Pakistan: A Patron of Last Resort for Middle East Security?
Policy Brief, September 2026
Global Fellow, Habib University
Key Takeaways
Formalization, Not a Pivot: Pakistan has moved from ad hoc Gulf military cooperation to a graduated security template, spanning a full mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia, a lighter five-year agreement with Kuwait, and exploratory talks with Bahrain and Jordan. This extends, rather than breaks from, decades of Gulf states bailing out Pakistan’s economy since the 1960s.
A Classic Credibility Problem: Pakistan’s standing as a security guarantor faces the same extended-deterrence problem that dogged Cold War alliances, sharpened by unresolved ambiguity over whether its first-use nuclear doctrine covers its new Gulf partners.
Stability-Instability Risk Revived: The arrangement risks reviving a Cold War-style stability-instability paradox. Nuclear weapons deter nuclear attacks but not conventional ones, and they are weak tools of compellence, leaving Islamabad’s guarantees of little use if the regional status quo is challenged.
A Widening Nuclear Picture: Growing Saudi nuclear latency under the U.S.–Saudi 1-2-3 Agreement adds a further complication. Pakistan’s limited power-projection capacity, its focus on India, and its ties to Iran all constrain what it can actually deliver in a crisis.
Executive Summary
Since the fall of 2025, Pakistan has stepped into a security vacuum left open by the Gulf states’ declining confidence in U.S. protection. Islamabad has signed two mutual defense pacts with Saudi Arabia, deployed forces there during the war with Iran, and reached a five-year military cooperation agreement with Kuwait. Bahrain and Jordan are reportedly exploring similar arrangements. This brief asks whether Pakistan can credibly serve as a security patron for the Gulf, particularly when the nuclear dimension of its guarantees is taken into account.
Pakistan is applying a graduated security-for-investment model across four states. This builds on decades of Gulf financial support for Pakistan rather than marking a clean strategic pivot. Yet formal defense commitments raise a fundamental credibility problem when Pakistan’s own vital interests are not directly at stake.
Several factors complicate Pakistan’s role as a security guarantor. Pakistan has never clarified whether its first-use nuclear doctrine extends to the Gulf. Its conventional power-projection capabilities are limited, and it remains preoccupied with India. At the same time, Islamabad maintains a working relationship with Iran. Nuclear weapons, moreover, are effective mainly at deterring other nuclear weapons, not conventional attacks or coercion, which means Gulf states risk over-relying on Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella for exactly the contingencies it is least equipped to cover.
A Security Template Built on Old Debts
Gulf states have grown visibly less confident in U.S. security guarantees since the 2019 attack on the Abqaiq and Khureis oil processing facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia. These concerns have been reinforced by Iranian missile and drone attacks as well as drone strikes conducted by militias belonging to Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs).1
Into that gap has stepped an unexpected patron: Pakistan. Islamabad’s Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement with Saudi Arabia, signed weeks after the Israeli strike on Doha in 2025, formalized a decades-old relationship into a NATO Article 5-style commitment, with Pakistani forces later deployed to Saudi soil.2 That bilateral pact was superseded in August 2026 by the trilateral Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, which extended the same Article 5-style commitment to include Türkiye alongside Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.3 Kuwait negotiated a five-year military cooperation and training agreement with Islamabad, offering upstream energy investments to secure Pakistani defense assistance after enduring Iranian strikes during the war.4 The need for a credible external patron by Gulf states has gained greater urgency since the outbreak of Operation Epic Fury and Iranian attacks on Gulf states. This brief builds on prior analysis of the broader multilateral bloc forming around Türkiye, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, by focusing specifically on Pakistan’s bilateral commitments to Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia and their credibility as security guarantees.5
This graduated template, a full pact with Saudi Arabia, a more limited agreement with Kuwait, and exploratory interest from Bahrain and Jordan is less a new alignment than the formalization of a decades-old pattern: Gulf states, chiefly Saudi Arabia, have bailed out Pakistan’s economy repeatedly since the 1960s, making today’s pacts an extension of an existing financial relationship rather than a clean strategic pivot.6
That commitment faces a classic credible commitment problem that echoes Western European states’ doubts about the credibility of American nuclear guarantees during the Cold War. The question is sharper for Pakistan given its limited power-projection capacity, its preoccupation with India, and its continued relationship with Iran. It is exacerbated by concern over whether Pakistan’s declared first-use, asymmetric-escalation nuclear doctrine would extend to the Gulf — well established with respect to India, but never officially extended or clarified with respect to the Gulf.
The Limits of a Nuclear Guarantee
Three issues sharpen this credibility problem. First, Pakistan has a first-use nuclear doctrine against India to counterbalance its conventional weakness against New Delhi. However, it is unclear whether any commitment to use nuclear weapons on behalf of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan would be a first-use doctrine or a posture of assured retaliation. Pakistan has not stated under what conditions it would use nuclear weapons on behalf of its protégés. This gives Pakistan latitude. A first-use posture is designed for deterrence as well as compellence, while assured retaliation is primarily useful for deterrence. However, the latter signals restraint and may be useful for mitigating regional security dilemmas, while the former requires vigilance and a high degree of alertness to be credible. It may also be more accident-prone than the latter.
Second, Pakistan has a long history of close relations with Iran. While the two countries are not treaty allies, they have had warm relations since Pakistan reached independence. During the recent war with the U.S., Pakistan allowed Iran to hide military and intelligence jets at the Nur Khan Airbase outside of Rawalpindi.7 This presents Pakistan with a commitment problem vis-à-vis its new treaty allies in the Gulf and the rest of the Middle East. They have reason to be suspicious whether Pakistan will live up to its commitments to them in case of another crisis or war with Iran.
Third, Pakistan’s contribution to bilateral commitments to states in the region is its nuclear arsenal. It is not a major conventional power and has difficulty projecting military force across long distances. Nuclear weapons are of limited utility in deterring many types of threats, from conventional attacks from state actors to threats posed by non-state actors. We have seen the ineffectiveness of nuclear weapons in deterring conventional wars during the October War of 1973 when Israel failed to deter Egypt and Syria from attacking.8 Similarly, nuclear weapons have not deterred terrorist actors from attacking nuclear-armed states, as shown during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan have not found a security catch-all with their ties to Pakistan. They still need to reckon with how much they need to spend on conventional armaments to deter threats to their countries and what kinds of weapons systems they need to purchase. They also need to grapple with how – or whether – they will coordinate responses among themselves and other Gulf and regional actors to (potential) threats.
This deepening security alignment introduces significant complications on regional nuclear dynamics, especially given that the recent 1-2-3 Agreement signed between Saudi Arabia and the United States raises the likelihood that Riyadh will evolve into a latent nuclear power.9 This emerging nuclear latency complicates Pakistan’s role as a security guarantor, bringing a Cold War-style extended-deterrence problem to the forefront. While historical comparisons often point to how American security guarantees dampened South Korea’s pursuit of the bomb, those U.S. protections were underpinned by an unmatched capability to project conventional military power rapidly across long distances.10 History suggests that Pakistan’s guarantee should dampen Saudi Arabia’s likelihood of moving from nuclear latency to a nuclear power. However, should Riyadh and Ankara fear abandonment, they could threaten to pursue nuclearization much like West Germany did in exchange for stronger guarantees from the U.S. – only in this instance they would attempt to extract guarantees from Pakistan.
Riyadh did not have to wait long to test the limits of this guarantee: when Houthi forces attacked Saudi Arabia earlier this month, the attack produced no response, leaving Riyadh to discover in real time just how little its defense guarantee covered.11 These dynamics sit outside the broader multilateral bloc narrative and warrant independent scrutiny, providing a clearer picture of how individual security architectures and nuclear ambitions are developing across the region.
There are few alternatives to Pakistan that can provide a nuclear umbrella. The U.S. has damaged its credibility during the recent war with Iran. The most immediate alternatives are China and India, both of whom have close ties with Iran. India has a No-First-Use Doctrine (NFU) and has repeatedly said that it does not want to get dragged into conflicts in the Middle East, even though it has the technical capacity to project a nuclear umbrella into the Arab Gulf region.12 China is a longstanding ally of Pakistan, is a large purchaser of Saudi oil, and has a close relationship with Iran and is seen as a behind-the-scenes supporter of the Mecca Agreement because of the military infrastructure it has provided Pakistan over the years.13 However, it has an aversion to alliances, showed few public signals of pressuring Iran to limit its strikes on Gulf states during the Iran War, and maintains a nuclear doctrine of assured retaliation rather than first-use. Intra-regional cooperation absent outside parties seems unlikely: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was created in 1981 as a defense pact with Article 5-like commitments, which proved an empty letter when Saddam Hussein attacked Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. States may instead pursue independent self-help options such as conventional rearmament and independent nuclear programs, but both carry price tags that will interfere with several Gulf states’ Vision 2030 ambitions. They will also clash with global restrictions on the international nuclear market and fail to meet these states’ immediate security needs, making them, at best, medium-to-long term solutions.
Recommendations
First, Islamabad must explicitly issue a public addendum to its nuclear doctrine detailing exactly where the red lines sit for its Gulf partners. Ambiguity may be tolerable in a two-party relationship, but it is far more dangerous within an extended deterrence framework. If Saudi Arabia or Kuwait believe they are sitting under a nuclear umbrella while Islamabad only intends to use its arsenal if raw material flows to Pakistan are threatened, a major miscalculation is likely. If Pakistan has no intention of launching a first strike to defend Riyadh from a conventional attack, it needs to state this clearly now before Gulf states place too much weight on a guarantee that does not actually exist.
Second, Pakistan must explicitly carve out a “non-aggression/neutrality clause” regarding Iran within the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, and within its bilateral arrangements with Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, to formalize its existing diplomatic realities. The Gulf states are purchasing security commitments, but they cannot buy a clean break between Islamabad and Tehran. Rather than allowing this to remain an unresolved credibility problem, Pakistan should be transparent that its defense pacts function strictly as defensive arrangements for Gulf sovereignty, not as a basis for staging offensive action or power projection against Iran.
Third, if the Gulf states want a credible, NATO Article 5-style protector, they need to explicitly finance a dedicated Pakistani strategic power-projection fund to build the logistics, sealift, and mid-air refueling capabilities required to move troops in a crisis. At present, the “security for investment” template remains largely untested and potentially unreliable in practice. If the Gulf states are simply supporting Pakistan’s broader economy, rather than specifically funding the logistics needed to transport and sustain Pakistani forces during a Middle Eastern conflict, the pact risks proving ineffective at the moment it is needed. The Houthi episode is an early illustration of that gap.
Finally, the mutual defense agreements, the Mecca pact chief among them, should be reframed away from abstract nuclear posturing and refocused on countering grey-zone, conventional and proxy threats, such as PMU drone strikes or Houthi missile barrages. Given the limited utility of nuclear weapons against such threats, Pakistan and its Gulf partners would be better served by focusing the agreements on joint air defense integration, anti-drone warfare, and counter-proxy intelligence.
Conclusion
The post-2025 security agreements between Pakistan and its new partners are not a sudden strategic pivot, but the formalization of a decades-old transaction: capital in exchange for Pakistani military muscle. However, by elevating this financial relationship into a series of formal defense pacts, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan have walked into a classic, Cold War-style extended deterrence trap.
Islamabad simply cannot deliver the total security shield these nations are looking for. Its conventional constraints, relationship with Tehran, and the limited utility of nuclear weapons against conventional and grey-zone threats all restrict what Pakistan can credibly offer its new treaty partners. Even if Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan look to Pakistan purely for its nuclear arsenal, they are miscalculating. Nuclear weapons are useless at deterring the exact threats plaguing the region: grey-zone proxy conflicts, regional missile barrages, and PMU drone strikes on critical infrastructure.
With the U.S. umbrella cracked, and with India and China refusing to alienate Iran by stepping into the gap, these nations have chosen Pakistan as their patron of last resort. Yet, this new alignment leaves them facing a dangerous stability-instability paradox. Pakistan’s unresolved nuclear ambiguity does not solve their immediate security deficit; it merely forces Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan to face a hard reality. They cannot buy a shortcut to security. To survive the medium-to-long term, these states must still shoulder the massive financial and strategic burden of conventional rearmament and localized defense coordination—even if it comes at the expense of their Vision 2030 ambitions.