For decades, the Middle East has resembled a massive ship sailing amid storms, mines, dreams, and illusions. It is a ship carrying Arabs, Persians, Turks, and Kurds—Sunnis, Shiites, Jews, and Christians. The passengers hold divergent memories: days of glory they yearn for, and days of defeat they dream of erasing. Some wounds lie dormant under forgetfulness, while others inflame anew.
It was only natural for the journey to witness reckless adventures and adventurers, attempts to hijack the ship's course, and bids to seize command. The Middle East ship is of exceptional importance, as it holds vast oil and gas wealth whose safe flow is considered vital to the global economy. This is precisely what makes it both critically important and a target of ambitions at the same time.
For decades, an impression prevailed that the Middle East's importance to the global economy obligated major powers to maintain stability there to safeguard their own interests. These nations did not hesitate to intervene whenever they perceived a threat to these interests, as occurred when the forces of Saddam Hussein's regime invaded Kuwait. However, stability remains threatened unless it emerges from within the region itself.
Since the eve of the mid-last century, the ship has faced two major shattering events. The first was the establishment of the State of Israel and the repercussions of that earthquake in a series of Arab-Israeli wars. The second was the victory of Khomeini's revolution, which made turmoil a permanent feature of life in the region. Israel and Iran did not hesitate to pursue a costly dream: attempting to reshape the Middle East to seize the leadership position or the primary role within it.
Israel is a state that occupies the lands of others and does not accept even the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside it, a state that has not recognized definitive borders for itself to this day. Iran is a state that does not accept boundaries for its influence in the region, seeking to reshape it through penetrations, and through encirclement operations when penetration is unfeasible.
After Al-Sinwar's Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, Benjamin Netanyahu's government fought wars on multiple fronts. After the fall of the Syrian link in the “Axis of Resistance,” Netanyahu spoke several times about reshaping the Middle East. The “flood” itself revealed the scale of the Iranian project to reshape the region.
In the context of the military confrontation with the US, Iran made two grave mistakes. It applied its past hostage-taking experience to the Strait of Hormuz. It is no simple matter for a state to decide to hold the fate of the entire global economy hostage. Neither distant nor neighboring countries can accept this. Conceding this right to Iran would mean accepting its possession of a weapon equivalent to holding a nuclear weapon.
The second mistake is its insistence on targeting Gulf Cooperation Council countries under the pretext of them hosting US bases or having mere partnerships in the field of defense. Iran ignored the obligations of the Beijing Agreement signed with Saudi Arabia and moved its loyal militias in Yemen and Iraq to target the Kingdom.
Between choking the global economy through Hormuz and bombarding Gulf countries with missiles and drones, the Middle East ship seemed on the verge of sinking into endless wars and economic and existential catastrophes. This was accompanied by a growing feeling in the region that the international guarantee for regional stability was no longer sufficient or present. Washington's calculations in this context remain those of an external party with its own interests, in addition to its complex decision-making mechanism.
It became imperative to consider a major and decisive role for key regional states invested in the Middle East's future to prevent the ship from permanently sliding into minefields. It was also necessary to counter the practices of expanding the war and spreading chaos with an option that provides an umbrella from which to broaden the scope of stability and reduce the opportunities available for adventures and adventurers alike.
In this context, the "Makkah Mutual Defense Agreement" can be understood. It sends an unmistakable message that prominent countries in the region will not allow the Middle East to remain a hostage to proxy wars and ambitions at a time when regional states must be allowed to dedicate themselves to tackling the burdens of development, building their economies, and improving the standard of living for their peoples.
The choice of Makkah, with its heavy symbolism, as the venue for signing the agreement is a message reflecting the depth of the Saudi, Turkish, and Pakistani commitment to what was agreed upon. There is no need to recall the political, economic, and military weight provided by the gathering of these three nations, not to mention their location and their relations with America, China, Russia, and Europe as well.
The signatories were careful to use the term "mutual defense," meaning that any attack on one party to the agreement constitutes an attack on all parties, sending an unmistakable message. The Turkish Foreign Minister clarified that the agreement mirrors Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which considers an attack on any member state to be an attack on all member countries.
The Makkah agreement is not a declaration of war against any specific country, but rather a serious attempt to make wars more difficult and costly, thereby forcing those gambling on conflict to abandon their adventures. The agreement has renewed hope that the Middle East will not remain hostage to those dreaming of reshaping it on the basis of destabilization, altering its identity, and imposing new norms that contradict the values of good neighborliness and mutual interests.
The regional and international weight of the three countries provides the agreement with a deterrent power that prevents states or organizations from sliding into practices that only deepen wounds, drain nations, squander wealth, and waste opportunities for stability and development. It is no exaggeration to say that regional and international actors must henceforth take into account this tripartite alignment, which serves as a harbor of stability in a turbulent sea.
