After Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed a mutual defense treaty in Mecca last week, a senior Israeli official sounded the alarm.

“The agreement worries us,” the official told the Ynet news outlet. “It is a pact aimed at Israel.”

“We wouldn’t be surprised if Egypt joins the Mecca Agreement,” continued the official, expressing worries that it could bring hostile forces to Israel’s doorstep.

That interpretation fundamentally misreads both the target of the tripartite pact and Cairo’s relevance to it.

It was actually a reading offered by Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman that got closer to the heart of the agreement.

“Countries in the region cannot rely on the claim of security provided by the US as in the past,” said Esmaeil Baghaei.

Indeed, the failure of the US to effectively confront Iran and sustain pressure on Tehran is at the center of the agreement. “These countries are showing frustration with the lack of success and the muddle of US diplomacy,” said Simon Henderson, Baker senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The three Sunni powers are not about to go to war for each other, and they know it. The pact is about signaling leadership, joint action, and diplomatic power, not about creating a unified military force.

The Middle East is littered with a litany of defense pacts that amounted to nothing.

The Arab League established its Joint Defense Council in 1950 after being defeated by the fledgling IDF. That council then created the Egypt-led United Arab Command in 1964.

Its chance to prove its effectiveness as a joint bulwark came a few years later, as Israel carried out Operation Shredder in the Jordanian-held West Bank in 1966 and then took on four Arab armies in the Six Day War the next year.

The UAC did nothing, and fell apart shortly thereafter.

Today, regional defense pacts still don’t mean much.

After Israel’s failed 2025 strike on Hamas leaders in Doha sent jitters through the region with the signal that nowhere was off limits, Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense treaty with nuclear-armed Pakistan that officially regards any attack on either nation as an attack on both. A decade earlier, Pakistan had turned down a request from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman to join its war against the Houthis in Yemen.

This year’s Iran war gave the countries a chance to see if things would change under the alliance. Saudi Arabia was hit repeatedly by Iran, and Pakistan did indeed send thousands of troops, a ​squadron of fighter jets and an air defense system to Saudi Arabia — after a ceasefire was in effect, and only after the Saudis forked over $3 billion to help Islamabad pay off debts to the UAE.

Even more feebly, the Pakistani troops were deployed in an “advisory and training role.”

Turkey, for its part, has had 3,000 troops in Qatar for almost a decade and a number of defense pacts with the country. But they did nothing to stop Iranian strikes in 2025 and 2026, or the Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Doha.

Further weakening the potential for any joint action in the newest defense agreement, the........

© The Times of Israel