The three countries that signed a joint defence pact in August sat down with Iran in Tehran on Monday, in the first high-level contact between Tehran and all three members of the bloc since Saudi Arabia came under escalating attack from Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis. Reuters reported, citing two people with knowledge of the matter, that Saudi Arabia was represented by Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Pakistan by its army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Turkey by its intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, for consultations with Iran's Supreme National Security Council on regional security.
Iran confirmed the meeting from its own side before it began. Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told state television that Prince Khalid, Munir and Kalin would visit Tehran for consultations with the council on regional security, and the state news agency IRNA announced the talks.
The bloc is meeting Tehran while its leading member is under fire. Saudi Arabia intercepted another wave of Houthi missiles and drones on Sunday as the fighting continued, and on Monday the Saudi-led coalition said it had destroyed two ballistic missile launchers in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, including one used to fire a missile towards Riyadh that the coalition said it intercepted.
The three visiting officials represent a pact built for exactly this kind of pressure. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement in August, under which an armed attack on one member is considered an attack on all. According to the text seen by Reuters, the agreement's first article says the parties shall use "all necessary means" to eliminate threats to one another's territorial integrity, sovereignty or internationally recognised borders.
The parties shall use "all necessary means" to eliminate threats to one another's territorial integrity, sovereignty or internationally recognised borders. — Article One of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, in the text seen by Reuters
The pact has been moving from paper towards deployment. The three countries' ministers held an emergency meeting in Riyadh earlier this month and agreed to ensure the "rapid deployment" of military forces and capabilities in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan approved the pact last week, and efforts by Turkey's parliament to ratify it began last week and are still underway.
Pakistan's army chief is the veteran of this channel. Munir visited Tehran last week, where he met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and other senior officials, and Iranian officials told him there would be no talks with Washington until Tehran's demands were met, according to Iranian media. Those demands, set out by parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, are seven conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, including ending the United States blockade on Iran's ports, lifting sanctions on its oil exports and ending hostilities on all regional fronts. Pakistan has been a key intermediary between the United States and Iran, and its earlier mediation helped produce an interim peace agreement in June, but the deal quickly unravelled as fighting between Iran and the United States resumed weeks later.
What Monday's meeting tests is whether the bloc that agreed this month to rush forces to Saudi Arabia's defence can also talk Tehran into reining in the Houthi campaign, or whether its deterrence will have to be used. No readout from the talks had been published as the meeting got underway, and neither side had announced any agreement. The Saudi government media office, Pakistan's military media wing and Turkey's Foreign Ministry did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
The words Pezeshkian gave Munir in Tehran last week hang over Monday's table: "You cannot intensify sanctions and pressure day after day and close off routes and avenues to our country, and then claim that you want dialogue and negotiations. What kind of dialogue is this?"
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