ABNA24 - Pakistan’s military spokesperson says a new defense agreement with Saudi Arabia and Turkiye will not affect Islamabad’s strategic relationship with Iran, describing the pact as defensive in nature and aimed at collective deterrence and regional stability.
Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations, said the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement formalizes Pakistan’s longstanding strategic relationships with Saudi Arabia and Turkiye and is not intended to compete with other countries, alliances or strategic partnerships.
Speaking to Al Arabiya English, Chaudhry said the agreement has “no offensive, no interference, no aggressive element” and is purely defensive in nature.
“There is nothing aggressive. There are no regional aspirations. It is a collective deterrence, and it is complementary because all these countries have independent relations with other alliances, other countries, other blocks,” he said.
Chaudhry said the agreement is not directed against any particular country and should be viewed as complementary to Pakistan’s existing international relationships.
Asked whether the new defense arrangement could complicate Pakistan’s relations with Iran, Chaudhry rejected the suggestion.
“I don’t think, not at all,” he said, describing the agreement as the product of decades-old strategic relationships between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye.
He said Pakistan’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Turkiye have not “come out of the blue”, but are based on longstanding political, military, cultural and people-to-people ties.
“These relationships that Pakistan has with both these countries are special,” he said. “They are based on people-to-people relationship. There is an emotional connection, there is a cultural connection, there is a government-to-government, a military connection which spans over decades.”
Chaudhry described the new defense agreement as “a formalization of these strategic relationship in a peculiar environment”, saying it strengthened existing ties without creating an exclusive strategic bloc.
He also said the agreement is complementary to Pakistan’s relationship with China and does not represent an attempt to compete with Beijing or any other strategic partner.
“Nobody has any problem with that, everyone understands that this is defensive, everyone understands it is for maintaining stability and peace in the region,” he said, adding that the countries participating in the agreement also maintained strong relations with China.
Asked how Pakistan would respond if one of the countries covered by the agreement came under attack, Chaudhry said the operational details of the mutual defense commitments would not be made public.
He said the three countries would determine how to respond to any attack and would decide how to operationalize their commitments when necessary.
“The how part of how we are going to defend Pakistan against any aggression, I think that is always part of the operational classification and security,” he said. “It is for the three countries to decide and it is for them to know and for them to actualize it.”
Chaudhry also rejected the characterization of the Makkah Agreement as an “Islamic alliance”, saying it is instead a regional security arrangement focused on stability, peace and collective deterrence.
“It’s not a club that has been made for Muslim countries only,” he said, adding that the three countries could eventually consider admitting additional partners.
“This agreement and alliance can always encompass new willing partners who also believe in regional peace, stability, and security, and who have a shared vision of non-aggression, non-interference and collective deterrence,” he said.
Any decision on expanding the arrangement, he said, would rest with the leadership of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye.
The comments come as Pakistan seeks to maintain its longstanding relationship with Iran while strengthening defense and security cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Turkiye. Islamabad has also sought to maintain working relationships with a broad range of regional and international powers.
Turning to Pakistan’s mediation efforts between Iran and the United States, Chaudhry said Islamabad has taken on the role in pursuit of regional peace and stability.
“For peace. For regional peace. Because stability stems from peace,” he said when asked why Pakistan had chosen to mediate.
He said Pakistan’s policy of maintaining relations with a wide range of countries gives it a distinctive position in efforts to facilitate dialogue between Tehran and Washington.
“Pakistan is a big proponent of peace in the region and in the area,” he said, adding that Islamabad’s policy of “multi-alignment and multi-engagement” enables it to act as an “objective arbiter of peace”.
Chaudhry said Pakistan’s longstanding relationship with the United States, together with its “brotherly, neighborly and very strategic relations with Iran”, has helped Islamabad engage with both sides.
“We don’t have any personal or own objective in this dispute,” he said. “The only objective Pakistan is pursuing is that the conflict doesn’t spiral horizontally as well as vertically and the differences and issues are resolved rather than resolving them in air, ground or naval domains.”
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