From Gwadar on the Arabian Sea to the Golden Horn in Istanbul, a new geopolitical arc is forming as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey sign the “Mecca Pact.”
Meanwhile, from Mumbai on the Arabian Sea to Piraeus in the Aegean, a parallel arc is stretching, with India, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Cyprus, and Greece forming a new grouping. This bloc is increasingly connected by trade, energy, defense cooperation, and the promise of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).
Both sit a few thousand miles east of Winston Churchill’s “iron curtain,” which he said in 1946 descended “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.”
THE MIDDLE EAST JUST BUILT ITS OWN NATO — AND SIGNED AMERICA’S EXIT TICKET
Washington’s instinct may be to gravitate toward the alignment containing Israel. But America does not need to choose between the two Middle Easts. It needs both.
Last month, President Donald Trump endorsed the Mecca Pact, writing on Truth Social that he was “Very happy” to see the three countries coming together to defend themselves in a more meaningful way. He is right to do so.
In terms of grand strategy, Washington must avoid two outcomes. The first is allowing the Israel-Turkey rift, which is at the heart of these groupings, to escalate even further. The second is abandoning the Mecca grouping to China, which would significantly strengthen Beijing’s position across the Eurasian landmass.
The two arcs are the culmination of several overlapping rivalries: Israel and Turkey over regional leadership after the current Iran conflict ends; Saudi Arabia and the UAE over leadership in the Arab and Muslim worlds; India and Pakistan over South Asian primacy; and Turkey and India over the routes connecting Asia to Europe. The last is less visible but increasingly apparent in the South Caucasus, where India has emerged as a major arms supplier to Armenia, counterbalancing the “one nation, two states” partnership between Turkey and Azerbaijan.
The Middle East has not yet hardened into rival blocs. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is also part of IMEC. But it is making clear through the Mecca Pact that its enthusiasm for the Abraham Accords with Israel has soured, for now.
Today’s divisions are unlikely to be permanent. From 2017 to 2021, Saudi Arabia and the UAE blockaded Qatar over its ties with Iran and alleged support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, Saudi Arabia is an ally of Turkey, Qatar’s closest regional partner. Middle East partnerships can quickly change.
Some have argued that American inconsistency has pushed Saudi Arabia toward the Turkey-Pakistan camp, and that a decisive American victory over Iran could put IMEC back on track and draw Riyadh firmly into a U.S.-aligned regional order.
But framing the choice as between IMEC and Mecca grouping overlooks a fundamental goal of American grand strategy: preventing any one power from dominating Eurasia.
Treating the Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan grouping as an opposing bloc — such as by labeling it an “Islamic NATO” — risks pushing it into China’s arms. In doing so, Washington could win IMEC and lose Eurasia.
This is particularly dangerous because Turkey and Pakistan are what might be called “amphibious swing states”: continental powers with strategic access to the seas, sitting where China’s overland corridors meet the maritime world.
China is vulnerable at sea. Closures of maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca or the Strait of Hormuz could quickly strangle China’s economy. The more resilient it becomes on land — through pipelines, railways, roads, and energy relationships — the greater its ability to withstand disruption at sea.
That matters for Taiwan.
A China confident that its continental flank is secure would have greater freedom to take risks in the western Pacific. Turkey and Pakistan, perhaps along with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, are arguably the most important countries through which China’s continental corridors pass.
Of the countries involved in the two arcs, Pakistan has by far the deepest relationship with China.
Islamabad sits at the junction of nearly every strategic geography involved in this story. Through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a pillar of the Belt and Road Initiative, Pakistan offers western China overland access to Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. It is historically intertwined with Saudi security, increasingly close to Turkey, adjacent to India, and offers the landlocked nations of Central Asia a path to warm waters.
Pakistan could become the hinge connecting the Mecca group to China. For the United States, that should make engagement with Islamabad a diplomatic priority.
Pakistan playing an integral role in America’s strategy towards China is well-rooted in history.
Disguised in a fedora and sunglasses, Henry Kissinger surreptitiously disappeared from public view during a visit to Pakistan in the summer of 1971. While the press was told that Kissinger was recovering from a stomach ailment in the Pakistani mountains, he had actually boarded a secret flight to Beijing.
Islamabad was allied with America, but it was also China’s closest partner in the region. It was the middleman between two great powers because it was trusted by both. Some in Washington are wary of Pakistan’s hedge between America and China, but it was precisely this characteristic that ended decades of diplomatic isolation between Washington and Beijing.
America, once again, capitalized on Pakistan’s hedging strategy 55 years later, when Vice President JD Vance flew to Islamabad to negotiate directly with the Iranian leadership. This was the highest level of face-to-face engagement between the Americans and Iranians in the last 50 years, but could it have been possible if Islamabad had been locked into an anti-American “Islamic NATO?”
To understand Islamabad’s calculus, Washington must consider how Islamabad is not in the race to lead the Muslim world. That competition is between Riyadh, Ankara, and Tehran.
But Pakistan has an extremely powerful military, it has nuclear weapons, and it is increasingly positioning itself as a security lender of the last resort. Islamabad does not want to lead the Muslim world — it wants to decide who does.
The Mecca Pact cements Pakistan’s role as a security provider to the Muslim world. What began as the Pakistan-Saudi Arabia Mutual Defense Pact has now expanded to the Mecca Pact, which echoes NATO’s Article 5. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are building a mutual security architecture that is both a deterrent for Iran and a signal to America and Israel.
The religious symbolism of the pact is not incidental and makes it quite difficult for critics from Mashhad to Marrakesh to attack it.
So while Pakistan may have chosen Saudi Arabia over Iran, it has not yet made a firm choice between America and China.
Washington could resent Islamabad’s tendency to hedge between great powers. But it could also capitalize on it.
For instance, America could invest in the construction of a deep-water port in Pasni, which is merely 140 kilometers (87 miles) away from Gwadar. This has already been proposed by Pakistan. America should not ask Pakistan to choose between Gwadar and Pasni. It could offer Gwadar and Pasni.
Washington’s answer to the developing dynamics should be simple: Keep the map messy. Overlapping relationships are a strategic asset. They give middle powers room to maneuver and make it much harder for any outside great power to dominate the region.
For Washington, the greatest danger is not the regional rivalry itself. It is what that rivalry could mean for the balance of power with China. To prevent Beijing from dominating Eurasia, Washington must remain engaged with both the northern, continental arc running through Turkey and the southern, maritime arc running through India and Israel.
In April, when Taiwanese opposition leader Cheng Li-wun sat down for lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, the first dish served was a Fujian clam stewed in chicken broth. Xi pointed to the menu and told Cheng that this was the same dish China had served Richard Nixon in 1972.
More than half a century later, Xi was serving the chairwoman of Taiwan’s Kuomintang a culinary reminder of the diplomatic opening that transformed U.S.-China relations — and of the unfinished business that followed it.
AN ‘ISLAMIC NATO’ IS BORN — TRUMP WOULD BE FOOLISH TO IGNORE IT
Nixon’s opening to China began a year earlier, when Kissinger secretly flew to Beijing through Pakistan.
Fifty-five years later, Pakistan may again prove pivotal to America’s China strategy — this time by helping ensure that Washington does not hand Eurasia to Beijing.
Ken Moriyasu is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, where he focuses on Greater Asia — the Eurasian landmass stretching from Turkey to Japan. He previously served as foreign correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Nikkei, with postings in Washington, Cairo, Beijing, Dalian, and New York. Hamza Azhar Salam is the editor of The Pakistan Daily and a 2026 journalist-in-residence at the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago.