Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Mansoor Qaisar
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The world is stocking its Pantry. Are we?
A few weeks ago, a government booklet started landing on doormats across Ireland. It explains what to do when the lights go out, and it is being sent to roughly 2.2 million households. Finland plans to post about 3.5 million printed guides covering crises and even drone threats. In Britain,…
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Pakistan can mediate between Washington and Tehran, but it cannot manufacture trust
When Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s army chief, met Iranian leaders in Tehran last Tuesday, he heard a familiar message in a harder form. President Masoud Pezeshkian said Washington must lift sanctions and pressure before talks resume. Security chief Mohsen Rezaei said no enriched material would leave Iran. After Munir…
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After Mecca, why Badr? Because this pact builds, not binds
Within hours of the ink drying in Doha, the label arrived: another “Muslim NATO.” It is the wrong label for the wrong agreement. On Wednesday, Turkiye, Qatar, Pakistan and Indonesia signed “Badr,” a defence-industry memorandum covering joint production, research and development, and military training. The defence ministers of Qatar, Pakistan…
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Trump can strike Iran again. He cannot bomb Hormuz open
A navy can control water. It can’t make a merchant captain sail through it. Warships stop missiles, sure, but no admiral can promise a shipping company that its crew, its cargo and its insurance cover will all survive the next voyage. That gap is the real problem in the US-Iran…
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Beyond oil: The Gulf crisis is becoming a food security crisis
Ask most people what the Gulf crisis will cost the world and they will say oil. Fair enough. Prices are the part we can watch every morning. But the bill that worries me more will arrive later and quietly: a farmer who buys less fertilizer than he needs, a thinner…
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The Makkah alliance has been called defensive. Now it has to prove it
When Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye signed the Makkah Alliance for Defence in August, most of us read it as a statement of intent. It took barely two months for that to change. On October 5, ministers and commanders met in Riyadh and agreed to activate collective deterrence measures and…
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Two straits, one pact: what Makkah can and cannot protect
Two months. That’s how long the Makkah pact has existed, and already it’s being asked to do the thing pacts are least ready for in their early days: handle a real war. On Sunday, Yemen’s internationally recognised government said it was launching a campaign to retake all Houthi-held territory. The…
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A shield, not a sword: what the Makkah pact’s first test reveals
On Wednesday, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave the Makkah alliance its clearest public definition yet. Opening the new session of the Shura Council, he said the alliance was created to strengthen regional stability and shield the region from the repercussions of tensions and conflicts. In the same address he…
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After UNGA: Can a broken memorandum be put back together?
For a moment this week, the freeze between Washington and Tehran looked like it might actually crack. On 23rd September, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sat down with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in New York — the most senior direct contact between the two sides since the…
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Iran just gave Washington a deadline. Watch Islamabad, not the White House
Iran’s message at the United Nations this week wasn’t subtle. President Masoud Pezeshkian stood before the General Assembly and told the room his country would not surrender, hours after President Trump had reportedly threatened Iran with annihilation. The American delegation walked out mid-speech. Then came the real substance: Iran’s Supreme…
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The Makkah Pact’s first test: Can Pakistan defend Saudi Arabia without entering Yemen’s war?
The Middle East is entering another dangerous phase, and this time the test isn’t hypothetical anymore. Yemen’s Houthis have just made their biggest advance in years down the Red Sea coast, seizing the Greater and Lesser Hanish islands near Bab el-Mandeb and pushing toward Mokha — reigniting a civil war…
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The Mecca Pact must meet the test of war
The Mecca Pact is already facing the test that matters: whether its promise of collective defence can shape the response to an actual war. With fighting escalating in Yemen and Saudi Arabia under attack, regional leaders no longer have the luxury of discussing security institutions as a future project. They…
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Is Saudi Arabia turning to Israel for help against Houthi attacks despite its new defence pact?
Recent reporting says yes — at least on the intelligence front. Diplomatic sources cited separately by Israel Hayom, Walla, and The Jerusalem Post say Riyadh has sought intelligence assistance from Israel through U.S. Central Command as Houthi forces advance along the Red Sea coast, seize strategic islands including Perim, and…
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Sovereignty without consent: Afghanistan’s Taliban and the limits of control
Five years after storming back to power, Afghanistan’s Taliban government wants the world to see a settled fact: a state that has outlasted predictions of collapse, kept its currency stronger than most of the region’s, and sat across the table, however unhappily, from neighbors who once swore they’d never deal…
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The first Middle East alliance that doesn’t need Washington’s permission
Sometime this past week, an Iranian parliamentary official told a Lebanese television channel that Tehran had received an invitation to join the Mecca Accord. No signature, no letterhead, no confirmation from Riyadh, Ankara, or Islamabad — and Iran’s own foreign ministry has responded with the kind of calculated ambiguity that…
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The strait that broke Washington’s illusion of control
When the United States and Israel opened their war on Iran on 28th February by assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the calculation in Washington was simple: overwhelming force would force capitulation. Nearly six months later, that calculation lies in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, where a tugboat sits…
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Iran’s supreme leader is back in control. That may be why diplomacy with Washington just collapsed
The 60-day window created by the Islamabad Memorandum expired on Monday with no permanent agreement between the United States and Iran. The 14-point framework, brokered principally by Pakistan with Qatar’s involvement, was signed on 17 June in an attempt to convert a fragile ceasefire into something durable. It covered the…
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After Mecca: The rise of a new Middle East security order and Iran’s strategic dilemma
The signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement by Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan on 7 August may eventually be remembered as more than another defence pact in a region already crowded with military partnerships. It could mark the moment when three influential Muslim powers concluded that the old security…
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Abraham offered normalisation. Makkah offers security
There’s a striking irony sitting inside this year’s diplomacy. Back on May 25, Donald Trump publicly pushed Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt and Jordan to join the Abraham Accords en masse — part of a wider attempt to reshape the region while he negotiated an end to the war…
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The Makkah pact is not a Sunni NATO — the Middle East is testing a security order of its own
It took barely 48 hours for the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement to run into the question that will ultimately decide what it becomes: a historic security arrangement, or just another ambitious regional declaration. Two days after Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed the pact on 7 August, Yemen’s Houthis said…
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Walking the tightrope between Tehran and Riyadh
Donald Trump threatened Iran with another strike, then called it off within hours — at the request, he said, of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. He now says talks resume today. Tehran says the opposite: no negotiations are under way, and it isn’t even Iran that asked for the…
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Beyond a ‘Muslim NATO’: Pakistan and the Middle East’s Emerging Security Order
For decades, I watched Pakistan’s military relationship with the Middle East unfold largely away from the headlines. Pakistani officers trained Gulf forces, pilots joined joint exercises, advisers worked alongside Arab governments, and troops were periodically stationed in Saudi Arabia. Islamabad was an important security partner—but rarely the centrepiece of the…
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Why Pakistan must choose active neutrality in the Iran-US war
A war is entering Pakistani homes right now. Not through headlines, but through the electricity bill, the bus fare, the price of vegetables at the local market. Wars in the Middle East rarely stay confined to the countries that start them — their consequences travel through oil pipelines, shipping lanes,…