Riyadh & Islamabad: The Pact of Oil & Nukes š¢ ā»ļø ā¢ļø
š š The Geo-Economics of Deterrence & Decline š š
Ahnaf Ibn Qais watches as the covenant of Riyadh & Islamabad shifts the axis of the world, oil flowing beneath the shadow of warheads, markets trembling as sanctuaries become fortresses. The Old World is dead & it wonāt be missed, nor will it be coming back:
The Silence of Washington, & the Americansā¦ once master of Gulf horizons, reveals not prudence but impotence, a hollow empire unable to protect even its vassals. In this fracture, the Ummah begins to stir, finding in steel & scripture the outline of a shield against collapse.
The recent Israeli strike on Doha, Qatar, lingers not because of the blasts themselves, but because of what followed the aggression:
A pause... a stunned waitingā¦ yet, all in vain.
People turned toward Washington, & the Americans, writ large, expecting the usual (a roar or at least a stern warning)... & instead, there was almost nothing:
There was but a shrug, & some lines about restraint.
The Silence was louder than the explosion.
Gulf rulers took noteā¦ Riyadh, especially so. For if Doha, home to the great American base, could be hit so openly, what protection was left for anyone else?
The decision to call Islamabad came quickly, for there was no Time to waste in committee rooms or for lengthy consultations with Washington. The Americans had already shown where they stood, or rather, where they no longer stood.
Pakistan was different.
Pakistan had lived through humiliation & embargo, had endured & still carried a deterrent that Arabs had long spoken about but never possessed.
The conversation didnāt need to be poetic. It was pragmatic & blunt āsurvival talk:ā
āWe will stand with you if you stand with us.ā
Of course, the roots of this are older, for it isnāt a sudden friendship:
In 1998, after the very public Chagai nuclear test, Pakistan was hit hard.
Sanctions bit deep & Foreign Reserves were paper-thin.
Pakistan itself could have gone underā¦
Then ships came from Saudi Arabia, fifty thousand barrels every single dayā¦ not a mere forty-nine or fifty-one, but fifty thousandā¦ for free. That oil kept buses on the road, machines turning, & households from collapsing due to said brutal sanctions.
People remember itā¦ Maybe not in exact figures, but in daily lifeā¦ they remember vividly how they received fuel to cook, to work, & to keep the lights from going out. Without those tankers, the story of Pakistanās bomb might have ended differently.
Go further back, to the 1970s, & we find Bhuttoās pivotal grass speech (paraphrased):
āPakistan & her peoples will eat grass if thatās what it takes to build the bomb.ā
Outsiders (especially Westerners) laughed, but King Faisal didnāt:
Money arrived, not in big headlines but in quiet flowsā¦ aid, scholarships, mosque projects. Budget support tucked into bland communiques. It wasnāt stamped ānuclear program,ā but everyone knew what space it created.
Scientists kept moving, & the centrifuges kept spinning. Out of that persistence came the arsenal, which today sits at the heart of this new pact.
& in between, during the 1980s, there was the IranāIraq war:
Pakistani soldiers were sent to defend Saudi borders.
Intelligence networks carried money from the Gulf & America to Afghanistan.
Each episode weaved another threadā¦ not born of sentiment, but brute necessity. These were but practice runs for the arrangement that has now been formalized.
By the Time Pakistan declared itself a nuclear state, the cycle was set:
Riyadh provided the resources, & Islamabad the resilience. Across the Ummah, the announcement was a vindication; proof that weakness could be interrupted. Tel Aviv saw danger, & Washington saw inconvenience, but neither could undo it.
Now, three decades later, the spiral turns againā¦
It is heralded by Shehbaz Sharif's arrival in Riyadh with General Munir.
They donāt ask for help this Time, instead, they offer it.
The arsenal, once kept alive by Saudi oil, is now promised as a shield for Saudi soil.
Mecca & Medina (names that donāt need embellishment) are folded under that umbrella.
Oil once bought Pakistan Timeā¦ today, nuclear deterrence buys Saudi sovereignty. Different currency, albeit the same covenant. Survival is the grammar, & both know it.
The pact shifts the ground because of One fact above all:
Pakistanās deterrent now stretches over Arabia.
That means Mecca & Medina are no longer defended only by Saudi soldiers or American air defence batteriesā¦
They are covered by the shadow of warheads tested in Chagai, carried by missiles like the Shaheen-III, which can reach Tel Aviv as easily as they can reach Delhi.
For Israel, this changes everything:
The old assumption was that it alone carried the nuclear card in the regionā¦
Now there is another hand on the table.
No One in Islamabad has declared that a strike on the Haramayn would trigger a nuclear reply. They wonāt say it, & Riyadh wonāt do so either:
But the ambiguity regarding the ānuclear questionā is the point.
Rivals are left to imagine the worst-case scenario, & to calculate whether a limited strike could spiral into annihilation.
That uncertainty is itself a weapon:
Deterrence works because no One knows precisely where the red line lies, only that it exists, & that crossing it could mean the end.
For decades, the idea of an āIslamic bombā was more rumour than reality:
In 1974, after Indiaās first test & the trauma of the Arab defeat in 1973, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto promised that the Muslim world would One day have its own deterrent.
For decades, Pakistan carried that burden aloneā¦
Others whispered about it, celebrated it, sometimes denounced it, but none were ready to bind themselves to it formally.
With this pact, the whisper has become a declaration:
A nuclear umbrella, however carefully worded, now extends across the heart of the Arabian Peninsula & beyond.
The symbolism matters almost as much as the weapons themselves.
Mecca & Medina arenāt just mere citiesā¦
They are the gravitational centers of the Ummah. To say they are now protected by Pakistani steel is to tie the arsenal to something far larger than national defence;
It becomes a sacred trust.
That is why the rhetoric surrounding this deal has been careful, almost cautious;
However, beneath the surface, everyone understands what has shifted.
Tel Aviv especially recognizes the gravity of the matter:
For them, the problem isnāt only the technical range but the political consequences.
A strike on Riyadh or Jeddah, like the strike on Doha, might once have been manageable. But if Pakistan is bound by treaty to treat it as an attack on itself, then any Israeli planner has to consider the possibility of escalation far beyond the Gulf.
The nuclear monopoly is gone, for the fundamental equation has shifted.
Critics will say this is posturingā¦
That neither Pakistan nor Saudi Arabia would risk annihilation for symbolism.
Maybe!
Yet history shows that ambiguity often restrains more effectively than clarity.
In the Cold War, Washington & Moscow lived under the same shadow, never entirely sure whether the other would risk it all. That uncertainty froze their hands more than treaties ever did. The same logic begins to take root here:
For the Haramayn are now not just holy cities; They are also nuclear tripwires.
That fact alone ensures that any adversary, whether Israel, India, or even the United States, must calculate risk in a way they didnāt have to calculate before.
The old landscape of vulnerability has been replaced by a landscape of deterrence, hazy but real, fragile yet potentā¦
& once introduced, that shadow cannot easily be removed.
The first country forced to recalculate (as hinted at earlier) is Israel:
For decades, it lived with the assumption that it alone carried the ultimate deterrent in the Middle East. It was the hidden card, sometimes hinted at, never confessed, yet always hanging over Arab capitals.
That monopoly gave the Anglo-Zionists space to strike, to bomb reactors in Iraq or Syria, to hit convoys in Sudan or Iran, & to humiliate neighbours with the knowledge that escalation would end badly for them & only them.
With Pakistan tied openly to Saudi Arabia, the monopoly ends:
Now an Israeli strike on Riyadh isnāt simply a regional gamble. It risks a war with another nuclear state, One that has the range to put Tel Aviv itself in the crosshairs.
Planners in Tel Aviv wonāt say this publicly, but the problem is obviousā¦
If the Doha raid had been repeated against Saudi targets before this pact, the calculus would have been straightforward:
Limited blowback, press outrage, Riyadh rattled but restrained, & Washington muttering about de-escalation.
Now the same action looks dangerous:
A single strike might be enough to trigger Pakistani retaliation, & no One knows if that retaliation would be measured or massive. The ambiguity works like a wall, forcing hesitation where once there was freedom.
Meanwhile, India faces a different kind of bind:
Delhi is drawn closer to Israel & the United States by shared interests & rivalry with Pakistan, yet its economy runs on Gulf fuel:
Saudi oil & Qatari gas arenāt luxuries; they are lifelinesā¦
Any Gulf-wide boycott, even a temporary One, would slam Indiaās growth, send its rupee into freefall, & drag its fragile balance sheets into crisis. That is the quiet leverage now sitting in Riyadhās pocket:
The very countries India wants to align with strategically are the same countries whose foes it depends on economically. The more Delhi leans toward Tel Aviv, the greater the risk that Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, or Doha tighten the valves.
This is the fundamental Geo-Economic trap:
India can deepen military ties with Israel, but if a conflict breaks out & the Gulf states close ranks, Delhi will suffer first & worst.
Millions of Indian workers live in the Gulf; Their remittances back home keep entire provinces afloat. Cut those flows, & India doesnāt simply lose fuelā¦
It loses income, stability, & political calm & the domestic fallout would be immediate.
For all the talk of strategic autonomy, this is a vulnerability India cannot wish away.
Tel Aviv knows this, too:
It can hope for Delhiās support, but it cannot be sure.
If Delhiās own survival is threatened by Gulf leverage, the alliance is paper-thin.
That leaves Israel more isolated than it has been in decades, its strikes carrying risks not only of retaliation but of alienating potential partners. The spectacle of invulnerability, which once defined Israeli posture, thus begins to crack.
Hence, the pact forces two powers into uncomfortable places:
Israel loses its monopoly & inherits uncertaintyā¦
India faces a choice between strategic alignment & economic lifelineā¦
Both outcomes favour Riyadh & Islamabad.
Thus, the deterrent isnāt just a missile on a launchpad; it is also a lever over oil & gas, over remittances & markets. Together, those levers change the grammar of decision-making from Washington to Delhi & beyondā¦
& once that grammar changes, the entire region begins to write in a different tense.
The deal in Riyadh doesnāt just stay between two signaturesā¦ For everyone else in the region is staring at it, uneasy, wondering if this is the new normal.
In Doha, the lesson was brutal & already learned; For even the presence of the most significant American base meant nothing when the missiles came.
Abu Dhabi remembers the Aramco fires of 2019, the smoke still fresh in memory, & the fact that American systems failed.
Kuwait doesnāt speak loudly, but the fear is the same.
Oman, quieter still, calculates survival in a different register:
āIf the Saudis no longer think Washington can protect them, then who can?ā
This is how talk of a bloc begins, not with slogans, but with rulers taking notes on what it means when the most prosperous kingdom, the One that holds Mecca & Medina, signs up with Pakistan for its defence.
Qatar has reasons already.
Turkey has had ambitions for ages.
Egypt (even as it is drowning in debt) sees leverage if it joins something bigger.
The Emirates, cautious, know that wealth alone doesnāt stop missiles.
No One says it in public yet, but the question is spreading in everyoneās minds:
āStand outside & risk it, or step under the new umbrella?ā
Then too, the Haramayn make this a fundamentally different matter:
Oil fields can be rebuilt, & airports can be repairedā¦
But Mecca & Medina are something else;
They are two names that every Muslim carries inside them.
Once those sanctuaries are tied to Pakistanās deterrent, the language of defence changes. This isnāt just Riyadh looking after itself, & it isnāt Islamabad alone; It becomes an Ummah question & a sacred trust.
Iqbalās words are pulled into this moment, whether people quote him or not:
He wrote of the dawn rising again in the Eastā¦
For years, it was mere poetry, the sort of verse people recited without thinking it would shape actual politics & societyā¦ Yet, now the imagery is more complex:
Nuclear warheads as guardians of holy places;
The idea that Muslim dignity doesnāt depend entirely on outside powersā¦
It is that kind of framing that pulls at Ankara, at Cairo, & even further...
Even in Dhaka, Jakarta & Kuala Lumpur.
They wonāt all sign on tomorrow, but the current is there.
But unity is slippery, & Everyone knows the history:
Too many summits, & too many declarations that dissolved in suspicion.
Turkey & Saudi Arabia fought for influence only years agoā¦
Egypt distrusts Qatarā¦
& Iran looms as both a neighbour & rival.
No pact erases that in a single night.
Still, the Saudis tying their defence formally to Pakistan means something concrete.
Even states that hesitate will orbit itā¦ For they cannot ignore that Mecca & Medina are now covered by a deterrent that no other Muslim state holds.
So what begins here may not be a neat alliance;
It may not even be a formal organization with charters & councils.
It might stay messy, inconsistent, & fragile.
But the recognition is thereā¦
Riyadh has moved, & Islamabad has done likewise.
The rest must choose how close or far they want to stand.
Once the Haramayn are under that umbrellaā¦
The pull extends across the Muslim world.
The bloc might grow, or it might fractureā¦
Either way, every Capital must measure itself against this new axis.
For no One can step outside its gravity entirely.
The Silence after Doha wasnāt just a failure of nerve;
It was the clearest sign yet that Washingtonās grip on the Gulf is slipping.
For years, the United States built its identity here around bases, fleets, & promises.
When the missiles came, those promises dissolved into vague statements about restraint. Gulf rulers arenāt naĆÆve; they read the hesitation for what it was:
āIf America wouldnāt respond when its most significant base in the region was struck, what exactly would it respond to?ā
This is why some are already calling it a Suez moment:
In 1956, Britain & France discovered they no longer had the power to dictate events in Egypt, no matter how loudly they claimed otherwise.
The American eclipse isnāt as sudden, but the shape is the same.
Once a superpower proves it cannot deliver, & clients begin looking elsewhere.
Riyadhās deal with Islamabad is the most visible proof of that shift;
It isnāt that the Saudis suddenly trust Pakistan more than Americaā¦
It is that they cannot afford to trust America alone.
The pattern has been building for years:
In 2019, drones & missiles cut through Aramco facilities, & the vaunted Patriot systems failed. Washingtonās response was muted.
The same year, Iranian strikes in the Gulf of Oman rattled shipping, & again the American answer was hesitation.
Each episode chipped away at the old assumption that the U.S. shield was unbreakableā¦
By 2025, after Doha, the illusion cracked completely.
This doesnāt mean the Americans are gone:
The fleets remain, the bases still hum, the weapons keep flowing.
But the psychology has changedā¦
Gulf capitals are no longer willing to bet everything on Washingtonās willingness to act. That is why the pact with Pakistan matters more than its text:
It is a hedge, a diversification, & a signal that the Saudis are preparing for a future where the Americans may stand back or even walk away from West Asia entirely.
Washington wonāt admit this readily:
Official statements refer to āenduring partnershipsā & āshared interests.ā
Behind closed doors, though, the frustration is palpableā¦
To see Riyadh sign a defence agreement with Islamabad without even informing the White House until afterward is a humiliation;
It means the Saudis no longer fear American disapproval the way they once did. It also means the leverage of American arms sales & security guarantees has weakened.
If the Kingdom feels safer under a nuclear umbrella from Pakistan than under another shipment of F-15s, the entire model of U.S. influence is in question.
Critics in America will argue that this is only hedging, that the Saudis still depend on U.S. Technology, & that Pakistan cannot replace America.
All of that is true:
Yet what matters here isnāt exclusivity but perception.
If Riyadh believes Washington is unreliable, then the bond has already shifted.
Trust cannot be repaired with another arms packageā¦
It requires proof of protection, & Washington has failed to provide it.
So the American eclipse isnāt the disappearance of fleets, but the erosion of faith:
The Silence after Doha told every ruler in the Gulf that the old guarantees no longer bind. In their place, new arrangements emerge, messy & untested, but real.
Pakistan enters as a shield, Saudi Arabia as an anchor.
America, once unquestioned, becomes just One option among many.
That change, once begun, doesnāt reverse.
Every corridor has two ends, & for years Beijing has been building its own (i.e., pipelines & ports, highways carved through mountains, rail lines drawn on maps from Xinjiang down to Gwadar).
The logic was simple:
Chinaās economy cannot remain hostage to the Strait of Malacca, a narrow channel easily blockaded by American fleets. A secure line from the Gulf, extending across Pakistan into western China, changes the equationā¦
With the SaudiāPakistani pact, that line no longer appears to be a fragile dream;
It begins to look like a shielded artery.
Pakistan already carried CPEC, the flagship of Belt & Road, but it held it under constant strain. Terror attacks, IMF bailouts, Indian pressure, & American suspicion...
All of it made the corridor uncertain.
Now, if Riyadh throws its weight behind it, under a nuclear umbrella that discourages intervention, the corridor takes on a different character.
Oil that once had to cross vulnerable seasā¦
Can now run through pipelines into Gwadar, then into Kashgar, with the knowledge that both ends are guarded by states willing to share the risk.
China doesnāt trumpet any of this. Beijing prefers Silence, the careful language of āwināwin cooperation.ā But in Zhongnanhai, the meaning isnāt lost:
An American eclipse in the Gulf, a Saudi tilt toward Pakistan, a corridor defended not only by contracts but by deterrence... these are quiet victories. They mean that the energy lifeline of the worldās largest economy cannot be cut as easily as before.
For Riyadh, the calculation is more immediate:
Oil is power only if it reaches markets, & markets are shifting east.
China is the largest buyer, the largest partner, the largest future.
The American market is secondary now, & American politics are unpredictable.
If Beijing is the buyer & Pakistan is the bridge, then Riyadh cannot ignore the geography. Signing a pact with Islamabad is also, indirectly, a signal to Beijing:
āYour lifeline will be secured.ā
For Islamabad, this is the leverage it never had:
CPEC was often treated as Pakistanās dependence on China, a one-way street of debt & infrastructure. With Riyadh in the mix, the corridor begins to look like a triangleā¦
Oil from Arabia, routes through Pakistan, & consumption in China:
Each leg strengthens the other.
& with a nuclear deterrent hovering over the arrangement, the risks of sabotage or blockade shrink. Not vanish entirely, but shrink decisively.
Critics will point out the dangers:
āPakistan is unstable, China cautious, & Saudi Arabia unpredictable.ā
āThe corridor runs through Balochistan, where insurgents have never been silenced.ā
āPorts & pipelines can be bombed.ā
But the counterargument is simple:
āEvery artery is vulnerableā¦ What matters is the cost of striking it.ā
& with a pact like this, the cost rises significantly for adversaries:
Attacking the corridor is no longer just about blowing up a pipe or a port; It becomes an act that might trigger a chain reaching Riyadh, Islamabad, & perhaps even Beijing.
So the Chinese corridor, once a map on paper, becomes thicker with every shiftā¦
The Americans will still patrol Malaccaā¦
& India will still guard the Indian Ocean.
But if Riyadh, Islamabad, & Beijing converge on a single artery, then the calculus of blockade, of pressure, of leverage, begins to change. The Saudis know it, the Pakistanis know it, & China, careful in its words, surely knows it too.
The Cold War never really left:
People said it ended, filed it in the archives, pointed to the Berlin Wall & the flag lowered in Moscow.
But the logic of it, the staring contest with weapons that could erase whole cities, that logic has slipped back inā¦ The RiyadhāIslamabad pact drags it into the desert:
Nobody wants to say it aloud, not in Riyadh, nor in Islamabad, nor even in Tel Avivā¦
But the thought is there:
āIf we misstep, if we push too far, the response could be final.ā
That is the shadow, & shadows donāt need speeches.
For they work in Silence, & in hesitation.
Israel has lived with freedom for yearsā¦
Free to strike reactors in Iraq, convoys in Sudan, sites in Syria, even Iranian targets.
The monopoly allowed that:
Arabs could rage, but they couldnāt match.
Now it is different:
The Saudis have a partner who already carries the arsenal.
A strike on Riyadh or Jeddah isnāt just about Saudi defences anymore;
It risks Pakistan stepping in, & Pakistan has ample range;
The Shaheen-III doesnāt stop at the Gulf; it reaches the Mediterranean.
That fact alone complicates every plan drawn in Tel Aviv.
It doesnāt mean war is imminent. Actually, the opposite:
MAD works because it paralyzes.
Washington & Moscow never traded blows directly because both knew they might not survive the second exchange.
The Saudis & Pakistanis are trying to import that same hesitation:
For if Israel thinks twice before another raid, the pact has already done its work.
But MAD is also dangerous; It relies on people being rational every single Time:
In the Cold War, there were near misses (i.e., a radar error, a training exercise mistaken for a strike, a submarine commander hesitating before pressing launch, etc.).
One mistake & the whole system would have cracked.
In the Middle East, crowded with militias, proxy groups, & sudden escalations, the chance of error is even higher.
Thatās what makes the situation so brittleā¦ Deterrence worksā¦ Until it doesnāt.
Critics shrug:
They say Pakistan wonāt trade cities for symbolismā¦
That Saudi Arabia wonāt push Islamabad to risk annihilation.
Maybe theyāre right!
But deterrence never required certainty; It only needs possibility.
The chance of reprisal is enough to freeze a hand on the trigger.
That is why the pact avoids details, why the communiquĆ©s stay vagueā¦
Ambiguity is the shield, for the enemy has to guess.
So the region slides into a new rhythm:
Israel, no longer invulnerable, hesitates.
Pakistan, bound but cautious, sits in the background.
Saudi Arabia holds up the ambiguity like a sword.
& the Haramayn, Mecca & Medina, are no longer only holy citiesā¦
They are pressure points, nuclear tripwires, & the center of a fragile balance no One asked for but everyone must respect.
History has a way of recycling its worst habits:
The Cold War grammar (deterrence, escalation, & annihilation) has returnedā¦
Not in Europe, but in the sands of Arabia, in the shadow of the Kaaba, & in the narrow alleys of Tel Aviv. Nobody wanted it, but it is here to stayā¦
& once it arrives, it rarely leaves.
Turkey & Egypt sit on the edge of this new arrangement, not quite inside, nor quite out. They are too large to ignore, too proud to follow, yet too indebted to stand alone.
Both capitals are watching Riyadh & Islamabad & asking the same question in different voices:
āIf this is the new center of gravity, how close do we drift before we lose ourselves?ā
Ankara first:
Erdogan leans on Ottoman memory, talks about Jerusalem, & fields drones from Libya to the Caucasus. His ambition isnāt lacking, but Turkish deterrence is:
No arsenal, & no weapon that matches what Pakistan already carries.
That gap was manageable when the Saudis leaned on Washington;
It isnāt a detail now:
Riyadh has officially tied itself to Islamabadā¦ Thus, Turkey can compete & risk isolation, or fold its hardware under anotherās umbrella & admit leadership must be shared. Either choice tastes bitter, & Erdogan knows that bitter taste quite well.
Turkish politics thrive on defiance, yet authentic leadership in this moment might require concession... a harder pill than any speech can disguise.
Cairoās calculation is grimmer:
The pound is cut, debt piles up, & the IMF stalks every budget line. But Egypt still has cards... Suez tolls, an army, geography, symbolism. In a bloc where Riyadh brings liquidity & Islamabad deterrence, Cairo can trade presence for relief.
Debt forgiveness, cheap oil, swap lines...
All lifelines that can be bought with Egyptian troops or just Cairoās participation. Egypt may be drowning, but drowning men still grab at ropes.
The regime in Cairo cannot afford principle; it can only afford survival, & that survival may depend on being inside the umbrella, even as a junior partner.
Then comes the monetary layer in the equation:
The petrodollar rests on One bargainā¦ namely, oil priced in dollars because America guards the wellhead. If that guardianship looks thin, the habit loosens.
Riyadh can test yuan trades, rupee swaps, barter, & regional clearing.
Tiny moves, but each says the same thing:
āThere are options.ā
The Saudis can now push gently at the edges of the system without fearing the hammer of instant Western reprisal. Pakistani steel gives them that margin.
Perception is everything... For if traders, bankers, & central banks see Riyadh testing new waters, the old faith in the dollar order weakens, however slightly.
Turkey & Egypt hear all this loud & clear:
Dollar shortages suffocate both, & both are desperate for space.
If Riyadh begins even small yuan settlements, Ankara & Cairo will follow.
It doesnāt topple the petrodollar outright, but it adds cracks where none were visible before. Cracks can widenā¦ & the image of Riyadh moving outside the dollar, even cautiously, plants the thought that the order is no longer absolute.
The day Cairo or Ankara can settle a fraction of oil or wheat without scraping for greenbacks will be the day they begin to speak differently to Washington.
So the swing states inch closerā¦ Ankara out of pride, & Cairo out of need.
They will grumble, & no doubt they will haggle, while also threatening to walkā¦
But the gravity is inescapably there:
The Saudis hold the tap, while Pakistan has the shadow.
Between them is room, & both Turkey & Egypt, however reluctantly, move into it.
Some treaties concern soldiers, budgets, or the allocation of shipsā¦
Yet, this One feels different, for it pulls at memory.
Riyadh signing with Islamabad doesnāt sound like just another deal. Ordinary people notice it, & they talk about it in tea shops, swapping half-formed versions outside the mosque. Hardly anyone knows the exact words of said treaty, but no One cares:
For years, the Haramayn were guarded by outsidersā¦
The Ottomans once, then the British, & then the Americans, with their fleets drifting in & outā¦ always someone else. People grew used to it, maybe even stopped asking questions. This pact bends that line, for Pakistan isnāt Arab, no, but itās Muslim:
& its arsenal wasnāt handed down; it was built the hard way.
Sanctions, hunger, scraping by with little left in the bank.
That story stays in peopleās minds:
It isnāt about legal text, itās about what people imagine.
Word spreads quicker than official notes:
A man in Jakarta, a boy in Lagos, they donāt see the clauses, but they repeat:
āMecca & Medina are under Muslim protection now.ā
That sticks. Mothers pass it on to kids, preachers shape it into sermons, young men say it with pride & unease at the same Time. Old men nod...
They remember 1998, when Saudi oil tankers arrived, free, just when Pakistan was on the brink. Rumour & memory blur in this instance.
Iqbalās verses return here once more:
āTulÅ«Źæ-e-IslÄm.ā
Once, they were just chants at rallies, half nostalgia, half noise.
Now they scrape against reality.
A bomb once mocked as a burden turns into a sign.
Some call it recklessā¦ & maybe it is.
But symbols donāt wait for approval:
They grow in Silence, spread through rumour, & soon outweigh the speeches that set them offā¦ For when people feel it deep down, no government can step away so easily.
But thereās danger here:
Holy places & annihilation side by side... that thought unsettles.
Oil fields, airports... they are rebuildable. Mecca & Medina... never.
Just linking them to deterrence makes people uneasy.
But once the idea is born, you canāt take it back.
Fear itself bends choices before any bullet is fired.
Leaders pause not out of mercy, but because the cost of error feels unbearable.
Skeptics scoff once more:
āBluff, posturing, nothing more.ā
Maybe thatās what it is.
But deterrence doesnāt need certainty; it merely needs doubt.
The sense that a red line might exist is enough to freeze a hand.
Thatās the salient shift:
Hesitation where there used to be freedom to act.
So the weight isnāt in hardware; instead, itās in the mood.
The Haramayn is no longer imagined as guarded only by American fleets or Saudi money, but by another shadowā¦ A shadow carried by people who once swore theyād eat grass if thatās what survival demanded.
Stories like that go deep.
They are told in classrooms, in sermons, & in family talks late at night.
& Long after the pact itself fades, the feeling remains:
āOnce again, the sanctuaries are being guarded by their own & not by outsidersā¦ā
& it changes the air, even if nothing else moves.
Every pact has its day, & every day ends. This One, too, will fade...
The ink will yellow, the names may be forgottenā¦
But what wonāt go so quickly is the air it left behind:
A heaviness. A shift in how people imagine their place in the world.
That, more than anything, is what matters.
Riyadh & Islamabad both know this:
The generals & ministers may count in tons of oil or divisions of soldiers, but underneath those numbers lies something more durable.
Atmosphereā¦ the sense that the Haramayn arenāt only reliant on fleets that sail from far away, but now rest beneath a shadow forged closer to home.
This isnāt the first Time a treaty has tried to speak for the Muslim world:
Summits & charters have come & gone, each promising unity, most ending in dust.
Yet this One feels differentā¦ not because it is cleaner or more durable (it might fracture tomorrow), but because it touched symbols that people donāt forget.
Mecca & Medina tied to a deterrent that came out of sanctions & hunger, not gifts from Washington or Moscow. That image sticks with the masses.
& so the story grows.
Mothers telling children that the sanctuaries are safer.
Preachers hinting in sermons that the Ummah is no longer as helpless as before.
Young men sharing half-formed pride, mixed with unease, on street corners.
Even those who fear the dangers cannot deny that a new layer has been added to the imagination. & once added, it doesnāt vanish easily.
Critics warn of recklessness, of raising the stakes too high:
They arenāt wrong.
Nuclear shadows are brittle thingsā¦ they rely on hesitation, on the belief that no One will dare. One mistake, One misread, & the whole system cracks.
That truth cannot be brushed away.
The Middle East, with its militias & sudden escalations, isnāt a place where caution always holds. Yet even knowing that, leaders in Riyadh chose this path, & leaders in Islamabad agreed. They judged that living without a shield was riskier still.
America watches with frustration, Israel with alarm, & India with calculation:
But outside those capitals, in the wider Muslim world, the tone is different.
For once, it feels as though defence wasnāt begged for, not rented, but claimedā¦
That feeling may not change the balance of missiles tomorrow, but it changes the mood of millions. & moods matter. They set the stage for politics, for patience, for how long a people will endure hardship.
The pact may unravelā¦ A new king may choose another path, a new general may see another priority. But the memory of this moment... that Saudi Arabia, the land of the sanctuaries, decided to tie its fate to Pakistan, the land of the deterrent... will remain.
& Even if undone, it wonāt be forgotten.
So the last word isnāt about hardware or clauses.
Itās about imaginationā¦ Since, for the first Time in living memory, Muslims picture Mecca & Medina under a shield that is their own.
& that picture, whispered & repeated, might last longer than the pact itself.
š š The DOOM Comethā¦! āļø š„
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