Over the past weekend, a dramatic diplomatic ceremony unfolded at Al-Safa Palace in Mecca. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif signed the “Mecca Joint Defense Agreement”, a trilateral military pact stipulating that an armed attack against any one of the three states will be considered an attack against all three. In the simplest sense, this is a historic agreement: it marks the first time the region’s leading Sunni powers have signed a formal military alliance of this kind.

A worrying combination of capabilities

What makes the agreement especially sensitive from Jerusalem’s perspective is the makeup of its signatories: Turkey fields the second-largest army in NATO, Pakistan is the only Muslim-majority state to possess nuclear........

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