Saudi-Pak Defense Agreement: Implications For India – OpEd

The Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA) between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, signed on 17 September 2025, is believed to have been in the making since the last three years.

The historical evolution of the Saudi-Pak relationship can be traced back to a time that predates the creation of Pakistan itself. In 1946, Saudi Prince Faisal, egged on by British agents, made a case at the UN in support of the campaign led by the All India Muslim League for a separate Muslim state. The KSA became one of the first states to recognize Pakistan as a sovereign state. 

To offset the Israeli threat during the Cold War, the Saudis forged the first formal defense pact with Pakistan in 1967, under which Pakistani military advisors helped expand and modernize the Saudi armed forces. Since then, Pakistan is believed to have trained up to 10,000 Saudi defense personnel. In the 1960s, Pakistani troops were first deployed in the Saudi border areas over fears of Egypt’s participation in the North Yemen civil war. Pakistani commandos helped quell the 1979 Mecca mosque siege. In 2017, former Pak Army Chief, Gen Raheel Sharif, was assigned to lead the Saudi-sponsored anti-ISIS coalition. By 2018, Pakistan broke its 3-year long neutrality in the Saudi-Houthi conflict and decided to station its troops in the kingdom to repel Houthi attacks on its oil installations. 

In return for Pakistan’s military support, the Saudis supported Islamabad in its wars against India, on the issue of Kashmir, and its clandestine nuclear program. Although the Saudi-Pakistan bilateral partnership took shape from religious kinship, it was actually bound by a transactional force. However, Riyadh was unimpressed with Pakistani adventurism in Kargil, but stopped short of reneging on its historic support to Islamabad. In 2019, Riyadh remarkably adopted a neutral stance on India’s abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. In May 2025, Riyadh again condemned the Pahalgam terror attack, without naming Pakistan. India’s outreach to Saudi Arabia was paying off. New Delhi has been investing heavily in its relations with Riyadh, deepening energy ties, expanding trade, exporting skilled manpower, conducting defense exercise, allowing the Arabs to invest in Kashmir’s development, and securing co-operation on counter-terrorism. In 2014, both sides had also inked an MoU on defense co-operation, which rankled the Pakistanis. Buoyed by deepening trade and energy relations, Delhi and Riyadh were on a roll. 

However, after this pact, the KSA is staunchly on Pakistan’s side along with China and Turkey, while India’s strategic partners are embroiled in their own wars; Russia in Ukraine, Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, and France is involved in the Ukraine conflict. Delhi-Riyadh ties grew at a time when Saudi fears about Iran grew. Riyadh wanted to wean Delhi off Iranian oil. But Israel has now weakened Iran and its proxies with 2 years of sustained military pressure, undercutting Riyadh’s ‘Iran rationale’ while creating new fears for the kingdom over Israeli revanchism, particularly after Tel Aviv’s strike on the Hamas leadership in Qatar. A major spin-off from this deal will be Pakistan’s ability to buy US weapons with Saudi money, which the Trump administration is willing to sell. 

While planning this deal, Riyadh seems to have overlooked India’s concerns. Some developments may have irked the Saudi oil lobby. The Reliance-Aramco deal had failed to take off. Reliance’s pivot toward Russian Urals grade crude broke the alignment that the Saudis had hoped would cement their grip over India’s refining future. The Russian pivot was a turning point where India’s energy strategy collided with the KSAs traditional dominance. Discounted Russian crude, much cheaper than the Middle Eastern supplies, were refined at Jamnagar and offloaded in European markets at comparatively lower rates. Reliance displaced the Aramco supplies, and the Saudis lost their market share and geo-economic clout. This irked Riyadh because India, once a stable customer of Saudi oil, was now eating into its share in the European markets. Riyadh’s anger translated into Saudi geopolitics. The Saudi oil lobby knows how to move the levers in Washington and the pressure campaign that followed against India’s appetite for Russian crude was actually a strategic necessity for both; Aramco’s recovery and America’s desire to protect its dollar hegemony over the lucrative oil trade. The other irritant in the Saudi-India bilateral relationship is Riyadh’s displeasure over reports of India selling weapons to Israel, which were used in striking Gaza.

A large part of India’s trade with Russia is conducted through non-dollar settlements signaling India’s intent to diversify from the dollar. India soon had to face the wrath of Washington. Initially, it was the high tariffs, followed by the nixing of India’s Chabahar port sanctions waiver, then, the H1B shocker and action on the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Next could be the CAATSA sanctions on India’s planned acquisitions of additional S-400 batteries. 

The SMDA came just 8 days after Israel’s unprecedented attack inside Qatar which hosts the US’ Al Udeid airbase, crucial for America’s strategic operations in the Middle East. It is believed that the Israeli strikes in Qatar acted as a strong catalyst for announcing this agreement. In 2019, when the Houthis attacked Saudi oil installations, the US looked the other way. The US didn’t want to get entangled in West Asia’s wars as its strategic gaze was shifting to East Asia. This deal now allows Saudi Arabia to benefit from Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella to enhance its deterrence. This is why several commentators have opined that Riyadh is now chasing strategic autonomy, multi-polarity, and multi-alignment. They claim that by turning to Pakistan, Riyadh is signaling to both, Washington and Tel Aviv, that it is diversifying its security alliances. Riyadh is letting Islamabad play a larger role in the Middle East. Riyadh, they claim, is hedging its bets against the US and Israel, and cash-strapped but militarily-strong Pakistan is seizing the opportunity to present itself as a security provider. 

In reality, however, Riyadh is diversifying its security partnership without jeopardizing its defense co-operation with the US. “The SMDA has the US nod and wink. It must be taken as the ‘US+1’ protection for the kingdom and not the ‘US-1’. The US is still possessive about its dominance over the Middle East. The US and Israel have very sharp red lines about nuclear proliferation in the region. Through the SMDA and the US’ recent defense co-operation agreement with Qatar, Washington has seemingly put some guardrails to ensure the stability and security of this volatile region,” says former Indian ambassador Mahesh Sachdev. It needs to be recalled that this agreement came on a day when Mohammad bin Salman met with the CENTCOM commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, to discuss core issues of US-Saudi interest. The pact bears the imprint of Washington’s quiet approval, aligning two of its old allies under a new security architecture that serves its interests in energy security, regional balance, and strategic parity in West Asia. 

For Pakistan, the deal leverages Saudi financial prowess to boost its economic and military profile to compete with India. Islamabad’s interest is to seek leverage from the Arab world for deterrence against India and reinforce Pakistan’s security profile in the kingdom that has long been in place. Pakistan has been providing a division-strong military contingent to Riyadh since the 1980s. With this deal, Pakistan hopes to check India’s rising power and leverage in the Arab world. It remains to be seen whether the Saudis start to loosen their purse strings to underwrite the Pakistani military, which will be a direct security concern for India, and the formation of an “Islamic NATO” that could complicate India’s “Look West” strategy across trade, investment, and strategic corridors in the larger MENA region. 

However, India has succeeded in cultivating strong ties with all of West Asia’s 3 powers: the Gulf Arab states, Iran, and Israel. Riyadh values balanced ties, and India is the kingdom’s second largest trading partner. “In ‘co-religionist vs friend’ conflicts such as Turkey vs Greece, and Iraq vs Iran, Riyadh has largely been militarily inert. The defense assistance has largely been in cash, and sometimes in military hardware given discreetly. Given the Saudi interest, Riyadh will not fight India directly for Pakistan. Islamabad has its own socio-economic and defense-related vulnerabilities vis-à-vis India. Our considerable economic strength and defense capabilities are sufficiently dissuasive for those straddling on the other side of the India-Pakistan hyphenation,” notes Mahesh Sachdev. 

India’s interests lies in ensuring energy security, protecting its 2.6 million strong diaspora, and preventing extremist spillovers. New Delhi’s best course lies in deepening economic and military ties with Riyadh (in August 2025, India had offered to train Saudi soldiers), while continuing to engage with the other Gulf states, Iran, and beyond.