David Wurmser, the executive member and founder of the Delphi Global Analysis Group, spoke to an August 17 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
The Mecca Agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan includes provisions for mutual defense with a clause similar to NATO’s Article 5, which commits all members to defend any member that is attacked. Despite the clause’s inclusion in the Mecca Agreement, none of the members came to Saudi Arabia’s defense when it was attacked by the Houthis. “There’s a gap between rhetoric and reality. And that’s a tradition in Arab and Middle Eastern Islamic political thought.” However, the Mecca Agreement does provide “a snapshot of the strategic environment, the strategic assumptions, the strategic stature of players, and the strategic threats that players face.”
Each of the countries that have signed the agreement has been threatened to varying degrees by Iran, but the threat each faces today is from India. India and Pakistan have fought four major wars since gaining independence in 1947, but Turkey’s and India’s history of animus toward each other is more recent, going back a decade when Turkish intelligence operatives were arrested in India for attempting to incite a civil war there by fomenting unrest among India’s 200 million Muslims.
The agreement’s anti-India element also challenges the emerging “quadripartite strategic relationship” of the West Asian Quad comprising India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the U.S. Launched following the Abraham Accords in 2021, the Quad has evolved with growing Israeli-Indian rapprochement. The Mecca Agreement splits Saudi Arabia from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of India’s main allies. Prior to the signing of the Mecca Agreement, Israel, Greece, and India had signed defense contracts, with India committed to providing missiles to Greece. Due to the region’s turmoil from the Iran conflict, the UAE acquired Israel’s Iron Dome missiles for its defense and worked with the Israelis. The Mecca Agreement is Turkey’s effort to split this emerging strategic alliance.
Despite the threat to Saudi Arabia from the Houthis, it is competing with the UAE to be a lead strategic player in the region. This dynamic played out in 2025 when, in order to protect the Bab el-Mandeb straits, the UAE’s allies in South Yemen were set to attack the Houthis. South Yemen was about to enter the orbit of the UAE, Israel, India, Greece, and Somaliland, but the Saudis sabotaged that alliance by threatening the UAE with invasion if the latter did not abandon its South Yemen ally. The Saudis, now exposed to Houthi attack, turned for protection to Turkey, whose assets are with Yemen’s Islamist forces. Although these forces are aligned with Saudi’s enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis prefer this arrangement rather than ceding prominence to the UAE.
While the Saudis enter into “some quasi-alignment” with Turkey, “what it really represents is Saudi Arabia surrendering.” The Saudis have lost confidence in “the American protective umbrella” and calculate that it is far better to “make peace with their enemy,” Turkey, because in the Saudi calculus, Iran is even more dangerous. The Saudis see Iran surviving the current war with the U.S. and fear the regime’s vengeance.
In all of these anti-India machinations, the hidden actor is China. “There is a strategic shift in the region” in that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are beginning to align strategically with China, viewing Beijing as the power capable of reining in Tehran. China and Turkey are also aligned in an effort to “subordinate North Africa to Turkish strategic design,” given that Turkey is “the western end of [China’s] Belt and Road” initiative. Africa’s Great Lakes region, “essentially the goldmine of the world” with critical raw materials and rare earth minerals, would be strategically secured for China if Turkey dominates North Africa.
Egypt has not joined the emergent alliance.Although Turkey assumed Egyptian president al-Sisi would cut a deal to survive by joining the Mecca Agreement, Saudi Arabia is at odds with Egypt and did not want them in the alliance.
Instead of viewing the UAE as a rival, Saudi Arabia should align with the UAE to weather the Houthi threat. Saudi Arabia’s future does not lie with Turkey and the “neo-Ottoman, neo-Umayyad, Sunni convulsive network anchored to the north.” Riyadh has a pattern of “strategic fumbling” in that it prioritizes short-term strategic interests ahead of longer-term strategic planning and interests. One of its major strategic blunders was trying to “externalize their internal threats” by striking a deal with radical sheikhs in the 1960s and 70s and ceding its education system to them. That ultimately led to the rise of al-Qaeda, 9-11, and the radicalization of Pakistan and other countries.
Despite Iran’s threat to the region, Turkey has been trying to sabotage U.S. and Israeli efforts to topple the Iranian regime. Although Erdoğan does not want the regime to fall, he prefers a weakened Iran that can no longer be a regional player so that Turkey can fill the void. Turkey is also angling to insert itself into Lebanon and dissuade Beirut from destroying Hezbollah and making peace with Israel. Instead, Erdoğan has offered Lebanon protection from Israel by replacing United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) personnel with Turkish troops at Israel’s northern border.
Turkey employs a similar dynamic in Syria by positioning Ankara’s forces, air bases, and troops in southwest Syria close to Israel’s border. “Turkey is the tip of the spear of a Sunni challenge to Western civilization.” According to radical Muslim fundamentalist lore, Islam went into decline after the fall of Umayyad rule in Damascus. However, if Damascus again “falls to pure Islam, it is a sign of Allah’s favor that you are finally back on the path of true Islam, and you resume the global conquest.”
Erdoğan, who has already destabilized the Horn of Africa, is making efforts to destabilize Jordan and wants to undo Somaliland’s separation from Somalia. In addition, he is hungrily eyeing Egypt. Sunni Islamists interpret Syria’s fall to Islamists, “backed up by a neo-Ottoman” such as Erdoğan,” as a sign to advance their global aspirations. Although Islamist Sunnis informed by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi Sunnis may differ in their tactics, they are somewhat in alignment in this respect. The subject minorities living under Islamist rule as second-class “dhimmis,” such as the Druze, Christians, and Alawites in Lebanon and Syria, are seeing Sunni accommodation ending. In their panic, they are turning to Israel for protection.
“So what you see here is a very dangerous evolution for Israel, where they really are beginning to enter the new strategic threat, and the old one of Iran lingers and stays.” The stakes for securing victory against the Iranian threat are an urgent one for Israel because the potential for turning Tehran into a strategic ally in the region rests on it. Israel should aggressively pursue a strategy in the Levant of saving targeted minorities and adding that strategy to the UAE’s stand against the Muslim Brotherhood in order to strengthen the quadripartite alliance. Should the Iranian regime collapse, Israel emerges as the protector of moderates, including those Muslims who do not ascribe to the restoration of a Sunni caliphate.
The formation of the West Asian Quad and its development of the India-Middle East-Economic Corridor (IMEC) represents a strategic shift to an alliance intended to build a “southern corridor that attaches Asia to Europe, and isolates, lo and behold, Russia and China from the Middle East.” The Quad’s proposed play to have Turkey join its alliance is upended now that Turkey has signed the Mecca Agreement.
The “grand strategic connections” of all the players reveal “two visions of the Middle East going forward. One is anchored more to the West, which is the southern one, and the other one is ultimately anchored to China.” Turkey is also increasing tensions with Greece, a major strategic player in the Aegean. To counter the Turkish challenge, states such as Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Montenegro should consider a Balkan defense pact and join a unified structure with Greece, Israel, and the UAE. The structure of a Balkan defense would also align with India and even Japan.
Unfortunately, Europe sees Turkey “as a vital asset” for its own narrow purposes. Europe is worried over America’s dampened enthusiasm to be part of NATO and unwillingness to provide for its defense. Moreover, Europe sees Turkey as an arsenal to pin Russia down on its southeast flank. However, Europe is making the same mistake as Saudi Arabia by “taking short-term strategic objectives and trading it in for a long-term strategic catastrophe.” Furthermore, NATO is becoming “paralyzed” and does not have a structure to expel Turkey from the organization. “NATO is beginning to acquire a strategic dimension that is both schizophrenic and, quite frankly, on some levels not really a Western-only anchored organization.”
