The recently concluded Mecca joint defence agreement, signed on August 7, between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey came as a surprise for many observers, including the traditional allies of the signatory countries. Some experts interpreted it as an ‘Islamic NATO’ or, to be more precise, as a ‘Sunni NATO’, while others remained uncertain over its operational utility, wartime commitments and security liabilities.The pact was formalised within weeks of the US and Saudi Arabia signing a 30-year civilian nuclear deal. It’s too premature to confine it within the brackets of Riyadh’s securitisation strategy, where it considers the ever-changing volatile situation in the region as an existential threat in the long run and an impediment to regional stability. But it is reflective of visible symptoms of deficit in the US-led security architecture in West Asia and can be viewed from the lens of a paradigm shift in Saudi Arabia’s approach. Beyond the Mecca pact, Riyadh has tried to fundamentally alter its traditional security strategy and alliance equations with global powers.From oil for security to strategic dilemmaFor much of the 20th century, Saudi Arabia operated within a clearly defined strategic framework. Initially, the Quincy Pact was signed in 1945, in which US President Franklin Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz Saud of Saudi Arabia formed a foundational alliance that laid the groundwork for an ‘oil-for-security’ arrangement.Saudi’s security was outsourced, wherein Washington became the guarantor of the kingdom’s sovereignty – with the latter becoming a protectorate, so to say – in exchange for energy market stability and containment against the Soviet Union’s influence in the region.The US consistently backed Riyadh during different regional conflicts, including during the 1990-91 Kuwait War (Operation Desert Shield). However, during the 1973 war, the US-Saudi relationship became diplomatically strained over Washington’s support to Israel, but both sides soon reestablished their ties. The depth of their strategic relationship can be ascertained from the fact that eight US presidents have made a state visit to the kingdom since 1974.Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and fall of the US-backed Shah government in Iran alarmed Riyadh, as this challenged the regional status quo and its own leadership of the Islamic world. This further led to the forging of a security and strategic partnership between the two countries.However, during the first two decades of this century, a fundamental erosion of confidence was seen within that arrangement. Riyadh perceived the Iran nuclear deal (or JCPOA) struck by the Obama administration in 2015 as a result of the shifting US strategy in the region and as a form of tacit diplomatic engagement with Iran. For the longest period of time, Saudi Arabia has been involved in regional contestation with Tehran, fighting proxy wars over competing interests and influence.Washington’s muted response during the September 2019 drone and cruise missile strikes on Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq and Khurais facilities, which caused the largest disruption to the global oil market since the 1991 Gulf War, confirmed for Riyadh’s leadership that Washington alone could no longer be relied upon as an unconditional security guarantor for the kingdom.Riyadh thus concluded it needed to leverage the other options available to it – i.e. to walk the multialigned path and diversify its partnerships beyond the US.The eastern pivot: strategic engagement with Beijing and MoscowWith this, Saudi Arabia began cultivating ties with other global powers, mainly Russia and China, hedging against Washington’s unreliability. Riyadh’s hedging was explicitly instrumental in nature – keeping the US relationship intact while simultaneously building independent economic and technological ties with Russia and China.For a brief period of time, the strategy seemed to pay off well in terms of a multialignment approach and niche diplomacy on Riyadh’s part.Gradually, China emerged as Riyadh’s largest trading partner, providing an economic foundation for a developing strategic relationship. By 2023, bilateral trade between the two countries reached roughly $100 billion annually.The relationship further evolved beyond the economic aspects into a technical and scientific partnership, with cooperation in AI, 5G infrastructure and the defence-industrial sector too, involving production of Wing Loong-3 combat drones and solid fuel ballistic missiles among others.Riyadh’s plan to join BRICS and its participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a dialogue partner further solidified its position within the China-led frameworks. (However, Riyadh has maintained strategic ambiguity over BRICS – despite joining the group, there has been no active participation from its side.)The pinnacle of this partnership was the China-brokered mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023. Though this rapprochement didn’t last long, owing to regional fragmentation caused by the October 7, 2023 terror attack by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza, it marked a significant shift where China replaced Washington as a power broker in the region.The historic normalisation of ties was followed by the restoration of diplomatic relations, reopening of embassies and Tehran further restraining the Houthis from launching any attack on Saudi territory.Another such alignment was with Moscow, where Saudi Arabia defied Washington’s expectation of compliance against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. Riyadh closely worked with Moscow within OPEC+ to maintain oil prices and energy market coordination. It also positioned itself as a mediator in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including the talks hosted at Jeddah. The relationship between the two translated into cooperation in fields including agriculture, logistics and technology.Iran war and the failure of multi-alignmentHowever, the wider regional war that panned out after the US and Israel coordinated a large-scale military offensive against Iran, and the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, triggered an unprecedented escalation that engulfed the broader region.Iran retaliated massively against US military installations across the Gulf states and effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia continued to maintain neutrality by refusing to participate in the US and Israel-led coalition against Iran, denying access to the US for launching offensive attacks against Iran through air or land.Tehran, however, kept attacking Saudi Arabia’s civilian infrastructure, oil fields, Aramco facilities and the Prince Sultan Air Base south of Riyadh – which hosts US forces – alleging that the US was using the kingdom’s soil to launch attacks against Iran.These strikes were explicitly part of an Iranian escalatory campaign violating the 2023 Beijing agreement’s mutual non-interference clause, highlighting that the agreement stood nullified as Tehran’s sovereignty was at stake.The landmark 2023 China-brokered normalisation with Iran appeared to validate the premise that strategic alignment and economic interdependence could substitute for a formal defence guarantee in peacetime. However, the fundamental inadequacy of economic multi-alignment as a security framework was exposed during the regional conflict. Neither China nor Russia, despite extensive bilateral ties with Riyadh, offered any meaningful deterrence against Tehran’s aggression (some reports have claimed that China and Russia shared real-time intelligence data on US military assets with Tehran).The most significant demonstration of the limitations of Saudi’s multialignment approach was China’s muted response during the crisis. Beijing maintained strategic ambiguity over the Iranian actions in the region, specially against Riyadh, simply calling for restraint from all sides and abstaining from UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 2817 (2026) for condemnation of Iranian offensive strikes in the region. Notably China and Russia also vetoed a Bahrain-backed UNSC resolution to boost security in the Strait of Hormuz.Despite having copious influence over Iran, China couldn’t or didn’t manage to strike a chord between Riyadh and Tehran during the heavy exchange of missiles and drones, despite once being the chief mediator between the two sides.Moscow, being a significant buyer of Iranian Shahed drones and ammunition, and embroiled in its own war against Ukraine, joined the Chinese camp at the UNSC, thus prioritising its own relationship with Tehran over Riyadh. Despite the Saudis’ facilitation of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Moscow’s neutrality during the crisis was palpable, highlighting that economic partnerships don’t translate into wartime obligations.Beyond a US-led security umbrellaThe US-Saudi civil nuclear pact followed by the Mecca Pact demonstrated Riyadh’s active diversification and security hedging. On the lines of NATO’s Article 5, the Mecca pact is said to state that an armed attack against one member is treated as an attack against all countries.The new arrangement – where Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich monarchy pooling significant financial resources; Turkey, with its advanced military technology driven by major contractors like Baykar, Turkish aerospace Industries and ASELSAN; and Pakistan, the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons and military resources from South Asia come together to create a trans-regional security framework – highlights how Washington’s role in the region is declining when it comes to reliability and protection.Structurally, the pact has its own constraints; besides the pledge to step in during a time of war, there is no known established and discussed mechanism to counter threats. It is worth noting that NATO has its own force (derived from member countries) and command system to face any contingency situation.It is also worth recalling that though Riyadh already struck a similar Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Pakistan in September 2025, Rawalpindi did not come to its rescue when Iranian missiles and drones struck Saudi soil. Instead of playing the role of a security guarantor for Saudi, Islamabad opted for the role of a mediator between Washington and Tehran.Turkey joined the grouping despite its past diplomatic friction with Saudi Arabia over the Jamal Khashoggi incident. Analysts predicted that many other countries may join the Mecca pact in the forthcoming months, but their commitment and the utility of such a grouping remains elusive as member countries have differing interests.The enduring lesson of the Iran war and the return of hard powerThe war became the decisive stress test for the Saudis’ multialignment approach. Beyond the material damage, the political and psychological impact on Riyadh was severe.Its flagship Vision 2030 appeared suddenly vulnerable in such a way that no amount of diplomatic hedging could protect against. None of these peacetime gains and relationships translated into wartime security, highlighting that multi-alignment along with economic interdependence are systematically devalued in high-stakes military conflict.Even the 2023 Beijing agreement lacked any enforcement mechanism and relied entirely on voluntary efforts. Moreover, mediators relying on economic interdependence mechanisms tend to be constrained when the national interest of any party is involved.Saudi’s diplomatic ties were redundant when the hard power games were being played. No diplomatic relationship came to its rescue during wartime, unlike during peacetime engagement.The crisis exposed the structural limitations and vulnerabilities of multi-alignment such as: in the absence of a coercive enforcement mechanism, agreements tend to break down in uneven conditions; the limits of soft-power deterrence where power balance is maintained through hard power alone; and, finally, the fact that a diplomatic and economically mediated detente doesn’t last long in the situation of conflict.However, Riyadh recalibrated its strategic position during the time of crisis – demanding a formal US defence treaty, exploring indigenous Gulf security frameworks and developing further alternative deterrent frameworks in the longer run. This newly signed Mecca pact is another major step by Riyadh towards the diversification of its relationship beyond Washington to secure its long-term interest in the region. However, its utility and enforceability remains highly speculative, akin to a paper tiger.Vivek Kumar Tripathi is a postgraduate scholar at IIT-Madras specialising in IR and West Asia. Thirunavukarasu S. is a JRF scholar with the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies at the University of Madras.