The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement (MJDA) signed between Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan established a trilateral framework for collective deterrence and stated that an armed attack against any one of the three countries will be regarded as an attack against all three. The pact is grounded in Article 51 of the UN Charter, which recognises the inherent right of states to individual as well as collective self-defence.

Within hours of its signing on August 7, the “Islamic NATO” label began circulating. The comparison was tempting as both NATO and the MJDA invoke collective self-defence and deterrence principles, and NATO’s Article 5 famously treats an armed attack against one member as an attack against all. But while NATO has an institutional structure, established command arrangements and a long-standing bureaucracy, the Mecca pact lacks, at least for now, a NATO-like organisational structure. This is why it has failed to shield Saudi Arabia from the ongoing Houthi attacks.

The Saudis had intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to........

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