From Insurance to Autonomy: The Transformation of Gulf Hedging
It is tempting to see the hedging of Gulf states as a result of current tensions in the Middle East. The last two years have seen sustained conflict in the region, from the 12-day war between Israel and Iran and Israel’s strike on Doha to the 2026 war in Iran. Throughout these crises, the United States has appeared increasingly erratic and either unwilling or unable to restrain its ally Israel, as seen in Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon despite U.S. disapproval. This explanation, however, is incomplete. Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia have been hedging for far longer. The question, therefore, is not why Gulf states began hedging, but why the nature of that hedging has changed. What recent hedging has shown is that Gulf states are no longer hedging merely as insurance in case the U.S. falters; they are increasingly hedging to preserve their strategic autonomy.
U.S. security guarantees had already begun to appear infirm after the 2019 attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities. The limited U.S. response, which focused on deploying troops and strengthening Saudi air defences rather than retaliating against Iran or Yemen, generated frustration in Riyadh. Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser warned that the restrained response could “embolden the attackers,” reinforcing fears among Gulf states that Washington might not defend them against serious Iranian attacks.
As a result, Gulf states began diversifying their security and economic partnerships, including through deeper engagement with China. China was already deeply embedded in the Gulf economically before Abqaiq, with its trade with the region eventually surpassing that of the U.S., U.K. and Eurozone combined. What followed Abqaiq, however, was a deepening of China’s role as a security partner. This hedging was insurance: quiet and reversible. Reliance on the U.S. remained overwhelming: half of all arms imported by Middle Eastern and North African states between 2020 and 2024 came from the United States, and Saudi Arabia took 74% of its arms from America.
Recent developments, however, have shifted the concern in Riyadh and Doha. It is no longer only whether Washington will protect them, but whether dependence on the U.S. limits their strategic agency: their ability to make decisions over conflicts they did not choose, but whose consequences they must still bear.
The relationship between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan embodies this shift. Pakistan has historically been a limited security partner, despite decades of close economic and military ties. On 17 September 2025, just over a week after an Israeli strike on Doha, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defence pact. The agreement stated that aggression against either signatory would be treated as an aggression against both, echoing the principle of collective defence found in NATO. Pakistan’s Defence Minister, Khawaja Asif, even suggested that Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella could extend to Saudi Arabia, although the exact implications of the pact have been deliberately left ambiguous.
For Pakistan, the agreement provides an opportunity to diversify its economic partnerships. For Saudi Arabia, however, the military dimension is the central objective. Pakistan, which possesses one of the largest standing militaries in the world, must now treat aggression against Saudi Arabia as aggression against itself, providing Saudi Arabia with what it has increasingly sought: greater strategic autonomy.
By committing so publicly to such a costly arrangement, Saudi Arabia hopes to avoid a situation like 2015, when Pakistan rebuffed its requests to join an anti-Houthi coalition. The nature of diversification has therefore changed. Previously, Gulf states pursued partners such as Pakistan for quiet, reversible insurance. Newer efforts are public, costly and harder to reverse.
The shift is also visible in how Gulf states use their existing relationship with the United States. During the current Iran war, this became evident when Gulf states refused to allow the use of their airspace and military facilities for “Project Freedom”, which would have seen the U.S. escorting vessels out of the Strait of Hormuz. The restrictions were subsequently lifted following further discussions with Washington, allowing Project Freedom to resume. The episode nevertheless brought the U.S. to the negotiating table. Gulf states were not rejecting the American security presence; rather, they were asserting their agency within it. The willingness to impose limits on Washington itself suggests a different objective: autonomy within, rather than independence from, the American security order.
The Saudi–Pakistan pact does not represent a replacement for the U.S. security umbrella; no alternative partner can currently match Washington’s combination of military equipment, missile defence, logistics and command and control. Instead, it gives Saudi Arabia another source of security and leverage.
The Saudi–Pakistan agreement has since expanded into a broader trilateral security relationship through the signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement with Türkiye, a NATO member, on 7 August, further entrenching formal military cooperation between the three powers. Türkiye’s inclusion is telling precisely because, despite being a NATO member, Ankara has increasingly sought to reduce its dependence on the U.S. by pursuing an independent defence industry, particularly after its expulsion from the F-35 programme. Its participation therefore reinforces this broader shift: strategic autonomy does not require abandoning existing alliances, but building the capacity to act beyond them.
The risks however, are clear. This web of layered alliances could draw an increasing number of countries into conflicts that are not entirely their own. This prospect is particularly concerning given Pakistan’s sizable Shia population, ongoing tensions with the Taliban to its west and India to its east. A third front could prove difficult for the already strained country to manage. Yet this risk appears increasingly acceptable to a growing number of states because the alternative is no longer viewed as stability, but dependence: an order in which they have limited control over the decisions that determine their security.