The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed by Türkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in Makkah on 7 August, has emerged as one of the clearest attempts to respond constructively to the cracks that have resurfaced in the Middle East’s security architecture in the post-October 7 context. The agreement is primarily a security arrangement, committing the three countries to strengthening collective deterrence and treating an armed attack against one as an attack against all.
Yet, its significance may extend beyond defence. By bringing together three states with complementary economic, logistical and strategic assets, the pact could provide a security framework for a more resilient regional connectivity architecture; one built less around dependence on individual corridors than around redundancy, optionality and shared infrastructure.
A Changing Region, New Needs
There is little doubt that the Middle East’s security architecture has entered a profound upheaval since 7 October. Israel’s brutal genocidal campaign in Gaza has activated dormant regional fault lines and opened additional theatres of confrontation. The first major blow to connectivity came in the Red Sea, where Houthi attacks on commercial shipping around Bab el-Mandeb turned regional conflict into a global logistics problem.
By mid-2024, vessel tonnage through the Gulf of Aden had fallen by 76%, while Suez Canal tonnage was down around 70% from 2023 levels. Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope increased vessel demand by 3% and container-ship demand by 12%, adding to freight, insurance and fuel costs.
A potentially more consequential shock followed the escalation between Iran and Israel. Strikes in 2024 gave way to a broader regional war after the US-Israeli attacks on Iran on 28 February 2026. Iran retaliated against Israel and US positions across the Gulf, while the Strait of Hormuz was subsequently closed to much commercial shipping.
Hormuz represents an even more formidable vulnerability. Before the latest escalation, the Strait carried 38% of global crude oil trade, 29% of LPG trade and 19% of both LNG and refined oil products, as well as 13% of global chemical trade. The exposure is particularly acute for Gulf economies, where hydrocarbons remain central to exports and public finances despite substantial diversification efforts. World Bank data show that non-hydrocarbon goods still account for only a minority of exports across most GCC economies.
Diplomatic efforts have not yet removed this vulnerability. An Islamabad-mediated process and a June 2026 memorandum between Iran and the United States created a framework for a possible settlement. Still, fighting resumed, and disruptions around Hormuz persisted into August, forcing Saudi Arabia to resort to irregular loading arrangements and alternative routes.
The strategic lesson is, therefore, broader than the immediate crises themselves. The simultaneous exposure of the Red Sea and Hormuz has demonstrated the limits of a connectivity system concentrated around a small number of maritime chokepoints. Route diversification can no longer be treated primarily as an emergency response; it must become a structural principle of regional connectivity policy.
Existing alternatives provide redundancy but not substitution. According to the EIA, Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi pipeline together provide roughly 4.7 million barrels per day of bypass capacity, only a fraction of normal Hormuz flows. Nor are the risks confined to individual waterways: disruption originating around the Red Sea or Gulf can reverberate across the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.
The objective, then, should not be to replace one vulnerable route with another, but to create sufficient redundancy across the regional system. Even before the latest Hormuz crisis, global shipping schedule reliability had fallen to roughly 50–55% in 2024, compared with 70–85% before the pandemic. Ceasefires may relieve immediate pressure, but they cannot eliminate the structural vulnerability exposed by repeated disruption. For the Gulf, resilience increasingly requires multiple routes and the capacity to redirect trade when individual corridors become unavailable.
Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan on the Connectivity Map
The connection between collective defence and connectivity is not automatic. Railways, ports and logistics networks can be developed without a security pact. The Makkah Agreement could add a political framework to reduce the security risks of long-term cross-border investment. The strategic value of infrastructure increases when states have confidence that trade routes, ports, energy networks and logistics hubs can remain operational during periods of crisis. By institutionalising consultation and security cooperation among three strategically located states, the pact could provide part of the political confidence needed to coordinate investment, protect critical infrastructure and plan for disruption collectively rather than nationally.
The three countries occupy distinct but potentially complementary positions on the regional connectivity map. Türkiye has already established itself as an important northern gateway in Middle Eastern trade routes through the Development Road Project. Starting at Iraq’s Grand Faw Port on the Persian Gulf and extending through Iraq towards the Turkish border, the project envisages approximately 1,200 kilometres of railway and highway infrastructure. From Türkiye, the corridor could connect onwards to European markets. Iraqi and Turkish officials have presented the project not merely as a transport route, but as a broader economic belt combining logistics, infrastructure and investment opportunities.
The Middle Corridor adds another layer to this picture. Türkiye already sits at the intersection of routes connecting Central Asia, the Caspian region and Europe. This gives the country the potential to combine the Development Road with east-west connectivity rather than treating each corridor as an isolated project.
A historical infrastructure concept could also regain relevance: the Hejaz Railway. The original Ottoman railway linked Damascus with the Arabian Peninsula and represented one of the most ambitious connectivity projects of its era. In September 2025, Türkiye, Syria and Jordan agreed on steps to revive sections of the railway, including work to restore a missing 30-kilometre section in Syria and studies to strengthen transport links to Jordan’s Aqaba port. The broader historical line extended for roughly 1,750 kilometres.
A modernised Hejaz corridor should not necessarily be understood as the literal reconstruction of the Ottoman railway. Rather, it can be conceived as a multimodal north-south connectivity axis linking Türkiye, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and potentially the wider Gulf. Such a network could complement the Development Road while offering additional alternatives to vulnerable maritime chokepoints.
Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, occupies a unique position in the connectivity equation. Before 7 October, Riyadh was expected to play an important role in the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), particularly as a land bridge connecting the Gulf to the Mediterranean. Yet, deteriorating regional security and the increasingly uncertain trajectory of Saudi-Israeli normalisation have significantly weakened the political prospects for IMEC.
At the same time, the closure or disruption of both the Red Sea and Hormuz reinforces the logic of developing northbound land connectivity. Saudi Arabia does not have to choose between IMEC and other corridors. Its strategic interest may increasingly lie in maintaining a portfolio of routes that reduces exposure to any single chokepoint.
Pakistan occupies another potentially important node in this emerging network. Through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and, particularly, the Gwadar deep-water port, Pakistan provides a maritime interface between the Arabian Sea, the Gulf and the wider Indian Ocean. Gwadar is located outside the Strait of Hormuz and has been developed as a potential transhipment and regional logistics hub. Its port facilities currently include three multipurpose berths and can accommodate vessels of up to 50,000 deadweight tonnes. Pakistani authorities have also sought to increase shipping connections with GCC states and integrate the port more fully into regional maritime networks.
On paper, this creates a compelling strategic geometry: Türkiye as a northern gateway, Saudi Arabia as the Gulf’s central economic hub, and Pakistan as an Indian Ocean node. In practice, however, the limitations are equally obvious. A corridor connecting these three spaces would remain exposed to infrastructure gaps and continuing risks associated with Hormuz.
A more useful framework is to think in terms of a connectivity portfolio. Just as diversification reduces exposure to a single financial asset, multiple transport routes can reduce dependence on any one maritime chokepoint or geopolitical corridor. The Development Road, Middle Corridor, CPEC, IMEC and a revived north-south axis through the Levant need not compete as mutually exclusive projects, nor must they be physically integrated into a single route. What matters is whether states can build the interoperability around them—through ports, railways, industrial zones, customs systems, digital infrastructure and energy networks—that allows trade to shift when disruption occurs elsewhere. Resilience, in this sense, comes from optionality rather than substitution.
The portfolio logic also creates a potential role for Saudi capital in Pakistan’s connectivity infrastructure. Rather than viewing CPEC exclusively through a China-Pakistan lens, Riyadh could explore targeted investments in logistics, ports, industrial zones, energy infrastructure and transport connections that strengthen Pakistan’s role as a bridge between the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Such an approach would also fit Saudi Arabia’s broader diversification strategy by shifting the Kingdom from primarily an energy exporter to an increasingly important platform for regional trade and logistics.
From Security Cooperation to Connectivity Governance
The implications extend beyond infrastructure planning. As connectivity increasingly depends on cross-border redundancy, its security becomes a regional public good. This is where the Makkah Pact could acquire significance beyond its immediate military dimension. Cooperation on maritime domain awareness, critical infrastructure protection, logistics resilience and emergency rerouting could allow defence and connectivity policies to reinforce one another without turning the pact into an economic organisation.
The practical expression of this nexus need not be a new supranational institution. A lighter framework could begin with a trilateral mechanism bringing together defence, transport, energy and trade officials to identify shared infrastructure vulnerabilities and coordinate contingency planning. Joint assessments could map critical nodes across ports, railways, pipelines, and digital infrastructure; investment mechanisms could prioritise projects that provide genuine redundancy; and crisis protocols could facilitate rerouting trade when major corridors are disrupted. The objective would be to move from connectivity by infrastructure to connectivity by design—where resilience is planned collectively rather than improvised after each crisis.
The strategic objective should, therefore, not be to find a single alternative to Hormuz or to reproduce one corridor under another name. It should be to build a distributed regional architecture in which existing routes are complemented by new infrastructure, shared investment and mechanisms for protecting critical nodes. Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan possess different but potentially complementary geographic, economic and strategic assets for such an effort.
Whether the Makkah Pact can translate these assets into a coherent strategy remains uncertain. But repeated disruption in the Red Sea and Hormuz has made one principle increasingly difficult to ignore: connectivity can no longer be separated from security. Makkah’s opportunity is therefore not simply to build more infrastructure, but to move from connectivity by geography to connectivity by design.
