The Duran Podcast - Why Are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan Teaming Up?

Episode Date: September 21, 2025

Why Are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan Teaming Up?

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the defense agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This is a big story that is not getting too much attention. Obviously, there's a lot of stuff in the news. Over the past week, there's been a lot of stuff in the news flow. But this is a big deal, at least in geopolitics. What's going on here, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Well, the first thing to say is that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have been very friendly with each other for basically ever since Pakistan emerged as an independent country in 1947. So, you know, they've always been friends.

And it's always been fairly well known that they had close contacts, military and security contacts. I mean, I can remember back in the 1980s. For example, when Pakistan was supporting the insurgency against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan, the Saudis were absolutely there, they were heavily involved, they were providing the Pakistanis with financial and military help to enable them to do that. And at roughly the same time, and this is widely known, the Saudis were also providing funding for Pakistan's ultimately successful nuclear, weapons development program, the one that was led by AQ Khan. I mean, this has never been formally admitted, but it is a universally acknowledged fact. So it's also long been rumored that as one of the conditions that the Saudis gave for all that funding for the Pakistani nuclear program,

the Saudi said, look, if we ever need nuclear weapons in a hurry. We have helped you to get to that point where you've been able to develop them. You must help us. You must loan or even give warheads. We already have long-range Chinese supplied missiles. Those missiles can be converted quickly to carry warheads, nuclear weapons warheads and the Saudis have long been believed to have had that agreement with Pakistan. So the important thing is not that these security ties exist, but that the Pakistanis and the Saudis have now made them public and they've made them public in the most formal way. They now have an absolutely clear, straightforward security agreement between them.

And given that Pakistan is a far more powerful military power than Saudi Arabia is. I mean, Pakistan is a big country. It's got a large army. It's got advanced technology. It's a nuclear military power. Saudi Arabia is not those things to any degree. What this amounts to is Pakistan coming to Saudi Arabia, telling Saudi Arabia, look, up to now you've been relying on the United States.

You don't need the United States so much anymore because we now have a full-scale alliance, military alliance with you, a public military. alliance with you and we are there to protect you. And the treaty is that it is a formal treaty of a military alliance between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Now, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are both friends or have been friends of the United States. This should not be interpreted in other words as a simple anti-American move. But it shows that the Saudis, looking at the situation in the Middle East, are hedging. Up to now, they have relied exclusively on the United States for protection.

They're now looking for other partners. Pakistan is one. Pakistan is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. By the way, Pakistan is an ally of China. By the way, Saudi Arabia has improved. imported those ballistic missiles I was talking about from China. So Saudi Arabia is now diversifying its defense ties. And that does mark a big shift in Saudi foreign policy and Saudi security policy. Way back in 1945, the then king of Saudi Arabia. Even Saud had a meeting with President

Roosevelt, and that was when the United States agreed that it would become Saudi Arabia's protector. It is no longer the protector of Saudi Arabia in the same way. Does this have anything to do with Qatar, the strike on Qatar? Probably. I mean, you mentioned that the agreement predates this, but maybe the implementation or the acceleration of this agreement, might have something to do with Qatar? This is what I personally.

think. I think, well, obviously, as I said, the security arrangements between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which were historically encouraged by the US, by the way, have long existed. The negotiations of this treaty must have been underway for some time. I suspect that the announcement of the treaty, just a short time after the Israeli strike on Qatar was, however, timed as a signal. The Gulf states have been very alarmed by the fact that that attack took place. Trump tried to soothe the Emir of Qatar, appearing to promise that nothing like that would happen again. Prime Minister Netanyahu, in ways that I still find extraordinary, then contradicted Trump about this. which I mean, I'm amazed, by the way, that people have not picked up more on that extraordinary act of defiance by Netanyahu.

The Arab media, the Gulf Arab media, is saying that the United States can no longer be relied upon as a protector in the same way as previously, because yes, until a few years ago, the major threat to the Gulf countries appeared to be coming from Iran, and Iran was seen as a. rival and a threat by the United States and Israel as well, so it made sense then to rely on the Americans. But now the immediate proximate threat appears to be coming more from Israel, which is conducting air strikes against Qatar, one of the Gulf Arab countries. The United States is not able or willing to reign in Israel, so it's time for the Saudis to make clear to the war. world that they're diversifying their security ties and they're going to start working with Pakistan, China's ally and friend, China and Pakistan have a full security agreement by the way. And I suspect that before long we're going to start to see that Saudi's diversifying

their arms purchases and I suspect they're going to start buying more weapons from China too. Where does India fit into this? Where does Russia fit into this? Because Russia also has an excellent relationship with Saudi Arabia. So where do they fit into? Well, the Russians are not going to be bothered by this. On the contrary, I mean, if Saudi Arabia is starting to tilt more ultimately to China, from a Russian point of view, that is a good thing.

The Russians have a very good relationship with Saudi Arabia, MBS, and Putin get on extremely well. They have, in effect, an oil alliance. Russia is part of OPEC Plus, and it works closely with the Saudis on issues of oil production and output. And there have been some rocky moments, but overall that relationship has worked well. And the Russians, as I said, are not going to be bothered about this at all. The Indians are because just as Pakistan is China's friend, Pakistan is India's perennial rival and enemy. And I don't expect that to change, by the way, any time soon. I mean, this has been the case for ever again, ever since both India and Pakistan became independent countries.

Now, India is going to see that Saudi Arabia is publicly aligning itself with Pakistan and is becoming a military ally of Pakistan. India historically has bought oil from the Gulf from countries like Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf states. it must now worry that in the event of a crisis with Pakistan, that oil supply is going to be in jeopardy. So what is it going to do? It has to import oil. India is a very major user of oil. It's going to want to forge still closer relations with Russia. It needs to import the oil from Russia.

It needs to import the oil from India as well. but India, sorry, from Iran, but Iran is currently exporting most of its oil to China. And Iran also has a very close relationship with Pakistan. So Iran might not be quite so reliable, whereas Russia, as we have seen, for India is extremely reliable. So the Indians will probably respond to this by wanting to deepen their ties with Russia. And given that Pakistan, Pakistan's security structures with China, with Saudi Arabia, arguably to some extent with Iran as well, are growing stronger. That is going to make the Indians value their relationship with Russia more at a security level

as well, because they will be looking to the Russians to do what the Russians have consistently done, which is to leverage their close relationship with China so that China in turn can place some restraints on what Pakistan is doing. Now, on this, by the way, there have been some reports that some of those pictures that came out of those summit meetings in China of Modi and Putin and Xi Jinping, that it was Putin who played an absolutely key role in setting up those meetings, that there was a risk otherwise that Modi might have been given less prominence over the course of that meeting than he was, and that the Pakistani prime minister who was also that might have been given more prominence. So you could see the importance that

in Russia is playing in this very complex, triangular relationship. Yeah, does India also try to deepen their relationship with the United States as well as a type of hedge? Yes, I think India always wants to have good relations with the United States and it makes absolute sense with them. I mean, on one and the same day, by the way, on the day of his 75th birthday, Modi spoke to, received and took calls from two presidents. One was Trump and the other was Putin. So even as he speaks to Putin, he's now again talking to Trump, and they're still, they're once again back to calling each other good friends and all of that. So the Indians will always want to have a relationship with the US. We've said this previously, even as things were getting worse between the US and India over the Indian, over the tariffs that Trump imposed on India.

The Indians were very careful not to burn the bridges with the US. completely. So the Indians will want the hedge with the US as well, but they have seen that the US is unpredictable and will come against India, against fundamental Indian interests, as they did with the tariffs, whereas Russia is consistently reliable and has been ever since India gained independence back in 1947. It's one of the most stable, if not the most stable relationships in the world today. I mean, it's not widely known, but very soon after India gained independence, the Indian Prime Minister of that time, Jawa Halal Bandit Nairu, sent Krishna Menon,

ambassador, India's ambassador at large to Moscow and he was received in Moscow by no less a person than Joseph Stalin. So his last actual meeting, he's been a foreign leader that's with a foreign leader that Stalin actually had a short, he was already unwell, but he went out of his way to meet Menon, the Indian ambassador for that meeting. and ever since then. And both in Soviet times and post-Soviet times, when liberals were in power in Russia,

when Putin took over throughout that entire period, the relationship between India and Russia has remained strong and it is also a popular friendship with the countries, with the people of these two countries, both Indians and Russians at a popular level like you, John. All right, we will end the video there. The durand.orgals.com. We are on Rumble and Telegram and X

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