{"id":13150,"date":"2026-10-21T12:26:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T09:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/?p=13150"},"modified":"2026-10-21T12:26:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T09:26:20","slug":"iraq-and-pakistan-an-asymmetric-partnership-at-the-heart-of-the-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/2026\/10\/13150\/","title":{"rendered":"IRAQ AND PAKISTAN: AN ASYMMETRIC PARTNERSHIP AT THE HEART OF THE CRISIS"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Ali Hassan Ali Al hmood<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4>On 7 August 2026 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Deterrence Agreement: a collective defence pact stating that any armed attack on any of the three countries must be treated as an attack on all of them. The alliance brings together Saudi economic power, the world&#8217;s leading oil exporter; Turkish military strength, the only NATO member in the bloc; and Pakistan&#8217;s nuclear arsenal, the only one in the Islamic world. The signing came a few months after Pakistan mediated the ceasefire between the United States and Iran, and a few days after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan publicly declared that the agreement &#8220;should not remain limited to three countries&#8221;. Who will be next? Iraq is not named, but the logic of the new regional architecture being built around the Mecca Agreement points inevitably towards Baghdad. To understand why, one must start with a structural paradox that runs through Iraqi politics in 2026.<\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IRAQ-AND-PAKISTAN.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Download Here<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ali Hassan Ali Al hmood &nbsp; On 7 August 2026 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Deterrence Agreement: a collective defence pact stating that any armed attack on any of the three countries must be treated as an attack on all of them. The alliance brings together Saudi economic power, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[534,19,1732,5],"tags":[758,45,1950,1949],"class_list":["post-13150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-domestic-and-foreign-policy","category-opinions","category-political-studies","category-foreign-policy-international-affairs","tag-al-bayan-center","tag-iraq","tag-iraqi-pakistani-relations-pakistan","tag-the-mecca-agreement"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Y2nv-3q6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IRAQ-AND-PAKISTAN.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13154,"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13150\/revisions\/13154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bayancenter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}