Pakistan

Islamabad, September 25, 2026. The joint defense pact of Mecca, signed on August 7 between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, structures the Pakistani reading of the Yanbu crisis. On Friday, on the sidelines of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Vice Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. The three ministers examined, according to Dar, "progress towards establishing the institutional structures" of the agreement, which he presented on the X network by evoking his "brothers" Saudi and Turkish. The text, signed the day after a bilateral strategic mutual defense agreement between Islamabad and Riyadh, provides that an aggression against one of the parties will be considered an aggression against all. The diplomats also prepared an urgent meeting of the chiefs of staff of the three countries, aimed at defining the means of supporting Saudi Arabia in the face of Houthi strikes, which targeted Mecca, Jeddah, and Yanbu, the kingdom's backup oil port on the Red Sea, on Thursday. Riyadh claims to have intercepted six ballistic missiles; the Yemeni rebels claim dozens of missile and drone strikes. The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that the three allies condemned these strikes while reaffirming Riyadh's right to defend itself. On the regional level, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif assured from New York that Iran "has no reservations" about the Mecca pact, specifying that a secretariat will be set up in October and that several Islamic countries wish to join. Islamabad has already appointed retired Lieutenant General Nauman Mahmood as the first secretary general of the agreement. It is within this trilateral framework, more than in the Parisian announcement of sending soldiers, radars, and defense systems to protect Yanbu, that Pakistani diplomacy situates its contribution: Asif summarized the spirit of the New York meetings by estimating that as long as meetings and exchanges continue, there remains hope for an improvement in relations.