(L-R) Shehbaz Sharif, Mohammed bin Salman, and Xi Jinping in a representational graphic.
This is not just a coincidence that Delhi can read as “one”.
Pakistan deployed its fighter jets and troops at King Abdulaziz Air Base in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia under a collective defence pact signed in September 2025, under which an attack on one country is seen as an attack on the other. The framing has been predominantly military – Pakistan bolstering a Gulf ally in the midst of a regional war. That’s a partial answer! Pakistan has now become a part of the physical infrastructure of the one country without which the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor would not be able to operate. Pakistan’s structural interests, of being a part of China’s CPEC, Iran’s former mediator, and now Saudi Arabia’s biggest military booster since 1991, are at odds with IMEC’s success. It doesn’t have to be used to break down the corridor. It simply and only needs to be in the room when Riyadh decides to further its IMEC commitments or hedge them. Now it is in the room.
WHAT HAPPENED
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a mutual defence pact in September 2025, saying “any aggression against either country shall be considered as an aggression against both.” It was formally activated on April 11, just as Pakistan’s ceasefire efforts with Washington and Tehran were failing in Islamabad, thus making Pakistan at once Saudi Arabia’s biggest military reinforcement since 1991 and the one that Iran had trusted the most to sit across from.
Pakistan put up a complete squadron of approximately 16 aircraft including JF-17 fighter planes, 8,000 soldiers, and an air defence system. One government source who has seen the text of the confidential pact said it provides for the possibility of up to 80,000 Pakistani troops being deployed to Saudi Arabia. The $5 billion financial support package announced by Saudi Arabia and Qatar on April 11 is an underwriting of Pakistan’s external debt obligations rather than aid. The jets and the cash came in on the same day. That’s the deal with the sequencing.
THE STRATEGIC CONTEXT
IMEC was announced during the G20 in New Delhi in September 2023. The corridor had been planned to link India’s industrial prowess with the markets of Europe via the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel with the “Gulf capital, Emirati logistics, Indian labour and Israeli technology” all integrated into a single chain. Washington was on the side of supporting it as an outright proponent of an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. For India, it was a trade route, plus more. It was the seat of the new Middle East order, a decade-long dream, put into institution.
The Iran war has revealed IMEC’s basic weaknesses at all levels at once. The Hormuz closure has severely affected the exports of the Gulf countries: the exports of Kuwait in April were completely at a standstill and Qatar’s exports fell by 90 per cent. The capital engine of IMEC is the Gulf financial hubs in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh. Their exposure to active military threat is not only disrupting trade flows, but it is making the corridor uninventable as an infrastructure proposition, at least until the security conditions that enable investors to rely on the corridor are resolved.
But the visible threat is the Hormuz blockade. The threat is structural and is in a Pakistan uniform.
Pakistan and China have found themselves lately getting engaged in brokering a ceasefire between Iran and the United States, and this isn’t only because of security issues, but also because they are directly safeguarding their trade route. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is BRI’s flagship project in South Asia. It links the regions of Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea along Pakistan’s coast, thus competing with IMEC for these trade routes between the Gulf and Asia. Pakistan has never voiced any objections to IMEC. It doesn’t need to. Every dollar of trade that passes through the Saudi-UAE-India axis via IMEC is a dollar which is not transiting Gwadar. On this issue Pakistan’s strategic interests and the Chinese are structurally the same.
INDIA’S CALCULATION
Delhi appreciates and knows the value of IMEC. The high prestige of Indian involvement in the corridor was symbolised by an Indian visit to Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, two days before the start of the US-Iranian war. No region faced as closely as India that their regional strategy was based on the success of the corridor. But this may now be a problem in New Delhi; a dilemma between policy interests and defence capabilities.
What India had hoped to forestall was the war in Iran dramatically shifting the parameters of the security arrangements that dominate the corridor, and pushing Saudi Arabia towards a Pakistan-China security arrangement that is soured by India’s geopolitical and military uncertainties in the region. This is no longer a possibility. Pakistan’s commitment on its part is more in terms of fight than just a token gesture or a consultative mission; its thousands of troops, aircraft, air-defences, and a ready-to-fight military. Now the Army’s chief Munir is directly connected to the Saudi command because of his military ties. That will be a lasting impression of the Iran war relationship.
There are also plans for military cooperation between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that will see the conversion of an estimated $2 billion of Saudi loans to a JF-17 fighter deal, ensuring the Pakistani defence industry presence in Saudi Arabia for years to come. (Al Jazeera) Buying a weapon, training a pilot, and having troops stationed at your base does not mean that you are buying a “neutral” weapon, training “neutral” pilots, and stationing “neutral” troops. It is a structural effect. The assumption behind IMEC was that Saudi Arabia’s economic regional interests — those of getting closer to Israel, integration into the region as part of Vision 2030 — would keep Riyadh on board the corridor’s logic. That was before Pakistan had 13,000 army troops in King Abdulaziz Air Base.
What Delhi is not telling everyone is that it has no direct plug in this end game. The Saudi-Pakistan pact does not include India. It is also devoid of a military establishment in the Gulf as Pakistan has created one recently. Through economic ties, economic interests are represented across the Indian diaspora, energy procurement, investment flows and so on, each of which has shaped Riyadh’s security calculations in its own way, to the detriment of having a voice in the room where the decisions are most being made.
WHAT TO WATCH
The deployment of Pakistan in Saudi Arabia will either redefine the strategic playing outness of IMEC or it will be a reshaping situation. Three signals will decide Pakistan’s deployment in Saudi Arabia’s redefining of IMEC’s strategic playing outness.
Watch if Saudi Arabia has a positive performance or negative performance in the next six months related to the infrastructure commitments for IMEC. IMEC is $5 billion short to become “minimally effective” connecting the Gulf ports to Haifa. The main source of the Gulf capital in the corridor is Saudi Arabia. In the event that Riyadh reduces the support for IMEC while growing Islamabad’s politics and military engagement, it is an obvious sign of its strategic course of change as it diverts its fiscal muscle into the $5 billion support package to Islamabad.
Second, monitor to see if Pakistan takes advantage of the mediation role to reach any agreement that brings Iran to the table on Hormuz without an agreement for security conditions that are compatible with IMEC. The outbreak of war, however, drastically impacted IMEC’s theoretical premises, and other infrastructure plans like the North-South Transport Corridor and China-Iran rail routes have gone back into the spotlight. A Pakistan-brokered agreement to stabilise BRI corridors without offering security for the IMEC would be a titanic achievement for Beijing, inside Saudi Arabia’s gates with Pakistani soldiers.
Third, see if the UAE takes a cautious approach to the balancing act – kicking off IMEC logistics with India, but reserve the more overt commitments for later – which is an indicator that even the most operationally mature node of IMEC is full of uncertainty regarding the corridor’s future. (Al Jazeera)
THE VERDICT
Pakistan’s deployment to Saudi Arabia is being analysed as a military story about the Iran war. This is a geo-economic story of IMEC. No one else tied to the corridor was as much as India in preparing its regional country strategy around the IMEC’s success. On the same day that secured $5 billion in financial relief, it now has to grapple with the fact that its anchor node making all the difference in this corridor of Islamabad is inviting its CPEC ally into its defences. I have seen no evidence of Pakistan blocking IMEC. It’s just here when IMEC is deciding its fate. Well, it’s the same for India.
This is a guest opinion article. Views expressed are personal to the author.
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