Syria’s Seat Will Test the Mecca Pact

On 31 October, Syria’s foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, used the Manama Dialogue, the security conference held each year in Bahrain by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, to say that “discussions are currently underway to evaluate Syria’s entry into the Makkah alliance”. He placed the request inside a longer complaint. Syria, he said, had suffered more than 1,000 Israeli attacks in under two years, and Israel should return to the lines it held before December 2024. He also condemned the recent attacks on Saudi Arabia and rejected the use of Syrian territory to threaten its neighbours. None of the alliance’s three members has commented, and no timetable has been set.

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement is less than three months old. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye signed it on 7 August, and it has been used twice. On 5 October, after Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, the members activated “deterrence measures” for the first time and committed forces to the kingdom. On 26 October Field Marshal Asim Munir and Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, met Iranian officials in Tehran, with Türkiye’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, in the same delegation. Neither act tested the promise Syria now wants extended to it. The deployment defended a member’s own soil, and the Tehran mission was diplomacy.

Syria’s request arrived between two elections. Israel voted on 27 October and produced no government, which leaves open the question of which Israel a Syrian member would face. Americans vote in their midterms on 3 November, and Donald Trump has said he will not resume strikes on Iran until they are over.

The Attack-on-One Clause

The treaty text became public in October, when Türkiye sent it to parliament for ratification. Article 2 covers “an externally originating armed attack” against any member. Israeli strikes on Syrian territory would meet that description, which is why Syria wants the clause and why its membership would test it.

The same article limits the obligation. Assistance follows “an objective assessment of the assistance required” and stays “within the limits of their available resources”, and each member decides for itself what that means. The first activation shows how the members have read it so far. Reporting at the time indicated that any response would be launched from Saudi territory, and no public authorisation has been given for Pakistani or Turkish forces to enter Yemen.

A Country Without Air Defences

Syria’s case for joining starts with what it lacks. In the days after Bashar al-Assad fell on 8 December 2024, Israel struck 320 targets and destroyed more than 70% of the former army’s strategic capabilities, beginning with its air defences. Israeli forces then moved into the buffer zone set up under the 1974 Disengagement Agreement, and they have stayed. The UN spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said on 9 December 2024 that military activity there “would constitute a violation” of that agreement. A state that cannot defend its own airspace can deter an attacker only by raising the prospect of a reaction from its allies. Membership offers Damascus deterrence by association, the only kind within its reach.

Two of the members have reasons of their own to want Syria in. Türkiye backs and trains the Syrian army, and the two governments pledged closer defence ties on 6 August, the day before the Mecca agreement was signed. Saudi Arabia announced about $2.8bn in investment commitments in Syria in February, and President Ahmed al-Sharaa visited the kingdom in October to discuss reconstruction. For both governments, membership would tie a recovering Syria more closely to them. Pakistan has no comparable interest there.

Tehran’s Account of the Meeting

The Tehran meeting ended with an agreement to continue consultations, which Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called “a significant step”. Four days later Pakistan’s military spokesman, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said Iran would be welcome as a member if it shared the goal of collective deterrence.

Iran’s security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, then gave state television his own version of the talks. He said the Saudi minister had warned him that Israel would “go after Turkey, and then it will come after us”. None of the three governments has confirmed his account. If it is accurate, Riyadh’s threat assessment already includes Israel. If it is not, Tehran wants the alliance seen as sharing its view. Either way, Syria’s application arrives while the alliance’s attitude to Israel is already a subject of public dispute.

Israel’s Syria Policy Outlasts the Vote

Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 of 120 seats, and he remains prime minister of a caretaker government. President Isaac Herzog opens consultations on 4 November. The candidate he chooses will then have 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14-day extension. Gadi Eisenkot, the likeliest alternative to Netanyahu, would keep Israel’s security zone in Syria, has hinted only at partial withdrawals, and distrusts al-Sharaa because of his past in al-Qaeda.

Israel’s record suggests a Syrian signature would not stop the strikes. On 18 August Israeli aircraft hit the Abu al-Duhur airbase to prevent the deployment of a Turkish radar and air defence unit, which Turkish troops were due to man. Ankara was not warned. Tom Barrack, the US envoy, later said Türkiye had watched the aircraft heading north toward its territory and “could have reasonably prepared its own response”. Israel accepted that risk with a NATO member. A treaty clause qualified by “objective assessment” is unlikely to deter it more.

Eisenkot or Bennett

Eisenkot wants new understandings with Middle Eastern governments that turned against Netanyahu. A government led by him would have reason to agree rules for Syria with a bloc that includes Saudi Arabia and Türkiye. His bloc holds 48 seats, and on 1 November the Joint List’s Ahmad Tibi offered to support it from outside the coalition in exchange for commitments to Arab citizens.

Naftali Bennett’s 12 seats could instead give Netanyahu a majority. In February Bennett described the alliance’s founders as a hostile Sunni axis with nuclear Pakistan. A government that includes him would treat a Syrian accession as proof of that charge, and would have little reason to negotiate rules with the alliance that made it.

Washington After 3 November

Channel 12 reported that Netanyahu pressed Trump to resume the war on Iran before the elections, which Netanyahu’s office denies. US officials told CNN that American forces could launch within 96 hours of an order, and that it would be “a big effort”. A resumed war would test the members’ mediation in Tehran in the same weeks that Syria’s request tests their guarantee.

Washington also runs the only channel that manages contact between Israeli and Turkish forces in Syria. Since the Abu al-Duhur strike, Barrack has been building a deconfliction mechanism between Israel, Syria and Türkiye, on the argument that such mechanisms are “far less costly than relying on kinetic means of communication”.

The congressional result matters too. If Democrats win, Sarah Yerkes of Carnegie expects pressure to cut military aid to Israel and to wind down America’s part in the Iran war. She also notes that “Trump has only ever worked with Netanyahu”, so an Eisenkot government would begin with a White House it does not know.

Pakistan’s Vote

Pakistan’s position differs from its partners’. It leads the alliance’s diplomacy with Iran and sits on the Board of Peace alongside Israel. It has no stake in southern Syria. A guarantee extended to a member that Israel strikes routinely would be tested often, and the members’ discretion under Article 2 means it would rarely be honoured with force. Each unanswered strike would count against a guarantee Pakistan has signed.

Article 8 leaves the “procedures and principles governing the accession” of new members to the existing ones, which allows Syria’s entry to be sequenced. One option is associate status first, covering training and intelligence-sharing through Türkiye and Saudi Arabia, with the Article 2 guarantee applying once Israel has a government able to agree terms and a deconfliction channel is working. A sequence of that kind would let Ankara and Riyadh deepen their ties with Damascus now, and hold the guarantee back until the members can honour it.

Bottom Line

Syria has asked to join the Mecca pact while Israel strikes its territory, and neither of Israel’s possible governments would change that. The alliance has demonstrated its diplomatic reach in Tehran, and its one military activation defended a member’s own soil against a militia. The outcome of Israel’s coalition talks will decide whether the next Israeli government deals with the alliance or treats it as an adversary. Washington’s choices on Iran and on deconfliction in Syria will set the conditions under which the members answer Damascus.

Unresolved

• The three members’ positions on Syria’s request, none of which has been stated.
• Whether Article 2 would apply to attacks already under way when a state joins.
• Rezaei’s account of the Tehran meeting, which none of the participating governments has confirmed.

What To Watch

• The US midterm results on 3 November, and Trump’s decision on Iran afterwards.
• Whom Herzog tasks after consultations open on 4 November, and where Bennett’s 12 seats go.
• Any statement from Islamabad, Riyadh or Ankara on Syria’s accession, and the terms attached.
• Progress on the US-brokered deconfliction mechanism in Syria.
• Further meetings between the alliance’s members and Iran.

The Pakistan Playbook will continue to report on the Mecca alliance’s membership and on government formation in Israel. ■

Also read: How the Mecca Pact Changed Pakistan’s Place at the Iran Table. It covers the Tehran mission, the alliance’s first act as a diplomatic bloc, and Syria’s request now tests that record.