Over the past year, the concept of hedging- strategic hedging- has dominated a significant portion of American writing on Saudi foreign policy. In the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs, Maria Fantappie and Vali Nasr posed the question directly: can Saudi Arabia keep hedging?
The idea, in brief, is that Riyadh does not want to place all its cards in one basket. It maintains its alliance with the United States, expands its relations with China, and keeps channels open with Iran, while wanting neither Iranian nor Israeli hegemony over the region. It diversifies its relationships in order to reduce the risks of depending on a single power.
This is a useful lens, but in my view it is no longer sufficient to explain what is happening- particularly after the Makkah agreement.
The Makkah Joint Defense Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan requires a different lens. Hedging describes how a state maneuvers among competing powers; what is happening now is closer to a new security architecture built on multilayered deterrence. There is a difference between spreading one's bets and designing the structure itself.
The best point of entry for understanding the Makkah agreement, then, is to look at it from Riyadh first, and only then widen the lens to the region.
From the Saudi perspective, security does not begin from zero. There is a long-standing security and military relationship with the United States, which the new agreement has not annulled. Above that layer came the Saudi-Pakistani Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement, signed in Riyadh on September 17, 2025. Now Türkiye enters as another layer in the structure.
The issue, therefore, is not the replacement of one umbrella with another, but a shift from the umbrella to the layers: from a single guarantor to multiple guarantees, and from single-source deterrence to multilayered deterrence.
The security-architecture lens poses a different question: how many layers of deterrence can a state build, such that the wobbling of one layer does not dissolve the whole structure? The United States is one layer, Pakistan another, Türkiye a third. And the layers do not perform the same function. America is a superpower and a historical guarantor; Pakistan is a nuclear military power with a deep strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia; and Türkiye is a regional power and a NATO member, which makes it a bridge between the old Atlantic system and the new regional structure. There is also a second lens on the agreement: its institutional nature.
According to what Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Dr. Rayed Krimly- a professor of politics before he was a diplomat- has written, the agreement is not a closed club for the three states, nor is it a sectarian or nuclear alliance. This is a point of considerable importance, because an institution, unlike a deal, is capable of expansion.
What we are looking at, then, is an attempt to build a regional security order.
The third lens is that of the adversary, because deterrence does not begin with the launch of the first missile but in the mind of the person contemplating the launch. An agreement premised on the principle that an attack on one party enters into the security calculations of the others changes the adversary's calculus even before the operational details are known. The layers do not merely add strength; they add uncertainty to the other side's calculations. Iran, too, should be viewed through this lens.
Iran is certainly present in Saudi calculations, with its missile program, its regional influence, and its experience in indirect warfare. But building layers of deterrence does not mean closing the door on Tehran. Saudi policy looks closer to an equation: deterrence while keeping the phone line open. Raise the cost of adventurism, while maintaining contact in order to prevent war.
This is not a paradox but one of the features of the new order: a state can deter a party in one space and negotiate with it in another.
That leaves the final lens: Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken at length about a "new Middle East," and the assumption was that Israel would be the one shaping it. But the new Middle East as it has now revealed itself is being shaped by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan- states that are drawing an important line on the regional map, one to which Israel is not a party. The agreement does not need to be directed against Israel for its absence to be significant.
Sometimes the most telling sign of a shift in the regional order is not who sits at the table, but who can be left off it while the others set it.
Perhaps, then, the time has come to change lenses. Hedging explained a phase in which Saudi Arabia was expanding its options within the existing order. The Makkah agreement points to something else: Saudi Arabia is not merely expanding its options within the structure, it is taking part in redesigning it. The American layer has not disappeared, a Pakistani layer has been added, a Turkish layer is now entering, and others may enter tomorrow. The question, therefore, is this: how does a state build its security so that it does not become hostage to a single guarantee?
Saudi Arabia isn’t simply changing the umbrella; it’s redesigning the entire architecture of the building.
