Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
Dimitra Staikou
From the glitzy announcement of Vision 2030 in 2016 to the cascade of regional crises between 2023 and 2026, Saudi Arabia has worked hard to sell itself as the Arab world’s great success story. A kingdom moving beyond oil dependence and religious conservatism to become a global hub for investment, technology and tourism. A nation of AI, smart cities and futuristic infrastructure.
But behind this glossy facade lies a profound contradiction. For all its talk of the future, Riyadh’s political and social model remains anchored in a deeply conservative structure of power, religious patronage and security governance — one that draws legitimacy from the past.
The Iran–Israel conflict of 2023–2026, combined with rising insecurity across the Gulf, has now ripped that contradiction wide open. The Hamas attacks of October 2023, the threats to the Strait of Hormuz, the constant fear of regional escalation — all have exposed just how fragile Saudi Arabia’s post-oil vision really is.
Enter Pakistan. Riyadh’s strategic rapprochement with Islamabad in 2025–2026, and its rapidly expanding military cooperation with the Pakistani army, is far more than another defense agreement. It signals a gradual return to the old playbook: hard security, sectarian polarization and militarized geopolitics. Exactly what Vision 2030 was supposed to leave behind.
We’ve seen this movie before. In the 1980s, the cooperation between Riyadh, Pakistan’s ISI and the United States during the Afghan jihad helped create madrasa networks, transnational jihadist infrastructures and a sectarian geopolitics that later produced extremism, regional destabilization and long-term blowback across the Middle East and the West. Four decades later, Saudi Arabia is walking the same path. The deployment of Pakistani troops and Chinese-made defense systems inside Saudi Arabia during 2026, the resurgence of instability along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border via the TTP and ISIS-K, and the growing coordination between Riyadh, Islamabad and Ankara — all point in one direction. Riyadh is once again betting on military deterrence and transactional alliances over reform and economic transformation.
This is the deeper contradiction at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s new strategy. The more the kingdom tries to present itself as a force of modernization, the more it gets drawn back into geopolitical models that historically produced instability, not security.
The new military convergence between Riyadh and Islamabad reflects something far deeper than a conventional defense partnership. A Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement signed in September 2025, followed by Reuters’ revelation on May 18, 2026, that Pakistan had deployed roughly 8,000 troops, JF-17 fighter squadrons, drones and Chinese-made HQ-9 systems to Saudi Arabia — this is not economics. This is Riyadh attempting to construct a new regional security framework built on anti-Iran deterrence and Sunni-oriented alignments. For the first time in decades, Saudi Arabia is seeking not just economic or diplomatic cooperation with Pakistan, but a form of strategic military dependence on a nuclear-armed Muslim power deeply connected to both Beijing and broader Sunni networks.
And behind this shift lies the gradual return of an older sectarian logic — one that Saudi Arabia itself had tried to curb through Vision 2030 and economic diplomacy. But the weakening momentum of the Abraham Accords after 2023, fears of expanding Iranian influence and repeated attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure have pushed transactional security alliances back to center stage. In this polarized environment, Pakistan becomes a military pillar of Gulf security, Turkey an emerging Sunni geopolitical and defense actor, and China — the silent strategic beneficiary — quietly profits through defense exports, the Belt and Road Initiative and deepening geoeconomic penetration.
Indeed, China may be the largest — and quietest — winner of this entire realignment. The presence of Chinese HQ-9 air defense systems and JF-17 fighters deployed to Saudi Arabia via Pakistan illustrates that Beijing is no longer limiting itself to economic ties. It is acquiring an indirect strategic footprint in Gulf security. Unlike the United States, China avoids large-scale military bases in the Middle East, preferring to project influence through proxies and regional partners. Pakistan now functions as Beijing’s principal security intermediary linking South Asia to the Gulf. Gwadar Port, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor and expanding defense exports are creating a growing Chinese geoeconomic and military presence stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is not just deepening ties with Pakistan — it is integrating into a broader strategic ecosystem where Chinese influence operates quietly, through military technology, infrastructure and transactional partnerships.
Meanwhile, the logic of the Abraham Accords has steadily eroded since 2023. The war in Gaza, the dramatic rise of anti-Israel rhetoric across the Arab and Muslim world, and mounting political pressure on Gulf monarchies have undermined the normalization strategy that dominated the region between 2020 and 2022. Before Gaza, Saudi Arabia appeared increasingly open to a historic rapprochement with Israel. Today, Riyadh is shifting back toward cautious, security-centered calculations. Strengthening ties with Pakistan and Turkey serves not only as deterrence against Iran but also as political balancing in response to domestic and regional pressures across the Sunni world. Perhaps this is the deepest geopolitical consequence of the post-2023 Middle East: instead of moving toward normalization and economic integration, the region is returning to a landscape of ideological blocs, militarized alliances and fragile balances of power.
For Europe, this is not another distant crisis. The strengthening Saudi Arabia–Pakistan–Turkey axis and China’s expanding penetration through energy corridors, military infrastructure and regional proxies are creating a new geopolitical system — one where energy, migration flows, security and political pressure increasingly operate together as instruments of strategic influence. Pakistan — with its history of managing jihadist networks, its deep military-ISI links to Islamist infrastructures, and its growing military integration into Gulf security — no longer functions as merely an unstable regional actor. It has become a multiplier of instability directly affecting the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe’s borders.
And Saudi Arabia? By returning to sectarian polarization and transactional military alliances instead of genuine reformist pragmatism, it risks reproducing the very dynamics that once contributed to the rise of extremism and the destabilization of the wider region. The kingdom sought to reinvent itself as the modernizing power of the Middle East. Yet under the pressure of war, insecurity and regional polarization, it may ultimately be returning to the very geopolitical logic it once claimed it wanted to leave behind.
That is the real tragedy of Vision 2030 — and a warning the rest of the world cannot afford to ignore
About the Author:
Dimitra Staikou is a Greek lawyer, human rights advocate . She works as a journalist writing about human right's violations in South Asia and ctravels to India to get informed about the political situation there and the geopolitcs between India,China ,Pakistan and Bangladesh. She works for Greece's biggest newspaper Skai.gr and Huffpost.Gr as well as international distinguised news sites as Modern Diplomacy, Global Research and Geostrategic Media Center. She is a political analyst and international affairs journalist specializing in India, South Asia, and the Indo-Pacific, combining a strong legal background in international law and human rights with experience in policy analysis, geopolitical risk assessment, and strategic commentary. She is a regular contributor to European and international media, offering in-depth, policy-oriented analysis on Indian foreign policy, India–EU relations, regional security, Pakistan, China, and great-power competition. Proven ability to translate complex geopolitical developments into clear insights for international and policy-focused audiences.
