Saudi-Pakistan Defence Pact Raises Alarms Over Terror Ties
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (Image X.com)
By formalizing a collective defense agreement, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif have signaled a geopolitical realignment — one critics warn ties two of the world’s most controversial security actors in an “axis of terror backers.”
By TRH Global Affairs Desk
NEW DELHI, September 18, 2025 — Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement, pledging that an attack on one will be treated as an attack on both. While state media in Riyadh and Islamabad hailed the pact as a leap in bilateral ties, critics see a dangerous deepening of what Brahma Chellaney described as an “axis of terror backers.”
The symbolism is hard to miss. Saudi Arabia, once branded by Donald Trump as “the world’s biggest funder of terrorism,” has now openly tied its security fate to Pakistan, long accused of exporting militancy across South Asia and beyond. The Financial Times noted that the deal sends a clear message to Washington and Tel Aviv: Riyadh is diversifying its security alliances, no longer tethered solely to the US defence umbrella.
For decades, Pakistan has quietly stationed thousands of troops in Saudi Arabia, often in Saudi uniforms, as revealed in a 1983 Canadian intelligence memo. What was once an “open secret” has now been codified into treaty language. The pact also echoes NATO’s Article 5 — the deterrence clause that an attack on one is an attack on all — but in a volatile neighbourhood where both states carry legacies of sponsoring extremist networks.
Geopolitical observers are split. While some, like analyst Kabir Taneja, dismiss the pact as a “re-hash” of old arrangements, others stress that the formalized collective defence language represents a major shift. TRT World called it “a redrawing of the regional security map.”
Yet behind the rhetoric lies unease: can two states long accused of stoking proxy wars now guarantee each other’s security without amplifying instability across the Middle East and South Asia? The answer may redefine not just Riyadh’s relations with Washington and Israel, but also the future of Gulf geopolitics itself.
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There is not even a sole politician in the world worthy of being called a statesman; most are lesser than petty midgets for whom their chairs/cronies are more important than anything else
India even when it was much poorer than it is today was a sane voice listened to with attention & acted upon more times than not unlike today
Rajaji , though not a legislator or an office bearer of any party, used to be paid more attention, heard & the powerful acted upon his hortatory -be it Kennedy or Khrushchev
India’s political cupboard is very bare at this juncture in terms of international stature & understanding