The first Middle East alliance that doesn’t need Washington’s permission

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (5th L), Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (C) and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif (5th R) pose for a family photo after signing a trilateral joint defense agreement in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on August 7, 2026. [TUR Presidency /Murat Cetinmuhurdar - Anadolu Agency]https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/AA-20260807-42161814-42161811-TURKIYE_SAUDI_ARABIA_AND_PAKISTAN_SIGN_TRILATERAL_JOINT_DEFENSE_AGREEMENT-1-1.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" width="1200" />
Sometime this past week, an Iranian parliamentary official told a Lebanese television channel that Tehran had received an invitation to join the Mecca Accord.

No signature, no letterhead, no confirmation from Riyadh, Ankara, or Islamabad — and Iran’s own foreign ministry has responded with the kind of calculated ambiguity that neither confirms nor kills a story.

In the same week, Iran’s foreign ministry announced that Field Marshal Asim Munir will travel to Tehran on Monday, August 24, for high-level talks framed around bilateral cooperation and “regional peace and security.” It is tempting, and wrong, to fuse those two stories into “Munir flew to Tehran to deliver the Mecca invitation.” He didn’t — the visit’s confirmed purpose sits inside Pakistan’s separate […]

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