Is it a misnomer? Since the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-Turkiye defence pact has been signed, there has been a tendency among scholars and analysts alike to call it an “Islamic NATO”. Surely, this is a tempting terminology to encapsulate a development like this: three Muslim-majority countries, the principle of an attack on one to be treated as an attack on all and a signing ceremony in Mecca. However, the analogy is misleading.
The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement is not akin to NATO. It may be pointing towards something else altogether. It is about a security order in which states cooperate without necessarily forming a bloc. They are pooling capability without giving up on their autonomy and deepening military ties without plumping for a single camp.
The timing of the pact also matters a lot. The agreements come after months of regional war triggered by Iran-US confrontation in February 2026 that shut the Strait of Hormuz, alongside renewing Houthi threats against Saudi Arabia and the efforts made by Pakistan to mediate a US-Iran ceasefire. Having very different strategic priorities, the three countries have decided that this is the time to formalise a commitment that had largely existed through bilateral ties.
Yet, the agreement seems relatively thin. It is a political commitment, not the elaborate machinery that constitutes NATO. There is no standing integrated command, no force-generation system, and no long-standing stricture on military interoperability. That still needs to be built if the situation arises. That is precisely why calling it an “Islamic NATO” gets the story backwards.