Over the last several decades, the Gulf states have used their oil and gas riches to transform their economies into global powerhouses. Many have built gleaming new cities and some of the world’s best airlines—and turned to the United States for security to make sure the party kept going. The Iran conflict has thrown most of those plans into flux. The latest example of this state of uncertainty could be the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, a pact between Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to treat an attack on one of them as an attack on them all—language that is reminiscent of NATO’s Article 5.

On the latest episode of FP Live, I dug into the nature of this new defense agreement and how the Gulf countries are rethinking their security and economic frameworks. I spoke with Allison Minor, a director at the Atlantic Council who previously served as a U.S. deputy special envoy to Yemen and also as a director at the National Security Council focused on the Arabian Peninsula.

Over the last several decades, the Gulf states have used their oil and gas riches to transform their economies into global powerhouses. Many have built gleaming new cities and some of the world’s best airlines—and turned to the United States for security to make sure the party kept going. The Iran conflict has thrown most of those plans into flux. The latest example of this state of uncertainty could be the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, a pact between Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to treat an attack on one of them as an attack on them all—language that is reminiscent of NATO’s Article 5.

On the latest episode of FP Live, I dug into the nature of this new defense agreement and how the Gulf countries are rethinking their security and economic frameworks. I spoke with Allison Minor, a director at the Atlantic Council who previously served as a U.S. deputy special envoy to Yemen and also as a director at the National Security Council focused on the Arabian Peninsula.

The full conversation is available on the video box atop this page or wherever you get your podcasts—on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or anywhere else. (Follow the FP Live podcast to automatically download it for free.) What follows here is a transcript of an excerpt of our discussion.

Ravi Agrawal: So let’s just start with what’s being called the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement. How do you see this? Is it an attempt at building a regional NATO, or is it not as significant as that?

Allison Minor: I think it’s a very significant development, but I don’t think it’s going to translate into the truly operational security alliance that we see with NATO and particularly the NATO Article 5 condition. There is a mutual defense commitment in the Mecca Agreement, but I don’t think it’s going to look like what we would expect a NATO response to look like for an attack on a NATO member.

RA: Yes, and the Article 5 clause you’re pointing to, of course, is that an attack on one is an attack on all. And the added factor that makes this more interesting is that Pakistan is a nuclear state.

AM: Exactly. But Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have had a defense agreement, including a mutual defense pact since September of last year. That was before the Iranian attacks on the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia. And Pakistan’s response to those attacks have been relatively muted from the pure security perspective. They sent about 8,000 troops and air defense........

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