Riyadh-Islamabad “Islamic NATO” to Check Israel in Shadow of US Decline
Juan Cole 09/19/2025
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a dramatic signal that the Arab Gulf nations have completely lost faith in the American security umbrella, on Wednesday September 17, Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. Mirroring the language of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization charter, they announced that an attack on one is an attack on both.
The agreement came only a week after Israel bombed negotiating offices in Doha, the capital of Qatar, endangering not only the negotiators but nearby kindergartens and embassies. The Israeli and American governments had asked Qatar to host Hamas negotiators for indirect talks over Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and the terms under which a ceasefire might be concluded. Nevertheless, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bombed a country to which he had repeatedly sent high Israeli officials for diplomacy.
The Israeli raid, involving 10 fighter jets, shocked not only the Qatari elite but all the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman) as well.
Qatar hosts the US al-Udeid Air Base with some 12,000 military personnel, and the reason for doing so was precisely to prevent Qatar from being attacked in this way, by anyone. It was supposed to be a guarantee of a US security umbrella.
It wasn’t.
Israeli officials maintain that they told Trump about the planned attack beforehand, though he says the notification came late. The likelihood is that the president stood by and allowed one American security partner to bomb another. All previous administrations would just have told Netanyahu “no.” Trump likes to pose as a tough guy, but no one rolls over for Putin and Netanyahu the way he does.
Photo of Saudi map by Lara Jameson: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-flag-marked-near-the-saudi-arabia-8828320/
The Gulf powers are rich as Croesus and they don’t get treated this way. They won’t put up with it.
If the U.S. will not reliably offer them a security umbrella, then they will either have to develop their own or seek another patron. Developing their own is attended with many risks.
But here you have Pakistan, a Muslim country of some 250 million, with a military that ranks 12th in the world and that possesses a stockpile of nuclear weapons. In fact, Pakistan ranks above Israel, which comes in at 15 in the Global Firepower Index.Pakistan’s only weakness in a comparison with Israel is its finances.
But a Pakistan-Saudi combination rather ups Islamabad’s finance game.
Photo of Islamabad by Jessica Anderson on Unsplash
Israel under Netanyahu has made a bid to become a regional hegemon in the Middle East, bombing Iraq (October 2024), Lebanon nearly daily, Syria frequently, Yemen, Iran, and now Qatar, in addition to the Palestinian Territories. It killed hundreds of high Iranian civilian and military officials. It assassinated the prime minister of north Yemen. Trump doesn’t seem to care one way or another if Israel acts like a rogue state and the US Congress has helped along this bombing campaign throughout West Asia with an extra $28 billion. So the US is not a source of restraint.
Photo of Riyadh by Md Amir Umar: https://www.pexels.com/photo/riyadh-cityscape-with-iconic-skyscrapers-30320203/
The Saudi elite has now attempted to check Israeli belligerency by turning to Pakistan. It was not a step that would have been necessary if the US had a normal government. Saudi Arabia has toyed with such a move for the past two decades, but perhaps considered it unnecessary and expensive given American security guarantees. Pakistan will have to be given billions in aid as a quid pro quo, so it isn’t a cheap decision.
It is, however, likely to be effective. If Israel were to strike at Riyadh now the way it bombed Doha, it would be a declaration of war on Pakistan, a nuclear state with Shaheen-III ballistic missiles that can reach 1,710 miles — i.e. they can reach Israel. That means that Pakistani nukes can reach Israel.
Israel has half a million active-duty and reserve troops. Pakistan has a million active-duty and reserve troops. Pakistan has a professional air force and its fighter pilots acquitted themselves well against India in the recent conflict.
In such a war, Israel would have only two plays to make. One would be try to bring India into the struggle. But India imports 650,000 barrels of oil a day from Saudi Arabia. It imports about 450,000 barrels a day from the United Arab Emirates, a close ally of Saudi Arabia. It also gets as many as 15 million metric tons of natural gas annually from Qatar. So the Gulf, if allied with Pakistan, could inflict severe damage on the Indian economy through an energy boycott if Delhi were inclined to side with Israel.
The Israelis could also try to get the United States to come in against Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. If Netanyahu initiated such a war, though, there might be a limit to the support Americans are willing to give him. Moreover, the US security elite wants good relations with Pakistan, which has long been viewed in Washington as a non-NATO ally. Finally, Pakistan has good relations with both the US and with China, and while China would not want to get involved directly in a Pakistan/Gulf conflict with Israel, it would certainly help Pakistan in various ways behind the scenes.
The more likely outcome is a MAD, mutual assured destruction, stand-off of the sort the US and the Soviets had in the Cold War.
This development demonstrates how crazy Israel’s strike on Qatar was, and how badly it has backfired, not only on Israeli security but also on the standing of the United States in the Middle East, which is now viewed as fickle and undependable and not a power it is worth bandwagoning with.