Shehbaz, Asim change regional calculus

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir have made it possible to put Muslim countries on a single platform

I will tell you exactly how it felt for Pakistanis all over the world the day the Makkah Defence Pact was signed. I am in London, and I can tell you that, for British Pakistanis, it felt like a wedding. I went to a café in central London and found a sort of celebration among Pakistanis. Phones were buzzing, television anchors were beaming, and for one evening, it seemed like every household in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi was talking about the same thing: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye standing together, promising to defend one another. In Riyadh and Ankara, the mood was no different. Flags, statements, warm handshakes. A celebration, plain and simple.

I miss Pakistan right now. Right now, Pakistan is illuminated. It is a sort of festivity. Celebration is in the air. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir have made it possible to put Muslim countries on a single platform.

But I am a curious man by nature, and celebrations make me curious in a particular way. When everyone in the room is smiling, I always want to know who is standing outside, looking in through the window. So I went looking. I wanted to know what India was saying, what Iran was saying, and what the UAE was saying. And what I found was a much more complicated story than the one being told at the wedding.

Let me start with India, because that is where the unease runs deepest. Turkish journalist Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, who studies the region closely, said it would be too early to call this a “Muslim NATO” or “Sunni NATO.” But she also said something important: this pact shows a real desire among regional countries to build their own security system, owned by themselves. Strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney went further. He warned that this agreement could make it much harder to control tensions if India and Pakistan ever clash again. He pointed out that during Operation Sindoor, Pakistan received far more military help from China than from Turkiye, but Turkiye’s direct support made one thing clear: if a conflict with India happens, Turkiye is ready to stand by Pakistan. Former Indian ambassador to the UN, T S Tirumurti, was even more direct. He said the pact uses language similar to NATO’s Article 5, and that its effects will not stay confined to the Middle East. Given the long, tense history between Pakistan and India, he said, this has to be read with that relationship in mind.

So, my friends in India must learn one thing: their government should think 10 times, or even more, before going into a military confrontation with Pakistan.

Then there is Iran, and here the tone was different again. Ali Akbar Velayati, adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not criticise the new pact. Instead, in posts written in Persian, Arabic, English and Turkish, he spoke of the resilience of Iran’s armed forces and what he called the defeat of the United States and Israel. He said this defeat proved that foreign forces, which he called the main cause of insecurity, must leave the region. And in the same breath, he said that growing cooperation among regional states can secure the region’s own security. In other words, Iran is not against regional countries banding together. It simply wants outside powers to step back.

The UAE, as I have written before, took the most careful line of all. No rejection, no celebration, just pointed questions about who exactly this alliance is meant to deter.

For his part, Turkish President Erdoğan tried to calm every nerve in the room. He wrote that the pact follows Article 51 of the UN Charter, the right to self-defence, and is not directed against any country. It is open, he said, to any friendly nation that wants peace and stability in the region.

So here is what I take from all this, writing as a Pakistani watching his own country’s celebration from the inside. Pride is natural, and this pact matters. But a wedding always looks different from outside the window. India sees risk. Iran sees an opening to push out foreign powers. The UAE sees questions still unanswered. As Pakistanis, we should enjoy this moment, but we should also read the room beyond our own hall.