Kuwait’s defence cooperation agreement with Pakistan was approved on July 26, 2026, by Decree-Law No. 73/2026 published in the official gazette, Kuwait Alyawm. The agreement was originally signed in Kuwait City on June 11, 2023. Three years elapsed between signature and ratification. The gap was not diplomatic hesitation. It was the ordinary pace of the Gulf legislative process. The result of the ratification is a formal, legally binding defence pact between two nations whose security relationship goes back decades before the advent of the two governments today.
Under the agreement, both countries will establish a Joint Military Committee to oversee implementation, coordination, and monitoring, with members nominated by the defence ministers of both countries, meeting at least once a year to review progress. The agreement also specifically deals with the “confidentiality of classified information”, which requires that classified documents must not be communicated to any third party without proper written authorization, and that this confidentiality commitment extends beyond the duration of the agreement.
The Timing is as important as the Content. The decree coincided with the most intense stress on the security situation in the Gulf since 2003. Pakistan’s MOFA spokesperson drew a red line on Pakistani-flagged vessels in the Red Sea the same week. Houthi attacks on Saudi commercial shipping continued through the week of July 20. The Kuwait agreement entered force in this environment, not as a planning document for a peaceful future but as a legal framework for a present that is already testing Gulf states’ security architecture in real time.
From Bilateral History to Formal Architecture
Security cooperation between Pakistan and the Gulf is not something that can be considered as a post-2025 development. Since 1967, Pakistan has been training over 8,200-armed forces officials of Saudi Arabia and has deployed troops to the country for internal security support since the 1967 crisis at the Grand Mosque and during the first Gulf War and for post-2003 counter-terrorism operations within its borders. The Saudi military’s relationship with Pakistan has been one of the longest bilateral military ties in the Islamic world, with as many as 70,000 Pakistanis serving in the Saudi military throughout the years. Pakistan provided military training and advisory assistance to Kuwait during the same decades, and the latter was a part of the allied forces during the 1991 Gulf War that liberated the nation from Iraqi occupation. What has changed is not the relationship’s depth. It is its formalization.
On September 17, 2025, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement in Riyadh, a mutual defence pact with a key clause declaring that any aggression against either country shall be considered aggression against both. The agreement marked more than 70 years of cooperation and was a clear sign of commitment in a time when tensions were running high in the region. This was sparked by the Israeli airstrike on Doha in September 2025. Gulf states whose leaders believed their close partnerships with the United States would deter Israel from conducting operations on their soil were startled and frightened by what happened in Qatar. Saudi Arabia had already begun to question the continued viability of US regional deterrence from the Aramco attacks in 2019 and the Houthi missile attacks between 2019 and 2022. The Doha strike triggered that re-thinking across the GCC.
The legal basis of the Kuwait agreement is different from that of the Saudi SMDA. The newly approved agreement does not create a mutual defence alliance or guarantee troop deployment. Rather, it lays the legal and institutional basis for future cooperation between the two countries, offering a framework for military cooperation, intelligence sharing, defence exchanges and strategic dialogue. The distinction is precise and consequential. Pakistan is not committing to defend Kuwait in the way the Saudi SMDA commits both sides to collective defence. It has agreed to enter into a partnership with structured cooperation that would include training, intelligence, technology, and logistics: the skeleton of a security partnership, rather than its most crucial element.
For Pakistan, the agreement expands its role as a genuine Gulf security partner after recently signing a similar deal with the Saudis, effectively turning it into a net security stabilizer for the region. That is the way the Gulf states perceive Pakistan’s strategic significance. Pakistan is the only nuclear-armed Muslim-majority country. The country has the largest army in the world in terms of active personnel. The Pakistani forces have been supporting the Saudi forces operationally and technically since the 1967 defence protocol, and the 2025 SMDA established a relationship of deep historical roots. In the case of the Kuwait agreement, the concept is extended to a second GCC country.
What the Architecture Looks Like Now
Pakistan has a strategic mutual defence pact with the two most strategically important states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, at a time when the region is dealing with active conflict with Iran, Houthis’ maritime attacks and a reshaping of US security commitments.
There are reports that Pakistan deployed 8,000 troops and a fighter squadron to Saudi Arabia in 2026 under the SMDA, confirming that the September 2025 agreement moved quickly from paper to practice once active hostilities in the region intensified. The Belfer Center’s analysis noted that while the SMDA does not provide Saudi Arabia with a nuclear umbrella, Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence posture remains India-specific and does not extend to providing extended nuclear deterrence to any state. What it does offer is a credible conventional military partner who not only has combat experience but also has operational logistics and has been training with the Gulf states for the past 50 years.
The Ishaq Dar-led diplomatic sprint of July, spanning Manila for the ASEAN Regional Forum, Shanghai for WAICO, Islamabad for the Canadian foreign minister’s visit, and Bishkek for the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers, takes on additional context alongside the Kuwait ratification. Meanwhile, Pakistan is also dealing with its mediation efforts in the Iran-US standoff, its Red Sea security stand-off with the Gulf nations, and its official extension of its defence framework in the Gulf. These are not separate tracks. They embody a unified strategic approach: Pakistan is not just a neighborhood state in the Gulf; it is an integral player in Gulf security.
The formalization of the Gulf security arrangements shows that Pakistan is not only a viable partner in the Gulf for security but also, despite the economic challenges and tensions with the West, has strategic importance. Kuwait’s approval confirms that the calculation Gulf states made in September 2025 has not been revised. If anything, five months of active conflict in the region have validated it.
The Joint Military Committee called for by the Kuwait deal will start its work in a Gulf that is far more volatile than at the time of the signing of the agreement in June 2023. Annual cooperation plans, personnel exchange and sharing of intelligence under the framework it sets up are not theoretical constructs. They are operational necessities for two states whose security interests have converged at a moment when the region’s existing security architecture is under stress it was not designed to absorb alone.
