Islamabad: Is Pakistan taking advantage of the Middle East crisis to create a new quadrilateral defence alliance on the lines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation or NATO?
The basis of this alliance will be religion as all members will be Islamic nations. Qatar and Turkey are planning to join the country’s mutual defence cooperation pact with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has said.
Islamabad is already known to have sent fighter jets and soldiers to Saudi Arabia as part of the pact. Riyadh was quick to respond by offering a bailout package so Pakistan may remain eligible for IMF funds.
‘The arrangement is currently in the process of being finalised,’ Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif said on a local television show on Monday night.
“If Qatar and Turkey also join this existing agreement, it will be a welcome development,” he said.
The expanded alliance, powered by Saudi and Qatar’s oil money, Turkey’s high-tech defence technology and Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities, could transform the security landscape of the region. It would bring together erstwhile rivals Riyadh and Ankara, as America’s war against Iran has pulled the wider Middle East into the conflict, marking a reset in ties after years of rivalry over Sunni leadership in the Middle East, as reported by NDTV.
Islamabad and Riyadh signed the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement in 2025, reportedly contains a collective defence clause under which any aggression against one signatory would be treated as an attack on all. According to a Bloomberg report, the clause echoes NATO’s Article 5.
The Iran war has proved that increased reliance on the US would not protect regional interests during conflict, people familiar with the matter said, noting that the alliance is a logical step.
“As the US prioritises its own interests and that of Israel in the region, changing dynamics and fallout from regional conflicts are prompting countries to develop new mechanisms to identify friends and foes,” Nihat Ali Ozcan, a strategist at the Ankara-based think tank TEPAV, told Bloomberg.
Turkey is a long-standing member of the US-led NATO, with the second-largest military within the alliance. It also has a mature defence industry and has assisted Pakistan during Operation Sindoor in May 2025 — a development that might have wider security implications for India.
The two new inclusions to the Saudi-Pakistan pact would potentially create a new axis that blends Ankara’s military experience and defence manufacturing base, Islamabad’s nuclear deterrent and ballistic missile capability, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s financial muscle. Some experts have called it the “Muslim NATO” or the “Islamic NATO”.
Indian Air Force Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retired), in an op-ed in The Eurasian Times, noted that if finalised, the “Islamic NATO” alliance could seriously challenge and even threaten countries like India, Israel, Armenia, and Cyprus, among others.”
The framework would complicate India’s security landscape, even if it does not translate into an immediate military threat, he said.
“Turkey and Pakistan have been working very closely. India, too, is concerned about this nexus. India has also been working more closely with Greece and Cyprus. India and Israel could coordinate more closely in the Mediterranean,” he said.
