Pakistan thought it had figured out the formula. Flatter Trump loudly enough, commit to Saudi Arabia firmly enough, and keep Iran placated with phone calls and warm words. For a while, the formula held. Then the United States and Israel killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, missiles started falling across the Gulf, and Pakistan’s carefully constructed diplomatic architecture began to crack under the weight of a war it never planned for.
The country now faces three simultaneous crises. It must manage a defence pact with Saudi Arabia that was never meant to be tested this hard. It must manage a restless and furious Shia population that makes up roughly 20 percent of its 250 million citizens. And it must avoid doing anything that damages its newly rebuilt relationship with Washington. The problem is that all three of these objectives have now become mutually exclusive.
The defence pact sits at the centre of the crisis. Signed on 17 September 2025 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Asim Munir, the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement declared that aggression against one country would be treated as aggression against both. Analysts compared its language to NATO’s Article 5. Pakistan’s military leadership signed it knowing the potential dividends were significant. What they apparently did not anticipate was that within six months, Iran would be firing ballistic missiles at Saudi military bases housing American troops.
Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman met Munir in Riyadh on 6 March and made the situation plain. They discussed, in the minister’s own words, Iranian attacks on the kingdom and the measures needed to halt them within the framework of the mutual defence pact. That is not a diplomatic courtesy. That is a formal invocation.
Pakistan’s response has been to talk furiously and commit to nothing concrete. Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar launched what he called shuttle communication between Riyadh and Tehran. He reminded Iran of Pakistan’s defence obligations to Saudi Arabia. He extracted assurances from Riyadh that its soil would not serve as a launchpad against Iran. He credited this exchange with limiting the scale of Iranian strikes on the kingdom. Within 24 hours, Iran fired three ballistic missiles at Prince Sultan Air Base regardless.
The domestic fallout has been immediate and dangerous. At least 23 people died in protests across Pakistan following Khamenei’s assassination. In Karachi, protesters stormed the United States consulate. American Marines fired on the crowds. The anger fused anti-American sentiment with pro-Iranian Shia solidarity in ways that put enormous pressure on a government already short on political legitimacy. The army imposed curfews. The underlying rage did not disappear.
What makes Pakistan’s position uniquely difficult is the Trump dimension. Since January 2025, Islamabad invested enormous effort into rebuilding its relationship with Washington. Pakistan nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Munir received a solo White House lunch. Pakistan offered rare earth minerals, Balochistan resource access and a revived counterterrorism dialogue. In return it got tariff relief, F16 sustainment and American warmth it had not experienced in over a decade.
The trap is now visible to everyone. The country that Pakistan needs to keep happy economically is Saudi Arabia. The country that Saudi Arabia is at war with is Iran. The country whose military campaign started the war is the United States. If Pakistan honours its defence pact with Riyadh, it risks becoming a participant in an American led conflict against a neighbour it shares 900 kilometres of border with. If it refuses, it loses Saudi Arabia permanently and potentially triggers the economic collapse it has spent years trying to avoid.
Analysts note that Pakistan’s most viable path remains air defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia, covert intelligence support and sustained diplomatic engagement with Tehran. Militarily meaningful, politically deniable. For now. But as Iranian strikes intensify and Saudi patience thins, the distance between a phone call and a military decision shrinks with every missile launched.
Pakistan built its foreign policy on the assumption that its key partners would never directly fight each other. That assumption is gone. What replaces it will define the country’s position in the region for decades.
