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Pakistan says trilateral defense pact will not affect Iran ties
Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations, said the joint defense agreement formalizes Pakistan’s longstanding strategic relationships with Saudi Arabia and Turkey and is not intended to compete with other countries, alliances or strategic partnerships.
Speaking to Al Arabiya English, Chaudhry said the agreement has “no offensive, no interference, no aggressive element” and is purely defensive in nature.
“There is nothing aggressive. There are no regional aspirations. It is a collective deterrence, and it is complementary because all these countries have independent relations with other alliances, other countries, other blocs,” he said.
Chaudhry said the agreement is not directed against any particular country and should be viewed as complementary to Pakistan’s existing international relationships.
Asked whether the new defense arrangement could complicate Pakistan’s relations with Iran, Chaudhry rejected the suggestion.
“I don’t think, not at all,” he said, describing the agreement as the product of decades-old strategic relationships between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
He said Pakistan’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Turkey have not “come out of the blue”, but are based on longstanding political, military, cultural and people-to-people ties.
“These relationships that Pakistan has with both these countries are special,” he said. “They are based on people-to-people relationship. There is an emotional connection, there is a cultural connection, there is a government-to-government, a military connection which spans over decades.”
Chaudhry described the new defense agreement as “a formalization of these strategic relationship in a peculiar environment”, saying it strengthened existing ties without creating an exclusive strategic bloc. He said the three countries would determine how to respond to any attack and would decide how to operationalize their commitments when necessary.