Political Analysis and Global Affairs

  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...