Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: The New Geometry of Security

Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: The New Geometry of Security

By Paolo Falconio

The defense agreement between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan does not represent merely the birth of a new military axis. It is the signal of a deeper transformation in the balance of the Middle East: the progressive search, by regional powers, for an autonomous deterrence capability, at a time when the traditional American guarantee appears less solid than it was in the past.

The energy question is one of the elements explaining this evolution. For some time, the Gulf countries have been looking at the possibility of reducing their dependence on the Strait of Hormuz through new pipelines and alternative routes for oil exports. But these infrastructures require years to be built and, above all, do not eliminate strategic vulnerability: a pipeline remains physical infrastructure, exposed to missiles, drones, sabotage and kinetic operations. Energy security, therefore, cannot be entrusted exclusively to the diversification of routes.

For Saudi Arabia, an additional guarantee beyond the American one becomes necessary. Not necessarily an alternative to Washington, but a complementary one. The perception of a weakening of U.S. deterrence, aggravated by the strengthening of Iran as a first-level regional power, is pushing Riyadh to build its own security network.

The new triangle possesses particularly significant characteristics. Pakistan brings great military strength and nuclear deterrence; Turkey possesses one of the region’s most important conventional military capabilities and an increasingly autonomous defense industry; Saudi Arabia possesses financial resources, energy weight and geographical centrality. Three different powers that pool together different instruments of power.

For Ankara there is also a specific issue. Turkey is a member of NATO, but the evolution of the confrontation with Israel has introduced a strategic question destined to become increasingly relevant: to what extent does membership in the Alliance constitute an effective guarantee when the possible adversary is a state that, while not formally belonging to NATO, maintains strategic relations with numerous Western countries? The search for an autonomous regional capability therefore also becomes, for Ankara, a form of strategic insurance.

Within this framework, however, Iran represents the decisive variable. It would be reductive to interpret the new agreement simply as an anti-Iranian alliance. Tehran is now too important to be excluded from the new regional architecture. Its strategic depth, missile capability, position on the Gulf and, above all, its ability to influence Hormuz give it a weight that no Middle Eastern balance can ignore.

The paradox is therefore evident: the more Iranian power grows, the more Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have an interest in coordinating; but precisely because Iran has become so relevant, none of these countries can afford to build its security system indefinitely on the prospect of a permanent war with Tehran.

It is therefore possible that Iran may end up being not the fourth member of the alliance, but the fourth pole of a broader system of balance. A future regional architecture could in fact provide for a distinction between defensive alliances, bilateral agreements and consultation mechanisms in which Tehran could also be involved.

In this sense, the role of Egypt is not accidental. Formally outside the trilateral agreement, Cairo maintains a consultative function and represents a strategic actor that is difficult to exclude: it possesses one of the main Arab armed forces and controls the Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Gulf.

What is therefore emerging is not a simple “Islamic NATO.” It is something more complex: the birth of a multipolar geometry of Middle Eastern security, in which regional states seek to reduce their dependence on a single external power.

And Iran itself could become the testing ground for this transformation. If the new system succeeds in including Tehran within a logic of balance, the Middle East could enter the era of regional deterrence. If, instead, the logic of opposing blocs prevails, the new agreement could become the first building block of a new arms race.

In this scenario, a further element of geopolitical significance emerges. Some time ago, in a strategic projection exercise, I described Pakistan as the epicenter of a kind of “nuclear crescent” stretching from Western to Eastern Asia. Today, some dossiers appear to confirm a significant trend: despite its profound internal vulnerabilities, Islamabad increasingly seems to conceive of itself as a power whose strategic projection extends beyond its traditional regional boundaries, in line with an interpretation already advanced in recent days by Chas W. Freeman.

This does not, of course, mean that Pakistan already possesses the economic, technological, and political-diplomatic capabilities of a global superpower. It does mean, however, that its leadership is progressively developing a perception of itself as a power of systemic relevance, capable of playing a game that is not confined to South Asia.

The combination of nuclear capabilities, geographical position, demographic weight, relations with China, ties with the Islamic world, and growing engagement with the Gulf monarchies gives Pakistan a potentially broader role than the one traditionally attributed to it. Its centrality may therefore derive not so much from its ability to dominate a region, but from its capacity to connect multiple strategic theatres: the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia and, indirectly, the Indo-Pacific.

It is precisely this transformation in Islamabad’s strategic self-perception that deserves attention. Pakistan may not yet be a superpower, but its ruling class increasingly appears to be thinking in terms of an emerging power with extra-regional ambitions. And in geopolitics, the trajectory of a power often begins with the ability to imagine a role before possessing all the instruments required to exercise it.

Returning to the agreement, America looms in the background as a partial absence that nonetheless structures the present — a precise geopolitical interpretation: the United States is no longer the principal actor shaping the history of the Middle East, yet its reduced presence continues to define the strategic space within which new actors operate.

In this sense, the agreement does not merely describe a new alliance. It describes the moment when a region ceases to be someone else’s chessboard and begins to play its own game. The real contest, therefore, is not simply about who will defend whom, but about who will define the rules of Middle Eastern security after the scaling back of the American security guarantee.