Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye Plan Military Chiefs' Meeting as Houthi Attacks Escalate

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye are preparing to convene a meeting of their chiefs of staff in Riyadh under the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement (MJDA), after their foreign ministers discussed the move on September 24 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York. The talks come as Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement escalates missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, putting the two-month-old mutual-defence pact to its first real test.

How the meeting came together

Pakistan's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in New York on September 24. Dar described the discussion on X as a review of "progress towards establishing the institutional structures" under the MJDA and an exchange of views on "regional and international security issues." Pakistan's Foreign Office confirmed a day later that the three sides were weighing a meeting of chiefs of staff to explore how to assist Riyadh under the pact.

Turkiye's Defence Ministry has confirmed that its Chief of General Staff, General Selcuk Bayraktaroglu, will travel to Saudi Arabia; Pakistan's Chief of Defence Forces, Field Marshal Asim Munir, is also expected in Riyadh, though no date has been formally announced. We covered the pact's institutional build-out last week, when Pakistan named retired Lt Gen Nauman Mahmood as the alliance's first Secretary General.

Why now

The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement was signed on August 7, 2026 by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It states that an armed attack on any one member is to be treated as an attack on all three. Since then, the Houthis have made rapid territorial gains against Yemen's Saudi-backed government forces, seizing the port city of Mocha and much of the country's Red Sea coastline, while ramping up ballistic missile and drone attacks on sites across Saudi Arabia, including near the holy city of Makkah itself.

That combination — a live military reversal for Riyadh's allies inside Yemen and direct strikes creeping toward Saudi Arabia's religious and population centres — is what has moved the pact from a signing-ceremony commitment toward an operational question: what, specifically, would Pakistan and Turkiye actually do.

Islamabad's careful line

Pakistan's public position has stopped well short of a combat commitment. Military spokesman Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry has said Pakistan stands with Saudi Arabia "diplomatically and physically," a choice of words seen as signalling more than rhetorical support. But the Foreign Office has said no military response is currently under discussion and that Islamabad would act "when time comes" — language that keeps open the option of staying out of direct combat.

That caution echoes 2015, when Pakistan's Parliament voted to stay neutral rather than send troops to join the Saudi-led coalition then fighting in Yemen, a decision that strained relations with Riyadh for years afterward. Turkiye's own domestic process adds another layer of delay: Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus has said the MJDA itself has not yet been submitted for ratification, and is not expected to go to the assembly until it returns from recess on October 1.

The Houthi warning

The Houthis have responded to the diplomacy with a direct threat. Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the group's political bureau, told an Iraqi television programme this week that Pakistan and Turkiye would be met with an "iron fist" if they entered the war. It is a reminder that any move beyond diplomatic solidarity carries a stated cost, at a time when Pakistan is already managing an active, separate military confrontation along its border with Afghanistan and continuing high-level engagement in New York, where Prime Minister Sharif addressed the UN General Assembly earlier this week.

What happens next is the Riyadh meeting itself: a date has not been set, but the chiefs of staff are expected to discuss the practical mechanics of the mutual-defence clause — logistics, intelligence-sharing and rules of engagement — well before any decision on whether either country's forces would be used directly against Houthi targets.

Build Better Pakistan's Security Desk is tracking developments around the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement and the Houthi escalation.