Pakistan-Saudi Arabia pact: Both share decades-long defence partnership

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have a decades-long defence partnership, and while the United States provides the overall security framework, in many cases Pakistan has provided manpower and expertise in the military domain, said a source, recalling that whenever Gulf states have come under threat, whether from Arab nationalism or Iran, they have turned to Pakistan.

As per Indian authorities, the Pakistan-Saudi Arabia pact only formalises the existing understandings, particularly on Pakistani support to Saudi Arabia, and that the timeline may have been accelerated by the recent attacks on Doha.

Saudi Arabia had first signed a defence agreement with Pakistan in 1967 and upgraded it in 1982 through a bilateral security cooperation agreement. At one point of time, during the Iran-Iraq war, more than 15,000 Pakistani troops were stationed in the kingdom.