India to assess implications of Pakistan-Saudi Arabia pact

New Delhi: India will study the implications of the strategic mutual defence pact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan on the "country's national security as well as for regional and global stability."

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed the pact on Wednesday, declaring that any attack on one will be treated as aggression against both. That's being seen as an unprecedented step by some experts against the backdrop of Operation Sindoor following the Pahalgam terrorist attack, given the warmth of the Saudi-India partnership over the past decade.

The accord came close on the heels of the summit in Doha between the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on September 15 in the wake of the Israeli strike said to be against Hamas leaders in Qatar.


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The Indian government affirmed that it remains committed to protecting the country's national interest and said that it knew such a move was being contemplated. "We have seen reports of the signing of a strategic mutual defence pact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The government was aware that this development, which formalises a long-standing arrangement between the two countries, had been under consideration," the Ministry of External Affairs noted Thursday, hours after the Pakistan-Saudi pact.

Gulf States Worried
“The government was aware that this development, which formalises a long-standing arrangement between the two countries, had been under consideration,” the MEA said Thursday, hours after the Pakistan-Saudi pact. “We will study the implications of this development for our national security as well as for regional and global stability. The government remains committed to protecting India’s national interests and ensuring comprehensive national security in all domains.” Analysts said the move had been necessitated by the Israeli attack on Qatar during negotiations with Hamas.

Several Gulf states are worried about their security. following the Israeli action and have come round to the view that the US defence architecture in the region cannot be taken at face value and will protect them in the event of similar aggression in the future.

Some analysts specialising in the Saudi-Pakistan dynamic were sceptical about the mutual defence agreement being put into practice.

“The Saudi deal is a face-saving option offered to Pakistan by the Saudis and the larger region,” one of them said. “They (Pakistan) tried for a pan-Arab-Islamic kind of agreement, like a version of NATO, at the summit in Doha and failed to get any consensus. Hence this was offered as a weak insurance policy against Israeli action. The Gulf states realised that US guarantees do not mean freedom to act, like Qatar figured out the hard way.”

Still, the timing of the agreement—so soon after the terrorist attack in Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor—and its implications for India-Saudi ties can’t be overlooked.

Preserving Energy Sources
While ties between India and Saudi Arabia have evolved over the years and have a strong strategic dimension, the defence partnership between the two is yet to achieve the desired depth.

“While the the Saudi-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement poses potential challenges for India's counter-terrorism efforts, particularly in pressuring Pakistan-based non-state actors, as the pact may embolden Islamabad while complicating New Delhi's security collaborations with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, it is not likely to dilute Saudi Arabia’s parallel commitment to work with India on counter-terrorism and regional stability—those channels remain structurally important to both sides,” said Ausaf Sayed, India’s former envoy to Saudi Arabia and a former MEA secretary who dealt with the Arab world.

According to DB Venkatesh Varma, member of the National Security Advisory Board and India’s former envoy to Russia and Spain, the agreement adds a new and worrying element of securitisation of energy supplies from West Asia and thus reinforces the need for India to preserve multiple energy sources, including Russia.

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Saudi Arabia in April, the two sides reaffirmed their longstanding energy partnership by sealing an agreement on setting up two oil refineries in India. New Delhi also agreed to work with the Arab country “to enhance the stability of global oil markets and to balance global energy market dynamics.”

The two countries also added two new ministerial committees–one on defence and another on tourism–under the Strategic Partnership Council (SPC), which is co-chaired by Modi and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (MBS). The SPC was set up in 2019 with two ministerial committees, one focusing on political and security issues and the second looking at the economy and investment

During Modi’s visit, his third since 2016, both sides jointly condemned the Pahalgam terror attack and reaffirmed that there can be no justification for terrorism or for supporting cross-border terror infrastructure. A Saudi official said that the country’s relationship with India is “more robust than it has ever been” and would continue to grow.