The agreement, now officially known as the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, was signed in Mecca by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif six weeks ago, and it is already facing the same setback that has engulfed nearly every American-backed security plan in the region over the past six years. The agreement, which stipulates an armed attack on any one of the three signatories is an attack on all three, was touted as a historic realignment, a “big, bold, important first step” as President Donald Trump put it on Truth Social.

Trump greeted it with enthusiasm as soon as it was signed, noting how the Middle East was getting together and how countries would be able to defend themselves in a more meaningful way. However, the trend is undeniable. The first was the Abraham Accords that were supposed to create a new Middle East in which Israel was to be fully integrated into the economies of the Gulf countries, and the second was the later "Board of Peace" of Gaza, that was supposed to finally stabilise the strip, the Mecca framework is potentially another blown headline.

The first, the Abraham Accords, was supposed to establish a new Middle East in which Israel was to be fully integrated into the economies of the Gulf countries, and the second was the later "Board of Peace" of Gaza that was supposed to finally stabilise the strip; the Mecca framework is potentially another blown headline.

The figures of the deal are truly massive. The 2026 Global Firepower Index shows that the Military Strength of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey comes to nearly 1.4 million active soldiers, about 3,400 military aircraft, 6,000 tanks and over 340 naval vessels. But on paper, it is a formidable bloc, consisting of Pakistan's nuclear armed and battle-tested military, Saudi Arabia's oil riches and caretaking of the holiest sites of Islam and Turkey's being NATO's second largest army.

The deal is based on a bilateral Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement signed by Riyadh and Islamabad in September last year, which was later extended to include Ankara following over a year of quiet negotiations. A secretariat has since been established in Riyadh, the first secretary-general, from Pakistan, and officials of the three capitals meet again in Istanbul in late August to christen the alliance the Mecca Defence Alliance.

However, size on a ledger doesn't equal size on the ground. Soon after the signing, Yemen's Houthis movement launched its first missile and drone strikes on Saudi territory, including attacks in the vicinity of the East-West Petroline pipeline, which supplies nearly four per cent of the world's oil. The Pakistani defence minister had threatened the pact could be triggered if Islamabad was to keep on being aggressive, but by mid-September, the military remained silent and the government had not been heard to consider any military action.

The agreement lacks any publicly known text, a joint command, a standing force and a trigger mechanism that critics had already feared from the outset. Several regional experts suggest that the pact is not about fighting but about defence industrial cooperation, citing the existing co-production of Baykar's Akinci drone with Saudi Arabian Military Industries and advanced discussions regarding Saudi's possible involvement in Turkey's Kaan fighter programme. That's a worthwhile economic connection, but far removed from the muscular collective-security guarantee that was promised in August.

The reference to the Abraham Accords is useful because there, too, progress has come to a standstill. The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco were supposed to be the model for an Israeli-Saudi “normalisation” and their accord eventually sparked the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. That couldn't happen.

This year's war in the Middle East between Israel and the United States against Iran has left American bases throughout the region damaged or even destroyed, and stiffened public opinion against any security arrangement that is perceived as endorsing Israel's actions in Gaza, where charges of genocide remain in the background of the diplomatic dialogue. Normalisation is not something that Riyadh has expressed interest in without a viable plan to a Palestinian state.

Already, trade planners are talking about trade routes that avoid Israel altogether, allowing products to flow from Saudi Arabia through Jordan and Syria to Turkey and then on to Europe, and in this subtle way, expressing a lack of confidence in the premise of the accords.

Saddling on top of that is the Iran conundrum. Tehran was also said to have been granted an informal welcoming letter to be part of the Mecca framework, an Iranian parliamentarian official who framed the invitation as a vindication of numerous Iranian demands for a regional security umbrella, called under review. Since then, Iranian officials have downplayed any formal invitation and said they don't see anything in the pact aimed at Iran. This ambiguity works both ways as it deprives the alliance of a solid enemy to rally against and, while Gulf nations remain concerned about Iranian-backed proxies ruining shipping lanes and energy supplies.

Indian interpretation of the pact has been extremely cold. New Delhi's external affairs establishment has openly raised doubts about the actual impact of the pact as live military crises were unfolding with its members on both sides, while other Western strategists have raised similar doubts that the pact has been primarily intended to enhance the regional leverage of Pakistan and Turkey at India's and Israel's cost.

That mathematics is as relevant to the economy as it is to the battlefield. But the true picture of Indian ingenuity is in the country's own capital account RBI data for the latest financial year shows that foreign currency borrowing by Indian companies, such as external commercial loans and foreign currency loans, is almost five times higher, at $143.5 billion, than under a similar scheme, which amounted to $26 billion, in 2013. Yet, Pakistan remains reliant on Saudi financial aid to sustain its weak economy, whereas India's capital markets are welcoming in record amounts of capital while oil prices are falling based on the optimism of a de-escalation of the Middle East and completely different global equity markets, especially the chip sector, are surging on their own AI-fueled optimism.