Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, a collective security pact stipulating that an armed attack on any one of the three states shall be considered an attack on all — mirroring the core principle of NATO's Article 5. The accord was formalised at Al-Safa Palace in Makkah by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who called it a "shield of peace" for the Muslim world. The pact brings together three of the most powerful Sunni-majority nations — oil-rich Saudi Arabia, nuclear-armed Pakistan, and Turkey (a NATO member with the alliance's second-largest army and a rapidly expanding defence industry) — at a time of heightened regional tensions, with Saudi infrastructure regularly targeted by Iran-backed Houthi forces and Saudi-Israeli normalisation prospects collapsed since the October 2023 Gaza war; officials were quick to stress the agreement targets no specific country and is open to other friendly nations.