a discussion about Pakistan's growing military importance when one comment stopped me. The conversation had moved quickly from Pakistan's performance against India in May 2025 to the new Saudi Arabia-Türkiye-Pakistan defence relationship. Then a reader asked a less comfortable question: what good is all this external importance if Pakistan remains weak inside? I looked away from the screen for a moment. Karachi outside offered its usual contradiction, a huge commercial city pushing ahead despite expensive electricity, broken infrastructure and the daily friction that businesses learn to absorb. Pakistan can matter enormously on a strategic map w...

  Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye form a new collective-defence framework, forcing Iran to reconsider how separate regional military relationships could develop into a coordinated security structure. The new Makkah defence pact does not yet create a regional NATO, but it forces Tehran to calculate risks it once considered separately. I still remember the sound of telex machines in a Karachi banking office during the Iran-Iraq War. In 1986, I sat in a dim back office near I.I. Chundrigar Road and watched international payments slow as the war spilled into Gulf shipping. Tankers were being attacked, while Kharg Island, the nerve centre of Iranian oil exports, repeatedly came under pressure. For a banker thousands of kilometres from the fighting, the Tanker War arrived through delayed instructions and nervous conversations about dollars. That memory returned on August 7 when Saudi Arabia signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement with Pakistan and Türkiye. Crown Prince Mohammed bi...

  A visual representation of rising tensions between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran, highlighting the exaggerated narrative of a unified Muslim military bloc. The Saudi Pakistan defence pact has suddenly reappeared in headlines, wrapped in a dramatic claim: if Saudi Arabia enters a war with Iran, Pakistan will join, and fifty Muslim nations will line up behind Riyadh. It sounds like a geopolitical earthquake. A united Muslim bloc. A decisive moment. But pause for a second. When was the last time the Muslim world acted as one? Exactly. What the Saudi Pakistan Defence Pact Actually Means Let’s start with what is real. In September 2025 , Saudi Arabia and Pakistan formalised a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement . According to reporting by the Financial Times and Associated Press , the agreement includes a key clause: an attack on one may be treated as an attack on both . That is not symbolic. It matters. Pakistan has long provided: Military training and advisory suppor...

  In May’s Pakistan–India clash, social media overflowed with stories: Israel’s drones “through Qatar,” Doha “threatening to make Pakistan another Gaza,” Arab states “cheering for India.” None of these are backed by solid evidence. Yet the rumors spread, fast and loud. Background: Qatar has been in the headlines — not for aiding India — but because it was attacked by Israel when Hamas leaders were targeted in Doha. The United Nations Security Council condemned that strike. In real life, Qatar plays the role of mediator, even risking its own security to host ceasefire talks. But in our Facebook timelines, it somehow became the villain, accused of stabbing Pakistan in the back. Trigger: Why does it matter? Because once we paint a Muslim country as a traitor — based on half-truths or WhatsApp forwards — we poison ties that might be critical tomorrow. Pakistan already faces a shrinking circle of allies. Why shrink it further with invented betrayals? Consequences of Spreading The...