If Iran Joins the Mecca Pact, the Middle East Security Order Could Be Turned Upside Down
Iran has reportedly been invited to join the newly created Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, an extraordinary development that—if officially confirmed—could fundamentally alter the purpose of the emerging Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan security bloc.
The claim comes from Mehdi Rahimi, head of the Iranian parliament-linked Khaneh Mellat news agency, who told Al Mayadeen that Tehran had received an invitation and was studying it.
But an important caution remains: Iran’s Foreign Ministry has not officially confirmed the invitation, nor have Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Pakistan publicly announced it. For now, the story should therefore be treated as a significant reported development rather than an established diplomatic decision.
If confirmed, however, its implications would be enormous.
The Mecca agreement was signed on August 7 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Its defining principle is collective defense: an armed attack against one member is treated as an attack against all.
The three governments are already moving toward joint military exercises, ministerial coordination and deeper defense-industrial cooperation.
Iranian membership would transform that structure.
Until now, the pact could plausibly be understood as a new center of Sunni strategic power—Saudi financial strength, Turkish military-industrial capacity and Pakistan’s large armed forces and nuclear status.
Bringing Shia Iran into that architecture would change it from a conventional alliance into something much more ambitious: an attempt to construct a regional security system capable of containing conflicts between the region’s major Muslim powers from inside the same framework.
That would also explain Tehran’s surprisingly positive reaction to the pact.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said earlier this month that Tehran had “no reason for concern” about the agreement and portrayed greater regional security cooperation as consistent with something Iran itself had advocated for years.
Iran therefore sees an opportunity.
For decades, Tehran has argued that Gulf security should ultimately be determined by regional states rather than by American military power.
Membership in the Mecca pact would allow Iran to claim that this principle was finally becoming institutionalized.
But Saudi Arabia would be making an equally calculated move.
Riyadh has spent years balancing deterrence against Iran with diplomatic engagement. Bringing Tehran into a collective regional mechanism could potentially give Saudi Arabia another way of restraining Iranian behavior—not through confrontation alone, but by forcing Tehran to accept explicit obligations toward neighboring states.
That is the theory.
The reality would be much harder.
Iran remains in a military confrontation with the United States and Israel. Its relationship with several Gulf governments remains deeply distrustful. Tehran retains ties to armed groups across Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon whose activities have repeatedly threatened Saudi and regional interests.
A defense pact cannot simply erase those contradictions.
The biggest question would be obvious:
What happens if Iran itself attacks another member?
A collective-defense structure only works when members agree on who constitutes the threat.
That is straightforward in NATO.
It would be far more complicated in an alliance containing Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Pakistan may therefore become increasingly important as the bridge.
Islamabad maintains deep strategic ties with Riyadh and close defense relations with Turkey, while simultaneously keeping channels open with Tehran. Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, is due in Tehran for talks that Reuters says will include the new Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan agreement alongside the Iran-US confrontation and wider regional security.
Turkey is performing a similar balancing role.
President Erdogan has urged Washington to return to negotiations with Iran while simultaneously strengthening Turkey’s defense relationship with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
What is emerging may therefore be less an alliance against Iran than an attempt to build a third regional pole—neither fully dependent on Washington nor aligned with Tehran.
WARYATV ASSESSMENT
Iranian membership would completely change how the Mecca pact should be understood.
Without Iran, it looks like a powerful new security triangle.
With Iran, it begins looking like the embryo of a regional security order.
Saudi Arabia could provide political and financial weight.
Turkey could provide military-industrial power.
Pakistan could provide strategic deterrence and diplomatic bridging.
Iran would bring geography, military capability and enormous influence across the Gulf and wider Middle East.
But it would also bring the alliance’s greatest internal contradiction.
The question would no longer be whether these countries can conduct military exercises together.
It would be whether they can agree on what constitutes aggression, how members should behave toward one another and whether regional disputes can be contained without armed proxies or external intervention.
That is why confirmation of the invitation matters so much.
If Tehran ultimately joins, the Mecca pact would cease to be merely another defense agreement.
It could become an experiment in something the Middle East has repeatedly failed to build:
a security architecture in which the region’s most powerful rivals are inside the same room rather than preparing for war from opposite sides of it.
