The announcement of a comprehensive defense pact between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia last month represents more than another bilateral agreement in a complex regional security matrix.
The deal is framed as a response to mounting insecurity in the Gulf amid Israel’s unrestrained military posturing across Lebanon, Syria, and the broader Middle East. But beneath the surface, the implications of the new defense pact are more expansive. It alters Pakistan’s strategic standing and deepens Riyadh’s defense entanglement with Islamabad—and it fundamentally complicates India’s policy in its backyard.
After nearly a decade of diplomatic maneuvering aimed at isolating Pakistan internationally, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is confronted with a structural realignment that entrenches New Delhi’s rival not only in West Asia—historically a theater of Indian economic influence—but also in the geopolitical imagination. The Saudi guarantee lends Pakistan new legitimacy, creating ripple effects reaching from the military balance of the subcontinent to narrative politics in the Islamic world.
The new pact is more than a one-off security arrangement, and Pakistan is the clearest beneficiary of the formalized partnership. For India, this poses both immediate military risks and enduring diplomatic challenges. How New Delhi responds—whether with tactical adjustments or fundamental policy recalibration—will determine whether this development marks a temporary setback or a more permanent shift in the strategic landscape.
The new defense pact gives Pakistan both immediate and substantial gains. Beyond the obvious financial benefits of Saudi funding for military modernization, it provides diplomatic insurance that Pakistan has lacked since the end of the Cold War. Islamabad now enjoys the backing of the Arab world’s most influential power—a state with economic leverage that extends far beyond the Middle East.
More than just emboldening Pakistan, the formal partnership will constrain international responses to a future crisis like the military conflict that erupted with India in May, making it harder for New Delhi to mobilize global support.
Perhaps more significantly, the arrangement grants Pakistan indirect access to advanced Western military technologies that flow through Saudi channels; Riyadh is a preferred client of the U.S. and European defense industries. These include systems that mirror parts of India’s own arsenal, potentially narrowing capability gaps. The irony is stark: Indian military planners have spent years calculating advantages over Pakistani forces and must now account for Saudi-funded upgrades to their adversary’s capabilities.
The public nature of the defense pact also serves as a vote of confidence in the Pakistani military’s professionalism, capabilities, and strategic competence. In the wake of the India-Pakistan conflict in May, Saudi Arabia has provided crucial international validation to Pakistan’s military brass, undercutting India’s claims that it militarily humbled its rival this year.
There is also the nuclear dimension. By extending its deterrence umbrella over Saudi Arabia, Pakistan transforms its nuclear program from a regional equalizer into an instrument of broader geopolitical influence. Saudi Arabia will shift from a passive investor to an active stakeholder in the survivability and credibility of the Pakistani arsenal. This creates incentives for Riyadh to support Islamabad’s nuclear modernization efforts, potentially accelerating developments that could alter the subcontinent’s strategic balance.
The pact also alters the underlying logic of Islamabad’s strategic stability, since its nuclear weapons are no longer simply about India but part of a broader deterrence calculus within the Islamic world. Pakistan’s nuclear strategy could also serve as a security guarantee for other Muslim-majority countries, positioning it within a wider context of interests and alliances. In this way, Pakistan’s nuclear posture is now influenced by broader geostrategic calculations beyond its rivalry with India. For New Delhi, this makes the already-volatile South Asian nuclear equation more unstable.
Beyond military considerations, the defense agreement with Saudi Arabia is a diplomatic revolution for Pakistan. After years of international isolation, Islamabad suddenly finds itself elevated to the status of a declared protector of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina. This symbolism serves a dual purpose. It bolsters the Pakistani military’s core domestic narrative—that it is the ultimate guardian of the nation and Islam, especially during times of crisis—as the state faces deep political fissures and economic struggles. Externally, it amplifies Pakistan’s claim to being an indispensable power for the Islamic world.
For India, the optics are damaging. For years, Pakistan’s position in the Islamic world was declining; Turkey sought to challenge its commanding role, countries like Iran and Qatar pursued competing visions of Islamic leadership and identity and Islamic narratives, and countries like the United Arab Emirates pivoted toward deeper commercial and security ties with India. New Delhi has sought to capitalize on this fragmentation.
Through economic leverage, security partnerships, and skillful narrative management, India long succeeded in portraying Pakistan as an unstable, terror-supporting state unworthy of serious international engagement. The partnership with Saudi Arabia shatters Modi’s carefully constructed narrative. Now, Pakistan again finds itself at the table as a partner of consequence.
However, it would be a mistake to interpret the strategic compact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as limitless. Both countries face constraints that temper the scope and functionality of the partnership.
Pakistan’s military remains overstretched, grappling with multiple insurgencies across its tribal regions in the provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa while also maintaining readiness along its borders with India and Afghanistan. This leaves few reserves available for substantial military commitments to the Gulf. Pakistan’s economic weakness also threatens to undercut its ambitions. Even with Saudi backing, sustained modernization requires indigenous technological depth; Pakistan remains heavily dependent on China.
Though credible, Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities are also limited in scope and sophistication compared to those of more established nuclear powers. They cannot be credibly extended without exposing vulnerabilities at home. Doing so would strain Pakistan’s command structure, potentially revealing weaknesses in communications systems, decision-making protocols, and multilayered authorization processes. It would also increase the movement and handling of sensitive materials. Furthermore, political instability still plagues Islamabad, raising questions about long-term strategic coherence.
Saudi Arabia has its own constraints. India remains a vital economic and energy partner, and millions of Indian workers in the Gulf contribute to the Saudi economy. The kingdom’s deep economic and security ties to New Delhi incentivize it against actions that could fundamentally damage bilateral relations. That means Saudi Arabia will calibrate the partnership with Pakistan carefully, avoiding any direct confrontation with India. In any case, Saudi priorities remain focused on Iran and regional stability, not on conflict in South Asia.
Saudi Arabia’s simultaneous outreach to Iran through China-brokered diplomacy reflects the contradictions of its security strategy. To hedge against Israel, to build bridges with Iran, and to empower Pakistan while cultivating lucrative ties with India creates a complex web of conflicting incentives for Saudi Arabia. These contradictions will inevitably limit operational cooperation between Riyadh and Islamabad.
Ultimately, the operational impact of the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan defense pact may prove more modest than initial assessments suggest. Pakistan has a well-documented history of overplaying a strong hand, from its relationship with the United States during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to its early partnership with China. The relationship with Saudi Arabia could follow similar patterns if Pakistani decision-makers mistake tactical gains for fundamental strategic advantages.
Still, India cannot base its strategic thought on the foolishness of its adversaries, and the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan security compact has created a new calculus in which New Delhi must operate. Most immediately, it complicates India’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has deepened significantly in the last decade through energy partnerships, investment agreements, and security cooperation. Riyadh now finds itself managing relationships with two nuclear-armed rivals.
This dynamic threatens to re-hyphenate India and Pakistan in international discourse, or to link their relationship in ways that force third parties to treat them as interconnected rather than as separate strategic entities. For Indian policymakers who have worked tirelessly to establish India as a rising power independent of its neighbor and rival, this represents a significant setback.
The last three military conflicts between India and Pakistan—in 2016, 2019, and this year—have all been sparked by violent incidents in Kashmir. Saudi Arabia has been involved in de-escalation during these crises, but a public investment in Pakistani stability and security could provide Riyadh with both motivation and leverage to involve itself in the resolution of the Kashmir dispute.
The prospect of third-party involvement in Kashmir, long considered a red line by Indian policymakers, becomes a major headache for New Delhi when Islamabad’s new strategic partner has compelling interests in regional stability.
India now faces a more dangerous adversary. With enhanced financial resources, indirect access to Western weaponry, and Saudi diplomatic backing, Pakistan’s military posture vis-à-vis India will harden. Even if the partnership with Saudi Arabia fails to deliver in full operational terms, its signaling effect alters the deterrence landscape. India is now up against a Pakistan wholly backed by China, strategically supported by Saudi Arabia, and benefiting from newfound U.S. benevolence under President Donald Trump.
This alignment reshapes South Asia’s strategic environment in ways that New Delhi did not anticipate, and the uncomfortable truth is that it sleepwalked into this predicament. Modi’s foreign-policy priorities, which have centered around showmanship with leaders such as Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, may be ill-suited for the current geopolitical moment.
The emphasis on personality and leader-to-leader connections produced short-term gains but also created vulnerabilities. India now needs a new strategic imagination that acknowledges that the emerging contours of regional alignments are shaped not in New Delhi, but in Riyadh, Islamabad, and Beijing.
Doubling down on the rhetoric of Pakistan’s global isolation serves little purpose in a changed landscape. Instead, India must develop ideas and cultivate leaders capable of fashioning policies that avoid the traps of the last decade. These include overreliance on Western indulgence, dismissiveness toward Pakistan’s resilience, and hubris about its own global rise based solely on the force of Modi’s personality.
India’s path forward requires abandoning the comfortable certainties of the Modi era and embracing the uncomfortable reality that regional power is increasingly defined not by New Delhi’s aspirations, but by the strategic choices of its adversaries.