When Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, clasped Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh last week, the symbolism was unmistakable.
The embrace followed the signing of a “strategic mutual defence agreement”, bringing the Islamic world’s only nuclear-armed state closer to the Gulf’s most ambitious monarchy.
A senior Saudi official told Reuters that the pact was merely an “institutionalisation of long-standing and deep cooperation, external“. But many in India see it differently.
Despite Delhi’s cultivated warmth with Riyadh, the pact lands amid heightened hostility with Pakistan, including a four-day conflict earlier this year. Nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan have fought multiple wars and clashes over Kashmir, making any move by Saudi to underwrite Pakistan’s military a direct concern.
What unsettles Indian analysts the most is the pact’s commitment that “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both”.
“Riyadh knew India would construe the Saudi-Pakistan pact as a direct threat to its security, yet it went ahead,” Brahma Chellaney, an Indian strategist, posted on X.
“The move reflects not Pakistan’s strength – it remains on the brink of bankruptcy – but Saudi Arabia’s ambitions”, he says. Binding a “chronically dependent” partner, he argues, gives Riyadh both manpower and nuclear “insurance”, while demonstrating to India, Washington and others that it will chart its own path.
Former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal called the pact a “grave misstep” by Saudi Arabia, warning that this could have serious implications for India’s national security.
“A politically unstable and economically broken Pakistan as a security provider is a dangerous proposition. Saudi Arabia knows this will be construed in India as a threat to India’s security,” Mr Sibal posted on X. “Given the tensions between Pakistan and India, this Saudi step is strategically most adventurous.”
India’s Narendra Modi-led government has been more circumspect, with a foreign ministry spokesman noting that the government will “study its [the pact’s] implications for national security and regional and global stability”. India also hoped that the strategic partnership between India and Saudi Arabia would “keep in mind mutual interests and sensitivities”.