Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry has said the “Makkah Joint Defence Agreement” between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye has no regional aspirations and is purely defensive in nature, to ensure collective deterrence.
Speaking to Al-Arabiya English during a special interview, the spokesperson said the agreement was based on collective deterrence and had “no offensive, no interference, no aggressive element” and was purely defensive in nature.
“There is nothing aggressive. There are no regional aspirations. It is a collective deterrence, and it is complementary because all these countries have independent relations with other alliances, other countries, other blocks,” he said, adding that the mutual defence agreement was complementary in nature and did not compete with any other.
Read: What the Pakistan-Saudi Arabia-Turkiye defence pact is — and what it isn't
When asked how Pakistan would respond if any one of the partners came under attack, the spokesperson said the operationalisation of the defensive commitments had never been made public in any discourse.
He said the three countries would decide how to respond, adding that they would decide the course of action and actualise it accordingly.
Asked whether the latest agreement would compete or complement Pakistan’s decades-long “iron-clad” relationship with Beijing, Chaudhry categorically described it as complementary.
He said Pakistan’s relationships with both Saudi Arabia and Turkiye had not “come out of the blue”, adding that China and the world understood how historic and deeply rooted these relations were and that Pakistan was formalising them.
“Nobody has any problem with that, everyone understands that this is defensive, everyone understands it is for maintaining stability and peace in the region,” he said, adding that the countries that had joined the agreement enjoyed wonderful relationships with China.
Rejecting the notion that Pakistan was competing with any country through the agreement, the spokesperson said Pakistan believed in solidifying engagement with its partners and friends.
He also rebuffed the idea of calling it a “Muslim alliance”, saying it was a regional stability alliance.
🔴 BREAKING: Pakistan Armed Forces Spokesperson Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry stresses the Saudi Arabia-Turkey-Pakistan alliance is focused on regional stability and could expand to new partners. pic.twitter.com/QlxBqkHK0V
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) September 15, 2026
“It’s not a club that has been made for Muslim countries only,” he said, adding that it was up to the leadership of the three countries to decide how and when to expand the alliance.
“This agreement, this alliance, always encompasses new willing partners who also believe in regional peace, stability and security, who have a shared vision of non-aggression, non-interference and collective deterrence,” he added.
Talking about Pakistan’s mediation role in the US-Iran war, Chaudhry said Pakistan had decided to play the role solely for regional peace because stability stemmed from peace in the region.
“Pakistan is a proponent of peace in the region and also has the unique position because of its policy of multi-alignment and multi-engagement with all the friendly countries around the world that it can act as an active arbitrator and an honest broker of peace,” he said.
Asked why other mediators had not achieved what Pakistan had, he said Pakistan’s friendly and decades-old relations with the United States and brotherly, neighbourly and very strategic relations with Iran had helped, while also giving credit to the desire and competence of the country’s military and civilian leadership.
“We don’t have any personal or own objective in this dispute. The only objective Pakistan is pursuing is that the conflict doesn’t spiral horizontally as well as vertically and the differences and issues are resolved rather than resolving them in air, ground or naval domains,” the spokesperson said.
He said dialogue was the only option to resolve the conflict and called on all parties involved to work towards a negotiated and peaceful outcome.
“For that, the mediator or those who are willing to mediate objectively and sincerely must continue to do their job, and they must continue to do this job,” he added.
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