The Saudi-Pakistan Nuclear Agreement. The Same But Very Different

Israel’s attack on a Hamas building in Doha on 9 September has provided Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with the perfect cover for bringing their previously secret nuclear deal out into the open. By casting it as a response to Israeli aggression the Saudis have neatly side-stepped Pakistan’s previous anxieties about alienating Iran. Meanwhile Pakistan, still reeling from the implications of the final stage of India’s Operation Sindoor in May, has secured an agreement which will oblige India to think twice about future missile strikes. But there are good reasons why neither party should place too much reliance on the pact.

On 17 September Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed a mutual defence pact between their two countries. The pact represents a revival of an older secret agreement, but with very different motivations for both sides.

The story goes back to the late 1990s when Nawaz Sharif, as Prime Minister of Pakistan, hosted a visit by Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, then Defence Minister of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia had helped fund Pakistan’s nuclear programme since the early 1970s, and Pakistan had reciprocated by providing troops to defend the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The latter role was hugely popular in the Pakistan army because salary and allowances were paid in US dollars.

It was therefore not a huge leap when the Saudis asked Nawaz Sharif (whose brother, Shehbaz, is the current Prime Minister) for use of the weapons in the case of need. The Saudis have always been careful to express their requirement in terms of the threat from Israel rather than their primary fear; that of a nuclear armed Iran.

The details of the agreement were always opaque. A brief insight came to the author in 2010 when he was informed that two nuclear-armed aircraft (probably Mirage IIIs at the time) with Pakistani air and ground crews would be placed at the disposal of the Saudis at moments of crisis. Various versions of this story have circulated since, including Mark Urban’s fascinating article for the BBC website in November 2013 which broadly rings true.

The Israel narrative was always a device to soothe Pakistan’s understandable anxiety about furnishing Saudi Arabia with a capability to be used against its western neighbour, a fellow Muslim nation and the spiritual home of Pakistan’s Shias. There are some 30 million Shias in Pakistan making it the second largest such population in the world, after Iran itself.

However, the whole covert agreement received a setback when, in April 2015, Nawaz Sharif, back in power after being deposed in 1999, refused a Saudi request to join a coalition against the Houthis in Yemen. Pakistan’s concern was familiar; its fear of alienating Iran (the main external sponsor of the Houthis) and Pakistan’s own Shia minority.

This decision was poorly received in Riyadh and relations with Pakistan spent some years in the freezer. A particular source of annoyance for the Saudis was that they had provided sanctuary for Nawaz during his long period of exile during the government of General Pervaiz Musharraf. Furthermore, King Fahd had been instrumental in preventing Nawaz being sentenced to death in Pakistan. So even when Imran Khan’s administration sought Saudi political support, in August 2019, when the Indian government revoked Article 370 and 35A of its constitution, which had protected Kashmir’s special status, his appeal was met with an stony silence.

So, what has caused the previously covert agreement to be revived? The return of the Sharifs to government is one factor. A second is the Israeli strike on Qatar. Israel’s increasingly aggressive behaviour since the 7 October massacre has been a source of concern throughout the region. However, the Saudis do not have a scintilla of sympathy with Hamas or the wider Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Nor do they particularly like Qatar, which not only harbours MB leaders but remains host to the Al Jazeera channel, a source of criticism towards fellow Arab and Gulf regimes (albeit to a lesser degree than during the major stand-off between the other Gulf monarchies and Qatar from 2017 to 2021).

But Riyadh’s main worry remains Iran. The Saudis were rattled when the first Trump administration did little to respond to the massive Iranian swarm drone attack on its Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities in September 2019. And it has been shaken again following the June 2025 attack by the US on Iran’s nuclear facilities with President Trump insisting that it was completely successful but the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) taking a much less optimistic view. Riyadh does not believe that Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons is over. In a bizarre way, therefore, it also suits Saudi-US relations to portray Saudi Arabia’s concerns in terms of Israel rather than Iran.

Another important new component is what happened on the final day of India’s Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in May 2025 following the terrorist atrocity at Pahalgam in Indian Administered Kashmir (IAK) on 22 April. Until that final day the tit-for-tat attacks had followed a largely predictable and incremental series of stages, familiar to anyone who has studied the gradual escalation in methodology since the Uri attack in 2016 and the Pulwama/Balakot events of 2019.

But on 10 May, India, urged on by an overly excited press and public and stung by reports of Pakistani successes in shooting down Indian aircraft a few days earlier, abandoned the incremental approach and launched a barrage of missiles at Pakistan air force bases. This took Pakistan completely by surprise. Shehbaz Sharif was woken at 2:30am by the army chief, but it was already too late to do anything but agree to a ceasefire proposed by Washington. The Indian attack drove a coach and horses through all Pakistan’s defensive calculations. There was not even time to decide whether any of the various missiles used in the attack might have been nuclear capable. This clearly has huge implications for the next Indo-Pakistani clash since the final act of the previous conflict tends to become the baseline for its successor.

In its scramble to redefine its defence architecture an agreement with the Saudis suits Islamabad well as does its suddenly improved relations with the Trump administration and the new US interest in mineral exploitation. But Pakistan would be wise not to put too much trust in its new pact with Riyadh.

Riyadh’s economic support is vital for Pakistan’s fragile economy and any political support from Saudi Arabia is much needed. However Saudi Arabia and India enjoy perfectly good relations which Riyadh will not sacrifice without good reason. The real value of the agreement is that it adds an additional layer of complication (and thus a degree of deterrence) for the next time New Delhi contemplates military action against Pakistan. India will not expect the deployment of Saudi aircraft or troops on Pakistan’s side but it will not wish to alienate Riyadh or the other Gulf states which are important trading partners and employ some nine million Indians, most of whom send remittances back home.

Furthermore, the Saudis must realise that Pakistan would think twice (and more) before ever using a weapon against Iran or even lending the Saudis any nuclear armed aircraft for that purpose. So, for Riyadh this agreement is no substitute for developing its own nuclear weapons programme. Hitherto it has banked on the United States (and ironically Israel) to monitor and disrupt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

And finally, Pakistan has now positioned itself firmly in the crosshairs of Israel’s intelligence services. Tel Aviv has always kept a watching brief on Pakistan and its nuclear programme but Islamabad should now brace for inventive cyber-attacks on its nuclear and missile facilities and attempts to disrupt its nuclear supply chains.

© Tim Willasey-Wilsey, 2025, published by RUSI with permission of the author.

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