The Türkiye-Pakistan-Saudi 'Defense' Pact: A Mirage of Hedging, Not a US Puppet Show – and Iran as a Structural Anchor the Left Misses.

In my earlier article “What is this agreement, and what role could Türkiye play in this so-called 'Türkiye-Saudi Arabia-Pakistan defense pact?” after stating the concrete conditions and situations, I concluded that “based on these concrete facts, the 'Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey' Defense Bloc is not a strategic pillar but a mirage for show.”

Amazingly, there are still “leftists” calling themselves Marxist-Leninist and proceeding from the premises that Turkiye (and so Pakistan) is a “puppet of the US,” and thus, this pact is driven by the US. For them, change is impossible. Once a puppet, always a puppet. There is no such thing as “the law of uneven economic development”. And they totally disregard the difference between economic and political independence- with that logic, the US, dependent on China economically (and now for the production of its military arsenal), is also dependent on China politically- so it is a puppet of China?

It is no accident that the 'US puppet' narrative is predominantly carried by the Avakianist sects and the so-called Trotskyite 'democratic left'—groups whose institutional existence depends on either US academic circuits or Western NGO funding. They mistake their own geopolitical location for a theoretical lens. For those grounded in Turkey's actual relations of production—the monopolization of finance capital, the militarization of the state-owned industrial base, and the export of military goods to Africa and the Gulf—the semi-colony thesis died the moment the Bayraktar factory went online and the Turkish Wealth Fund began underwriting sovereign ventures in Qatar and Somalia. The left that cannot see this is not a 'left' rooted in the working class; it is a rentier-intellectual class feeding off the remains of Cold War dogmatism.

Turkey is not a semi-colony, but a classic example of a sub-imperialist or regional imperialist state, operating within the interstices of a declining unipolar order.

The Comprador-to-National Bourgeoisie Shift (1990s–2010s)

 The 1990s Structural Rupture: From Sentinel to Sovereign Actor

During the Cold War, Turkey was indeed a forward-operating base—a "glorified aircraft carrier" for NATO. The US dictated the military infrastructure (Incirlik, Kürecik) and the rules of engagement.

However, the 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent 1990s fragmentation of the Balkans and Caucasus forced Ankara into an existential realization: NATO's security umbrella was no longer tailored to Turkey's regional threats (PKK sanctuaries in northern Iraq, instability in the Caucasus, and the spillover from the Yugoslav wars). Turkey began unilaterally cross-border operations into Iraq in the mid-1990s without US approval. This was the first fracture—Ankara started defining its own "near-abroad" threats independent of Washington's strategic priorities. By the 2003 parliamentary vote rejecting US troop transit for the Iraq invasion, Turkey formally established that its sovereign parliament could nullify the Pentagon's operational plans. That is not a semi-colony; that is a veto-player.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Turkish industrial elite (TÜSİAD) functioned as classic compradors: they imported Western finished goods, assembled them under license, and depended on IMF standby agreements for liquidity. Their profit model relied on domestic market protectionism and Western consumer credit.

This collapsed after the 2001 financial crisis. The subsequent restructuring forced the Anatolian "conservative" industrialists (MÜSİAD) to bypass Western distributors. They built vertically integrated textile, automotive, and white-goods supply chains that competed against European manufacturers in third markets (Africa, Russia, the Middle East). By 2010, Turkey was no longer a passive importer of Western technology but a net exporter of medium-to-high-tech intermediate goods. This is the birth of a national (statist-comprador hybrid) bourgeoisie with its own accumulation logic, distinct from Washington's.

The "Geographic Rent" and Tri-Continental Leverage

Turkey's political independence is not gifted; it is extracted via brute geographic reality. Turkey controls the Turkish Straits (Montreux Convention), the only maritime chokepoint linking Russia's Black Sea fleet to the Mediterranean. Since the 1990s, Ankara has used this not as a US proxy, but as an independent tariff and interdiction mechanism. Furthermore, Turkey borders Iran, Syria, Iraq, and the Caucasus—acting as the land bridge between the energy-rich Caspian basin and European markets.

This geography allows Turkey to practice simultaneous hedging—a luxury most EU states lack. The EU states are geographically embedded in a rules-based, US-guaranteed Atlanticist system; they cannot credibly threaten to pivot to Eurasia without fracturing their internal economic DNA. Turkey, however, can host Russian S-400s while maintaining NATO F-16s; it can trade in yuan and rubles while holding US dollar reserves. This is not vacillation born of weakness; it is structural rent-seeking. Ankara charges geopolitical tolls to all superpowers for access to its airspace, maritime territory, and intelligence corridors.

Autonomous Military Projection: The Decoupling of Hardware

Political independence in the 21st century rests on the ability to project force without foreign logistics. By the late 1990s and accelerating in the 2010s, Turkey’s military-industrial complex (SSB) deliberately decoupled critical systems—drones (Bayraktar), armored vehicles (FNSS), naval corvettes (MILGEM), and satellite infrastructure (Türksat)—from US ITAR-controlled components.

Today, Turkey is one of the few states globally (outside the P5) that can conduct expeditionary warfare—in Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Nagorno-Karabakh—without relying on US aerial tankers, US satellite targeting, or US naval escort. Contrast this with Germany, France, or the UK, which remain logistically tethered to US C-17s, AWACS, and space-based ISR for any out-of-area operation. Military logistical autonomy translates directly into political veto-power over US demands.

 Economic Dependency as a Two-Edged Sword

Yes, Turkey is vulnerable to US Treasury sanctions and dollar-liquidity squeezes. However, since the 1990s, Turkey has weaponized its massive domestic market ($1 trillion+ GDP) and its construction/contracting dominance in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia to create alternative financial corridors.

When the US threatened CAATSA sanctions over the S-400s, Turkey did not capitulate; it deepened swap agreements with China, Qatar, and Russia, and pivoted to gold-for-gas trade. This is the behavior of a state that calculates economic pain as a transactional cost of political autonomy—not a leash. A semi-colony would not absorb 40% inflation and currency devaluation to maintain a foreign policy independent of the US Treasury; a semi-colony would adjust its foreign policy to save its currency. Turkey has repeatedly chosen the reverse.

Institutional Supranationalism vs. Untethered Sovereignty

Why does Turkey outpace most EU states in political independence? Because EU membership demands ceding sovereignty over trade tariffs, competition law, border regimes, and even judicial oversight to Brussels. France and Germany are institutionally interwoven into a continental fabric that makes unilateral foreign policy exorbitantly expensive.

Turkey has never allowed such structural penetration. Its EU Customs Union is purely commercial; its military is non-integrated into any unified European command structure; its intelligence (MİT) operates in grey zones that European agencies refuse to touch. Turkey’s political class is accountable solely to domestic nationalist-secularist-Islamist cleavages, not to transatlantic liberal consensus. This domestic volatility—which Western analysts mock—is actually the engine of its independence. A superpower cannot reliably predict or control Turkey's electoral outcomes, hence cannot embed a "puppet" elite.

 Monopolization and the Fusion of Finance Capital

Today, five family-controlled conglomerates (Koç, Sabancı, Eczacıbaşı, Çalık, and Albayrak) and their associated state-owned banks (Vakıf, Halk, Ziraat) control over 60% of industrial output and nearly 80% of banking assets. Crucially, this finance capital is no longer a branch of Western investment banks; it has formed a symbiotic relationship with the sovereign wealth fund (Turkey Wealth Fund), which directly underwrites military, energy, and infrastructure megaprojects. This state-finance monopoly allows Ankara to issue domestic debt, manage currency swaps with Qatar and China, and fund multi-billion-dollar defense projects without seeking prior approval from the IMF or the US Treasury. This is finance capital operating under national parameters, not imperial dictates.

The Militarization of Industry as a Primary Accumulation Driver

Militarization is not merely a defensive posture; it is the leading sector of Turkey's current accumulation model. Since 2015, Turkey's defense and aerospace sectors have grown at an average annual rate of 25–30%, outpacing textiles and tourism. This is not a welfare burden; it is the primary R&D engine that generates technological spillovers into civilian aviation, electronics, and software. By withholding production licenses from Western firms (e.g., replacing US T-700 helicopter engines with indigenous TEI units), Ankara deliberately creates a closed domestic procurement loop. This loop generates surplus value that is then reinvested into scaling production—exactly what Lenin described as the militarization of the state apparatus to resolve the contradiction between overaccumulation and stagnant domestic demand.

Export of Capital and Military Means

Here is where the "little imperialist" label becomes undeniable. Since 2016, Turkey has exported:

• Capital through Turkish construction firms (3rd globally) that take equity stakes in African ports, Qatari hydrocarbon fields, and Central Asian mining ventures, often financed by Turkish state banks.
• Military hardware (Bayraktar TB2, Akıncı, naval corvettes) not merely as finished goods, but as complete military-industrial turnkey solutions. Turkey sells factories, training academies, and joint-venture production lines to Ukraine, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. This is the export of the means of warfare—a classic hallmark of imperialist expansion, where the metropolis ensures the client state's military dependency is permanently structured into its procurement cycle.

The "Little Imperialist" Categorization and Its Limits

To call Turkey a "little imperialist" is theoretically precise—but it would be  more theoretically correct to call it "sub-imperialist" to avoid conflation with the US/China/Russia. A full-fledged imperialist power controls global reserve currency issuance and sets global financial rules. Turkey cannot print dollars, nor does it control international commodity pricing. Instead, Turkey is a regional sub-imperialist. It exercises coercive hegemony over the Levant, the South Caucasus, the Horn of Africa, and the Gulf's northern tier. It extracts surplus from these peripheral zones through unequal exchange (arms-for-infrastructure deals, construction-for-gas swaps) while simultaneously being a peripheral power vis-à-vis the US-EU core. This dual character—extracting surplus from its near-abroad while being extracted by the core—is precisely the uneven condition that drives its hyper-aggressive, vacillating foreign policy. It cannot afford to be a loyal US vassal because its own domestic accumulation model now depends on securing autonomous overseas markets (Africa, Pakistan, Gulf), which often directly compete with Western multinationals.

To say Turkey "vacillates" is accurate, but it vacillates from a position of deliberate autonomous agency. It is not a pendulum pushed by US and Russian winds; it is a fulcrum that allows both winds to pass while tilting the balance for its own benefit. The US lost the ability to treat Turkey as a semi-colony the moment Ankara developed indigenous precision-strike capabilities and normalized relations with every rival of Washington (Iran, Russia, China) simultaneously.

Since the 1990s, Turkey has operated less like a dependent state and more like a classical Ottoman-era buffer empire—extracting tributes (diplomatic and economic) from all sides while fiercely guarding its domestic decision-making apparatus. Economic dependence is the price of this strategy, not its determinant. The EU states, by contrast, traded their geopolitical maneuverability for economic stability. Turkey chose the reverse, and its geography and military gave it the luxury to make that choice stick.

If Turkey were a semi-colony, this pact would be a US-engineered NATO offshoot.

If Turkey were a classic imperialist metropolis, this pact would be a hard, binding annexation treaty.

As a sub-imperialist state, Turkey does not seek permanent military basing in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia; it seeks exclusive market access for its finance capital and military-industrial goods. Saudi Arabia buys the pact to hedge against US withdrawal; Pakistan signs it to access Turkish drone tech without Western ITAR restrictions; Turkey signs it to secure long-term energy financing and a captive market for its naval exports.

The Russian Calculus: A Spoiler, Not a Driver

For Russia, a hard military pact between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan is strategically counterproductive.

Moscow’s primary regional lever is its détente with Iran (the "Eurasian pivot"). Russia relies on Iranian drones, Central Asian access, and coordination in the South Caucasus. A formal bloc that excludes Iran but includes Pakistan—which has deep tensions with India (Russia's long-standing strategic partner)—would force Moscow to choose sides. Furthermore, Russia is militarily exhausted and financially reliant on OPEC+ coordination with Saudi Arabia. The Kremlin's interest lies in keeping the Gulf monarchies non-aligned and buying Russian weapons bilaterally, not in consolidating them into a rival Sunni-majority military pillar. If Russia influenced anything, it would be to water down this pact into a meaningless memorandum to avoid upsetting Tehran and New Delhi.

The Chinese Calculus: Economics vs. Alliances

Beijing operates on a strict "non-interference" and "no military alliances" doctrine (outside of its peripheral buffer). For China, the trilateral format is a logistical and economic convenience, not a strategic pillar.

China just successfully mediated the Saudi-Iran rapprochement in 2023. Its crown jewel is the Belt and Road Initiative (CPEC in Pakistan) and energy security from the Gulf. Pushing a defense bloc against Iran would instantly destroy the diplomatic capital Beijing just spent years building. Moreover, China's primary concern in Pakistan is the safety of its civilian infrastructure, not joint military patrols with Turkish or Saudi troops. If Beijing is involved, it is softly encouraging these states to coordinate on Afghanistan stabilization (to secure the Wakhan Corridor and counter Uyghur militant splinters) and on de-dollarization in oil trades. It does not need, nor want, a formal defense treaty that could drag it into a future Turkey-Greece conflict or a Saudi-Iranian proxy relapse. China is a bystander leveraging the trade benefits, not the architect.

 The Actual Driving Force: Internal Hedging

If the US is absent and China/Russia are not driving it, who is? The participants themselves—but for purely domestic and commercial reasons, not strategic alliances.

• Turkey is using this to bypass NATO procurement restrictions, selling drones and naval tech to cash-rich Saudis while using Pakistan as a testing ground for its artillery and aerospace systems.
• Saudi Arabia is hedging its US security umbrella by buying Turkish military industrialization know-how (not deploying troops) to build its own domestic defense sector for Vision 2030.
• Pakistan is using Saudi financial bailouts and Turkish tech transfers to modernize its aging military without triggering IMF conditionalities that come with Western loans.

Pakistan is not a puppet; it is a gatekeeper state and a sub-imperialist buffer that uses US aid as rent, not as command. Here is a structural deconstruction, stripped of Western liberal narratives, grounded in the material realities of its military-industrial-feudal complex.

 The Nuclear Deterrent: The Ultimate Autonomy Clause

A puppet state does not possess an independent, triad-capable nuclear arsenal with delivery systems that deliberately bypass US satellite tracking and missile-defense architecture. Pakistan developed its nuclear posture (full-spectrum deterrence, including tactical battlefield nukes and sea-based Babur-3 cruise missiles) explicitly against US regional preferences. Washington spent decades trying to cap, roll back, or condition Pakistan's nuclear program via the Pressler Amendment (1990) and subsequent waivers.

Pakistan's response? It continued building, diversified its enrichment infrastructure, and operationalized its deterrent without US technological assistance after the 1970s. Today, Pakistan's nuclear command-and-control is structurally insulated from any foreign power—including China. This is not the behavior of a comprador elite; it is the behavior of a deep-state oligarchy that treats nuclear sovereignty as its non-negotiable rent-extraction asset.

The China Pivot: A Structural Reorientation of Accumulation (Post-2015)

The half-truth of US puppetry rested on Pakistan's economic dependency on US and IMF aid. However, the launch of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in 2015 marked a watershed shift in Pakistan's mode of accumulation.

CPEC is not aid; it is a long-term, debt-financed infrastructural and industrial reorientation that links Pakistan's domestic logistics (ports, railways, energy grids) directly to Xinjiang and the Chinese Belt and Road. Crucially, Pakistan's military establishment does not merely "host" this—it owns and operates the security apparatus for these corridors via the Special Security Division (a dedicated army unit). This provides the Pakistani military with a parallel, state-capitalist accumulation model independent of US Pentagon contracts or Treasury disbursements.

Since 2018, Pakistan has also decisively pivoted to buying Russian wheat, Central Asian energy, and Iranian gas (despite US CAATSA threats). The US has lost its status as Pakistan's primary external economic underwriter; China now holds that position, but even here, Pakistan is not a Chinese puppet—it maintains tariff barriers, delays project completions, and renegotiates terms to extract maximum local surplus.

The Geostrategic Rentier Model: Sitting on the Eurasian Crossroads

Pakistan's geography is its primary asset. It sits at the confluence of South Asia, Central Asia, the Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. This allows it to practice simultaneous great-power rent-seeking. Since the 1990s, Pakistan has charged:

• The US for overflight and ground transit (Afghanistan logistics).
• China for port access and overland corridor rights.
• Saudi Arabia and the UAE for military basing rights and troop deployments (used for Gulf internal security).
• Russia and Iran for transit through the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).

A puppet does not auction its strategic geography to multiple, mutually hostile, great powers simultaneously. It is a gatekeeper that monetizes its location. When US aid dried up after the Afghan withdrawal, Pakistan did not collapse—because the military's domestic revenue base (real estate monopolies, agricultural taxation bypass, state-owned enterprises, and military-run welfare foundations like Fauji Foundation) constitutes nearly 20–25% of the formal economy. US aid was never structural; it was a supplementary operational budget for specific counter-terrorism campaigns, not for regime survival.

The Bureaucratic-Military Oligarchy vs. Comprador Civilian Rule

The "puppet" narrative often confuses Pakistan's civilian political class (which is fragmented, corrupt, and periodically subservient to Western diplomatic pressure) with the Deep State—the Corps Commanders and the ISI.

The military oligarchy has its own strategic culture, rooted in the 1965 and 1971 wars with India, the Soviet-Afghan jihad, and the Kashmir insurgency. This culture is profoundly anti-US in its institutional memory—it views Washington as an unreliable ally that abandoned Pakistan in 1965, embargoed it in 1990, and humiliated it in 2011 (the Raymond Davis incident and the Abbottabad raid).

When US pressure mounts (e.g., demands to sever ties with Hafiz Saeed or the Haqqanis), the military brass calculates the domestic nationalist backlash and the loss of "anti-India" proxies. More often than not, they choose to defy the US rather than comply. The civilian government may issue condemnatory press releases; the military operational wing continues its established regional calculus.

Its foreign policy is not dictated by Washington; it is dictated by the internal calculus of the military oligarchy: preserving strategic depth against India, maintaining access to Gulf petrodollars, and securing Chinese infrastructure loans—all while periodically extracting US goodwill to balance the IMF and keep the rupee from total collapse.

This is vacillation, but it is vacillation born of structural autonomy—the rational behavior of a state that has multiple external patrons bidding for its allegiance. It is neither a colony nor a sovereign fully in command of its own economic base; it is a geopolitical auctioneer, selling access to its territory to the highest bidder while fiercely preserving its internal military command. The US is merely one bidder in this auction—and since 2021, it is no longer the highest or most influential one.

So, this is not a strategic "bloc"—it is a cartel of  “sub-imperialist” intentioned powers coordinating to carve up overlapping spheres of influence in a vacuum left by the US retreat. And crucially, this cartel is inherently unstable because each member is, like Turkey, trying to export its own capital and military goods to the others. Saudi Arabia wants Turkish tech without Turkish political influence; Pakistan wants Turkish drones without antagonizing its own deep-state Gulf alliances.

Thus, when you hear gossip about "Iran invited", view it through this sub-imperialist lens: Iran is mentioned not as a potential ally, but as a threat-commodity—something to invoke to justify increased arms sales to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Turkey, as the "little imperialist," benefits from perpetuating a mild, managed threat perception in the region, because that threat justifies the continued militarization of its industrial base. Inviting Iran would eliminate the very rationale for the cartel's existence. Hence, the gossip is likely tactical disinformation, emanating either from Turkish defense lobbies or Pakistani intelligence circles, to inflate the pact's perceived urgency.

Turkey's vacillations are not reactive flailing; they are the rational strategies of a sub-imperialist state that must simultaneously extract surplus from its periphery, compete with Gulf petro-capital, and avoid direct collision with the US core—all while maintaining its domestic finance-monopoly coalition. That’s why the so-called "defense pact" is precisely a mirage: a shimmering projection of sub-imperial ambitions that cannot solidify into a permanent bloc because each signatory is, ultimately, a rival for the same peripheral assets.

The pact is "utopian" because it disregards Iran.

The solution is not to revert to great-power puppetry, but to correctly position Iran as a peer “sub-imperialist” rival and structural constraint, rather than a distant "new power."

Iran is Not a Puppeteer; It is the Inescapable Geographic Gravitational Field

For both Ankara and Islamabad, Iran is not an external variable; it is the geological and sectarian bedrock of their operational theaters.

Iran borders Turkey's eastern provinces and Pakistan's entire western flank (Baluchistan). Its 1,200-mile shared border with Pakistan and 300-mile border with Turkey means that every single independent action taken by Ankara or Islamabad must be filtered through Tehran's potential veto or reaction.

This is not "push" from a superpower; it is the structural friction of contiguous sub-imperialist intentions of states. Turkey cannot deepen its influence in the South Caucasus (Azerbaijan) without monitoring Iran's reaction to the Zangezur corridor, which threatens to cut off Iran's land bridge to Armenia. Pakistan cannot secure its Gwadar port and CPEC routes without ensuring Iran does not foment Baloch insurgency across the porous border. Independence exists within this friction, not outside it.

Material Competition: Water, Energy, and Militia Networks

Iran competes with Turkey and Pakistan on the same peripheral assets, meaning their "independence" is defined by their ability to outmaneuver Tehran, not to ignore it.

• Energy Routes: Iran undercuts Turkey's ambition to become the sole Eurasian gas hub by offering direct pipeline routes to Europe via the Caucasus and to Pakistan via the IP (Iran-Pakistan) gas pipeline. Pakistan's independent pivot to Iranian gas (despite US sanctions) is not a submission to Tehran; it is a calculated rent-extraction move to pressure Saudi Arabia and China into offering better financing terms. Iran is the bargaining chip, not the master.
  
  
• Afghanistan's Spoils: Both Turkey and Pakistan court the Taliban independently. Pakistan uses its ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) leverage; Turkey uses its humanitarian and construction contracting. Iran, however, actively arms the Hazara-Shia militias in Afghanistan, directly countering both. The trilateral Turkey-Saudi-Pakistan pact's original Afghan stabilization framework collapses the moment Iran is introduced—not because Iran is "pushing" them, but because their material interests in Afghan lithium, transit tolls, and water rights are inherently contradictory with Tehran's.

The Military-Industrial Mirror: Indigenous Yet Reactive

Turkey builds the Bayraktar; Pakistan builds the JF-17 and Shaheen missiles; Iran builds the Mohajer and Kheibar missiles. All three have achieved significant indigenous deterrence.

Crucially, Iran's recent breakthroughs in hypersonic missiles and loitering munitions directly force Turkey and Pakistan to accelerate their own R&D (Research and Development) without Western input. This is reactive militarization, but it is reactive to a regional peer, not to Washington or Moscow. Pakistan's development of the Babur-3 sea-launched cruise missile and Turkey's development of the Tayfun short-range ballistic missile are direct structural responses to Iran's expanding arsenal. Their independence is forged in this regional arms race, not in a vacuum.

Why is “Invitation Gossip” Structurally Impossible, but Functionally Useful

The gossip that "Iran has been invited to the bloc" is not a sign of Tehran's influence; it is a strategic disinformation tactic generated by the actors' very independence. Turkey or Pakistan might float this gossip to achieve three purely domestic/regional goals without any external push:

• For Turkey: To pressure Saudi Arabia into granting more favorable defense production licenses (by threatening to dilute the pact's Sunni character).
  
  
• For Pakistan: To scare Saudi Arabia into increasing its financial deposits at the State Bank of Pakistan (by hinting that Islamabad has a "Plan B" for regional security).
  
  
• For Iran itself: Tehran denies it, but gains diplomatic prestige simply by being mentioned as a potential peer, which elevates its status in the Gulf.

Thus, the gossip does not prove Iranian agency over the pact; it proves that Iran's material existence is so weighty that its mere name is used as a currency by independent actors. This is the classic behavior of powers with “sub-imperialist” intentions: auctioning their alignments rather than obeying external commands.

The gossip that Iran has been invited to this bloc collapses under three regional realities:

• The Afghan Factor: The trilateral Turkey-Saudi-Pakistan mechanism was originally birthed in 2021 largely as a post-US Afghanistan stabilization forum. Saudi and Turkey fund humanitarian aid, while Pakistan acts as the Taliban's handler. Iran, despite being Afghanistan's neighbor, is a strategic rival to the Taliban (over water rights and the Herat-Shia militias). Inviting Iran would paralyze the entire Afghan framework.
  
  
• The Sectarian & Proxy Ceiling: While Saudi and Iran normalized ties diplomatically, the institutional militaries remain deeply distrustful. Turkey and Iran are direct proxy opponents in Syria, Iraq, and the Caucasus (Azerbaijan-Armenia). A formal "bloc" would require joint military planning, intelligence sharing on missile defense, and unified rules of engagement—areas where Iran and Turkey/Saudi are diametrically opposed.
  
  
• Pakistan's Red Line: Pakistan's military establishment views Iran's intelligence networks in Balochistan with deep suspicion. Bringing Iran into a defense pact would violate Pakistan's core doctrine of balancing Iran against the Gulf Arabs to secure Saudi funding.

 To disregard Iran would indeed be utopian, but only if one mistakes 'independence' for 'isolated sovereignty.' Independence does not mean acting in a vacuum; it means that the driving logic of state policy originates from the internal accumulation needs of the military-finance bloc, and that interactions with Iran are transactional, competitive, and coercive—never submissive. Iran is not the missing 'fourth driver' behind the pact; Iran is the uninvited third player on the same chessboard, forcing Ankara and Islamabad to constantly recalculate their moves.

A triangular “sub-imperialist” model: Turkey (Western pivot & naval-tech exporter), Pakistan (Eastern pivot & nuclear gatekeeper), Iran (Northern/Shia pivot & energy-proxy commander). The US, Russia, and China are off-stage financiers and arms suppliers, but their presence is reactive—they respond to the moves of these three regional heavyweights, not the other way around.

The Turkey-Saudi-Pakistan "pact" fails not because of US/RU/CN sabotage, but because it attempts to create a bloc that inherently excludes Iran, yet Iran's physical geography and proxy networks make such exclusion operationally impossible. Therefore, the pact remains a "mirage"—not because of external puppetry, but because the internal contradictions of three overlapping sub-imperialist ambitions (Turkish, Saudi, Pakistani) cannot be resolved without Iranian concessions, and none of these three are independent enough to offer those concessions without losing domestic legitimacy.

This is the materialist, non-utopian conclusion: Iran is the uninvited anchor that sinks the pact, but not because Tehran lifted a finger—simply because it exists, arms itself, and sits squarely in the middle of the map. One has to put Iran in its correct structural position: a peer competitor, not a shadowy manipulator.

It would be a shock if Iran accepted such an invitation under current conditions. Iran has won against the US and Israel. Such a move could be not only a show of weakness, but also give all the credit for its win to the "block" in the long run- at least in narratives that will follow.

Erdogan A

August 25,2026