Damascus says it is weighing entry into the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani defence pact
Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani told the Manama Dialogue that talks are under way on Syria joining the Mecca alliance. Twenty-four hours on, none of the three member capitals had said anything.
Speaking Saturday at a regional security session of the 22nd IISS Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani said that “discussions are currently underway to evaluate Syria’s entry into the Makkah alliance,” the mutual-defence pact signed in August by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan, under which an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all three. The remarks were carried by AFP via Arab News, by Anadolu and TRT World citing SANA, and by Al Jazeera, Dawn and The New Arab. Shaibani described Syria as an “integral” part of regional security and said the region was “in greater need than ever” of joint deterrence and defence systems. The New Arab noted explicitly that “the minister provided no further details about the ongoing talks.” The New Arab dates the pact’s signature to 7 August in Mecca; AFP says only “August.”
Shaibani framed the pitch in the language of arrival rather than supplication: “Syria has left the trenches of conflict to take its place at the table where security is shaped,” he said, per Arab News. He also backed the Yemeni government’s efforts to restore sovereignty and urged all parties to uphold the unity and sovereignty of states — lines carried by Anadolu, TRT and Pakistan’s Nation. AFP, in its own framing rather than Shaibani’s, placed Saudi interest in enlarging the pact against the backdrop of Houthi attacks, reporting that a major strike closed Riyadh’s international airport for two weeks this month. That characterisation is AFP’s; it is not something the Syrian minister claimed, and The Files has not verified it independently.
Assessment: What was said is a Syrian aspiration, not a negotiation. No statement from Riyadh, Ankara or Islamabad appeared in any version of the story, and the silence is the more informative half of the day. A mutual-defence clause extended to Damascus would obligate three states to treat Israeli strikes on Syrian territory as attacks on themselves — which is precisely why none of them will say yes quickly, and why saying it out loud in Bahrain costs Shaibani nothing. Read the announcement as addressed to the Gulf audience in the room, and to Washington behind it, rather than to the pact’s secretariat. The test is whether any member capital responds at all.