Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense agreement on Friday in Saudi Arabia, a pact that says an armed attack on any one of the three will be treated as an attack on all three. The deal was sealed during a meeting between Mohammed bin Salman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Shehbaz Sharif.
The timing made the agreement read as more than a statement of intent. Pakistan’s foreign ministry said the accord was meant to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression, a message that landed as fighting flared again in Yemen and along Saudi Arabia’s border. Saudi Arabia has also been looking to diversify its defense partnerships, making the accord part of a broader regional recalibration rather than a one-off gesture.
That recalibration came against a sharp rise in violence. Iran-backed Houthis launched attacks on Marib province in eastern Yemen on Friday morning, and Qassem Bahaibah said the strikes hit a refugee camp and residential areas, killing at least two people and injuring 14 others. Late Friday, Yahya Saree said the rebel group had also targeted a Saudi-backed military camp in Marib and used drones and missiles to destroy storage facilities and military equipment.
At the same time, Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki said the Houthis struck the Najran region in southwestern Saudi Arabia near the Yemeni border on Thursday, wounding 11 civilians, including a woman and a child who suffered second-degree burns. The attacks mark a major escalation since a truce in 2022 largely halted fighting, and they sharpen the contrast between a new deterrence pact and a conflict still able to spill over borders with force.
The war in Yemen pits the Iran-backed Houthis against a Saudi-led coalition allied with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, and the new agreement places Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia inside a formal pledge meant to broaden the response to any future attack. What remains unclear is the mechanism that would turn that pledge into action, and whether the agreement will change events on the ground before the next round of strikes does.
