India, explained.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, left, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Arif Hudaverdi Yaman, Chandradeep Kumar via Getty Images)
Pakistan reads the Mecca Pact as deterrence – India reads it as one more variable to manage.
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New Delhi’s Mecca Pact calculusNew Delhi’s Mecca Pact calculus
A week after the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement bound Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye to treat an armed attack on one as an attack on all, India and Pakistan marked their national days within 24 hours of each other. Two addresses by their heads of government, reveal how each capital has chosen to frame it – little more than a year after India and Pakistan fought a short but consequential war.
In Islamabad on 14 August, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif placed (Opens in new window) the agreement squarely in an India-facing context, citing the May 2025 conflict as proof of Pakistani capability, declaring India’s abandonment of the Indus Waters Treaty a red line requiring a direct response, and warning that any future challenge would be met more forcefully than in 2025.
In New Delhi the following day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned (Opens in new window) neither Pakistan nor Operation Sindoor. Its security content was substantial but framed through contemporary warfare: conflict can no longer be assumed to remain at borders; refineries, banking systems and data centres are now targets, and self-reliance must extend to drones, counter-drone systems and hypersonics. West Asia appeared only through supply chains, fuel and fertiliser.
One government framed the pact through intent, thresholds and deterrence, the other emphasised resilience, endurance and strategic depth.
For India, then perhaps what matters is not what the agreement contains, but what Pakistan's leadership believes it confers.
Notably, Pakistan’s official case remains contested (Opens in new window) at home. Islamabad presents (Opens in new window) the pact as alignment with the guardians of Islam’s holy sites, ties to NATO’s second-largest military, and validation of Pakistan’s role as a regional stabiliser. Yet domestic commentary ranges from claims that Pakistan is once again seeking salvation abroad (Opens in new window),to questions (Opens in new window) about what tangible benefits Riyadh can deliver against India with which it maintains close ties. Even supporters have defended the agreement in notably modest terms (Opens in new window): not a bloc, not directed at any state.
India’s debate, meanwhile, has oscillated between pessimistic (Opens in new window) readings of an emerging Sunni alignment (Opens in new window) and dismissive (Opens in new window) claims that the pact is largely Iran-facing. Professional (Opens in new window) assessments have been more restrained, concluding (Opens in new window) that the agreement creates solidarity rather than structure (Opens in new window): no joint command, no shared assets, and no common rules of engagement. In that reading, Pakistan has gained proximity rather than power, a judgement mirrored by New Delhi’s official response, (Opens in new window) simply to keep the arrangement under close watch.
The divergence begins not in the facts but in the stories built around them. Indian sceptics conclude the pact matters little, Pakistani sceptics that it delivers little, even though its principal value is likely to be diplomatic rather than military. For India, then perhaps what matters is not what the agreement contains, but what Pakistan’s leadership believes it confers.
The principal lesson of May 2025 (Opens in new window) for India was not simply the employment of force, but its sustainment (Opens in new window): effective intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance integration, logistical replenishment during sustained operations, and the ability to manage escalation and bring hostilities to a controlled termination. Against that measure, the pact is militarily symbolic but politically consequential. It deepens Pakistan’s access to Turkish defence technology and training, layered onto a model of Chinese platforms, Pakistani co-production and Gulf financing. It crowds the room with more actors in the termination phase and widens the information battlespace. In this backdrop, Modi’s emphasis on industrial depth, infrastructure protection and civil defence could be seen as a response to the actual lessons of 2025 without elevating a Gulf security arrangement into a doctrinal challenge.
For Indian planners, the more consequential shift is not military but geopolitical. The Gulf is no longer merely an economic stakeholder in India’s security environment; it is becoming an active participant in shaping the regional security order. The Mecca Pact sits alongside broader Saudi efforts (Opens in new window) to institutionalise security cooperation across the Red Sea and western Indian Ocean, reflecting Riyadh’s ambition to emerge as an autonomous security provider rather than a consumer of external guarantees. It enlarges Saudi Arabia’s stake, influence and diplomatic standing in any future India-Pakistan crisis. India cannot disregard Saudi involvement at the cost at which it might disregard Turkish support to Pakistan.
India will be watching out for three specific indicators and developments: a joint command structure, meaningful interoperability, and additional members. Absent all three, the agreement will remain symbolically important, operationally limited. Meanwhile New Delhi will be setting itself up for a lot more legwork (Opens in new window) – working to deepen ties with Cairo, Doha and Kuwait ahead of any expansion, make Saudi neutrality costly to abandon, and invest in maritime domain awareness in the Arabian Sea, the one theatre where this pact’s geography meets India’s.
About the author
Shruti Pandalai
Shruti Pandalai is the inaugural India Chair at the Lowy Institute.
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