Exactly six months ago, on September 17, 2025, Pakistan signed the Nato-style defence agreement with Saudi Arabia. No person with keen eyes could have missed Iran, the unnamed factor, in the matrix. With the pact, the Rawalpindi-Islamabad hybrid regime sleepwalked into the Middle East maze, and now 400 Afghans at a hospital had to pay the price with their lives.
It was clear from Day One that Riyadh was unlikely to jump into any war that Pakistan waged, but Saudi Arabia had its sights on the Pakistani army — a mercenary force — and its nuclear shield. Saudi Arabia has given billions in loans to cash-strapped Pakistan and, thereby, can dictate the terms.
On September 17, 2025, Pakistan signed the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia. The exact terms of the deal were never made public, but the broad contours say that an attack on one would be considered an attack on the other. Pakistan, the only Islamic nation with nuclear weapons, would deploy its arsenal for Saudi Arabia if the need arose.
At home, this could have been used to prove a point. Pakistan was assuring its nuclear weapons for a country that is home to Islam’s top two holiest sites — Mecca and Medina. However, the security guarantee placed Pakistan in the Middle East matrix. Sunni Saudi Arabia is the archrival of Iran, the bulwark of Shia forces in the region.
“According to sources, Field Marshal Asim Munir has conveyed to MBS [Muhammad Bin Sultan] that as Pak forces are heavily engaged in Afghan sector, it cannot spare resources to send to Saudi Arabia. The same sources also say that MBS has got the hint of Pakistan’s clever plans to activate its border with Afghanistan to avoid committing defence resources to it,” Francesca Marino, an Italian journalist specialising in South Asia, wrote on X on March 16.
Marino said Saudi Crown Prince MBS had “actually called Asim Munir and Shehzad Sharif two-three times to convey his disappointment in this regard”.
On February 28, the very day Iran was hit and struck back, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman spoke to Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif.
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base, where the US operates a military base, the American embassy in Riyadh, oil fields and energy infrastructure were attacked by Iran.
On March 7, Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman met Pakistan’s Chief of Defence Forces Syed Asim Munir in Riyadh.
On March 12, Sharif and Munir met bin Salman in Jeddah. In the meeting, which was driven by the conflict in the Middle East, Sharif pledged “full solidarity and support” to Riyadh.
The urgency was palpable. Saudi Arabia needed assurances and more.
“Pakistan always has this principled position in its foreign policy. It will always come to the assistance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia when its sovereignty and territorial integrity are at threat,” Pakistan’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Ahmad Farooq, told the Arab News after the Salman-Sharif meeting.
Farooq, when asked if Pakistan would deploy troops or defence equipment in Saudi Arabia, said, “These are basically technical discussions that are, you know, take [place] between military authorities of both countries.”
The meetings and the question about Pakistan committing soldiers and weapons came against the backdrop of Iran attacking Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations with missiles and drones.
This is the time when Riyadh would need Munir and Sharif to walk the talk. But doing so would get things messy for the two at home.
“Both Shahbaz Sharif and Asim Munir have been summoned by Saudi Crown Prince MBS several times to request Pakistan to honour the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA)… The Saudi crown prince is extremely unhappy with Pakistan’s repeated failures to abide by the SMDA,” wrote Hamad Sidig, former Afghan ambassador to Germany, on X on March 15.
The US and Israeli attacks on Iran during the holy month of Ramadan, the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the spiritual leader of the Shias, top Iranian leaders and over 160 schoolgirlshave bridged the Shia-Sunni divide in Islamic nations. While political leaders might be given to realpolitik, the people have taken that a top Islamic leader has been assassinated by the US and Israel.
The volatility at home could be difficult to control for Munir and Sharif if it was seen that they were aligning against Iran in this war without facing any direct threat. Additionally, all of Pakistan, which shares around 900-km-long border with Iran, is within the range of deadly Iranian missiles. Any participation, direct or indirect, would make it the target of an Iran that is raining fury on its neighbours.
To wriggle out of the Catch-22 situation, Pakistan converted the border conflict with Afghanistan into an “open war”.
The Pakistan-Afghan situation has evolved like I had explained on March 3 in the article — Why Pakistan set its own house on fire just before Iran war. There was no trigger for Pakistan’s massive airstrikes on Afghanistan on February 27. Those came just a day ahead of the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, which set the entire Middle East on fire.
Even as the flames of the war singed Saudi Arabia, Pakistan carried out intensive bombing inside Afghanistan, and on the night of Ramzan’s Shab-e-Qadr (Laylatul Qadr), considered to be the holiest, killed over 400 Afghans at a hospital in Kabul.
There has been no trigger for Pakistan to have intensified the military conflict with Afghanistan barring the situation in the Middle East, which demands that it place its soldiers and military equipment in Saudi Arabia as pledged. That is what Pakistan did with the airstrikes on February 27. Deny US President Donald Trump his pound of flesh.
“Pakistan is not expected to get involved in any Saudi adventure outside its territorial boundaries. That is, Pakistan will not fight for Saudi Arabia in the territory of any other Muslim country,” Hasan Askari Rizvi, an independent defence analyst, told Sputnik, the Russian state-owned news agency.
Committing troops against Iran would be disastrous for Sharif and Munir, with Shias forming 20% of Pakistan’s population. Pakistan refrained from joining a Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis in 2015. The Iran-sponsored Houthis are part of its ‘Axis of Resistance’.
Pakistan requested Iran not to target Saudi Arabia, and later Pakistani Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, claimed Tehran had gone soft on Riyadh while hitting other Gulf nations hard. Reports suggest that Pakistan is engaged in backchannel diplomacy to cool down the heat between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
“The so-called war with Afghanistan is actually a deliberate distraction by the Pakistani military. They want to avoid the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA) commitment to give military support to Saudi Arabia by creating a manufactured conflict with Afghanistan,” wrote Sidig, the Afghan diplomat.
“This [war] is an excuse to justify why they cannot commit military forces to defend Saudi Arabia against Iranian attack,” Sidig added.
With the airstrikes on Taliban-led Afghanistan, Pakistan is trying to show both Trump and bin Salman that it has its own war to fight. It is innocent Afghan civilians who are now being killed in the hundredsby Pakistan, which is desperate to keep up its rouge. This should be a tale of caution for the countries, including the US and Saudi Arabia, that are aligning with Pakistan. While Islamabad benefits from these partnerships, it emerges just a fair-weather friend.
So, after Pakistan sleepwalked into the Middle East maze by formalising its defence commitment with Saudi Arabia, it is the defenceless Afghans who are paying with their lives now.
