Pakistan sent fighter and support jets to Saudi Arabia on Saturday, landing the aircraft at King Abdulaziz Air Base in the kingdom’s Eastern Province in the first visible military move under a mutual defence pact signed in September 2025. The deployment came as Islamabad hosted direct United States-Iran negotiations, putting Pakistan’s new security pledge to Riyadh on display while it was trying to play mediator elsewhere.
The jets arrived on a day when Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan was in Islamabad with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir. The timing gave the pact immediate political weight: Pakistan was not only moving aircraft into Saudi airspace, it was doing so while senior delegations were already at the table in talks that Pakistan described as mediation.
The defence agreement, signed during Sharif’s visit to Riyadh last September after he met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commits each country to treat an attack on the other as an attack on itself. Four days before the deployment, Sharif called the crown prince and pledged Pakistan would stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the kingdom. The two sides also agreed to expedite a promised Saudi investment package for Pakistan worth $5bn.
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Dar said in early March that he had warned Iranian leaders Pakistan was “bound by its obligations to Riyadh under the agreement,” and said he had secured assurances that Saudi territory would not be used to attack Iran. Munir also flew to Riyadh in early March to discuss measures to halt Iranian strikes under the pact’s framework. Together, those moves show the agreement was being worked not as a paper commitment but as an active part of Pakistan’s regional diplomacy.
Still, the military value of the deployment is limited. Analyst Imtiaz Gul said, “Three jets won’t make much of a difference militarily,” adding that the move was “messaging Tehran to be flexible in these talks, but also it is underlining to them that Pakistan has obligations under the mutual strategic agreement it has with Riyadh.” That leaves the pact doing what aircraft alone cannot: signaling where Islamabad’s loyalties now run, even as it tries to balance ties with Iran and the United States.
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The stakes are broader than the immediate flight path. Saudi Arabia is home to about 2.5 million Pakistani workers whose remittances help support Pakistan’s economy, and Riyadh has repeatedly provided financial assistance to Islamabad. The deployment also follows a period in which Iranian attacks on targets in Saudi Arabia continued, including key bases and a United States embassy building. For Pakistan, the pact has now moved from ceremony to action, and the next question is how far it will go when the pressure on either side rises again.
