Trump hails Mecca pact: Can it replace the region’s US security umbrella?

Islamabad, Pakistan — When Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan signed a mutual defence pact in Mecca 10 days ago, some geopolitical analysts saw the deal as a message to Washington — that several of the United States’ closest military allies and partners no longer trusted its security umbrella.

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump made it clear that he didn’t mind the Middle East finding ways to defend itself.

“Very happy to see that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan have recently, and finally, signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It shows that the Middle East is coming together and how Countries will finally be able to defend themselves in a more meaningful way.”

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump within hours on Monday, crediting his “courageous and decisive leadership” with helping avert “a nuclear catastrophe in South Asia”.

In many ways, Trump’s apparent happiness over US partners seeking other security arrangements beyond their traditional reliance on Washington is in keeping with his political posture: The US president has long accused allies of not spending enough on their own defence, and of stretching America’s resources in their service.

But even as three close US allies build their own collective defence arrangement, one question hovers as an elephant in the room, say analysts: Can deals like the Mecca pact actually replace the reliance of countries like Pakistan, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia on the US?

The timing of Trump’s statement is not incidental, say analysts. The US president has spent much of the past year pushing allies to shoulder more of their own defence burden.

At NATO’s summit in The Hague in June 2025, member states agreed to more than double their defence spending target, from 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 5 percent by 2035, after sustained pressure from Trump, who had questioned whether Washington should keep defending allies that fell short.