Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan moved for the first time to put real troops behind their four-month-old mutual defense pact on October 5-6, after a fresh barrage of Houthi missiles and drones slammed into one of Riyadh's main airports and a Saudi Aramco refinery on the Red Sea coast. An emergency meeting of the three countries in Riyadh ended with a joint statement declaring they would move "immediately to the practical implementation" of their collective-defense commitments, the first real-world activation of the so-called Mecca (Makkah) Defence Pact since it was signed.

Yemen's Houthi movement, through military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, claimed what it called three "qualitative military operations" striking King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, the Aramco refinery at Rabigh, Abha airport, a military facility at Khamis Mushait, and sites in Najran and Jizan, according to Daily Sabah. The three-nation statement condemned what it called "attempted attacks" on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina as well as continuing strikes on Saudi civilian and economic facilities, though it stopped short of formally naming the Houthis as responsible.

Troops Without Numbers

Exactly what the deployment will look like remains deliberately vague. Pakistan's defense minister, Khawaja Asif, said Turkish and Pakistani forces already have a "presence in the theatre" but are not yet in combat.

"WHATEVER ASSISTANCE THEY REQUIRE IS BEING PROVIDED. BUT RIGHT NOW, THE TURKISH AND PAKISTANI ARMIES ARE PLAYING A SUPPORTIVE ROLE."

Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman said the alliance would "activate collective deterrence measures within the framework of the Alliance in response to the attacks," according to The Week. No troop numbers, unit composition or deployment timetable were released.

The pact itself was signed only in August, when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif agreed that an armed attack on any one of the three — pairing NATO's second-largest standing army with the Islamic world's only nuclear-armed state and the Gulf's leading oil power — would be treated as an attack on all three, a dramatic reshaping of Gulf security triggered by the ongoing US-Iran war and repeated disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf News reported. Tuesday's decision marks the pact's first practical test.

The toll from the wider Houthi offensive against Saudi Arabia, which has run alongside the broader war, is already steep: the World Health Organization has put the death count from the latest escalation at more than 959 killed and over 4,200 wounded, Daily Sabah reported, on top of the more than 150,000 killed in Yemen's civil war since 2014. Repeated strikes on Aramco facilities and Saudi airports in recent weeks have already rattled global oil markets and air travel through the kingdom.

Regional capitals are now watching to see whether Ankara and Islamabad move beyond a "supportive role" into direct combat, a step analysts have long warned could widen the war to draw in Iran, Israel and the United States more directly. For now, officials in Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad have given no date for when, or whether, that line gets crossed — only that for the first time since August, the Mecca Pact is no longer just paper.