Introduction
On 7 August 2026, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye signed a trilateral defence agreement at Al-Safa Palace in Makkah, formally titled the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement. It converts into a three-way arrangement the bilateral Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement that Riyadh and Islamabad had concluded in Riyadh in September 2025. Within hours, commentators were calling it an “Islamic NATO”. India’s Ministry of External Affairs offered a narrower assessment the same day. Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said New Delhi was “closely following” the pact and would “keep you updated”, language that echoed the government’s studied neutrality toward the original bilateral agreement eleven months earlier. That posture held in the weeks that followed. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar later questioned the pact’s practical relevance given the live military situations confronting its signatories, while stressing that New Delhi weighs every such development in its calculus.
