Published: · Region: Middle East · Category: geopolitics

Saudi‑Turkey‑Pakistan Security Axis Raises New Military Pressure on Iran and India

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan are formalizing a new defense alignment combining hundreds of thousands of troops, large air fleets and some of the region’s biggest arms budgets. The partnership strengthens each state’s hand against rivals from Iran to India and complicates calculations for Washington, Beijing and Moscow as they court all three.

A new defense alignment knitting together Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan is beginning to take clearer shape, backed by some of the Muslim world’s largest militaries and defense budgets — a combination that could reshape threat perceptions from the Persian Gulf to the Himalayas. Recent public data on the three countries’ military strength offers a snapshot of what this emerging axis can marshal. Turkey fields around 481,000 active personnel, 1,101 military aircraft, 2,284 tanks and 192 naval vessels, underpinned by a defense budget of roughly $51.4 billion. Saudi Arabia, despite a smaller population, deploys some 247,000 active troops with 917 aircraft, 1,085 tanks and 32 naval vessels, financed by a…

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