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European Energy Markets
22JUN

Sharif, Munir and Dar land in Jeddah

3 min read
13:56UTC

Pakistan's prime minister, army chief and foreign minister arrived in Jeddah on 6 August, with Erdogan following a day later, ahead of a trilateral defence text nobody outside the room has read.

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Key takeaway

Three delegations, one city, and a defence text nobody outside the room has read.

Pakistan's prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and foreign minister Ishaq Dar landed in Jeddah on Thursday 6 August, received by Prince Saud bin Mishaal, deputy governor of the Makkah region. The arrival account comes from the SPA (Saudi Press Agency), The Kingdom's state wire, relayed by Saudi Gazette, and Pakistan's Prime Minister's Office issued a statement saying the same⁠1⁠2. Sharif and Munir performed Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage undertaken outside the Hajj season, alongside defence minister Khawaja Asif and special assistant Tariq Fatemi. Recep Tayyip Erdogan travelled to the city on Friday 7 August to join Sharif and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman⁠3.

A trilateral Pakistan, Turkiye and Saudi defence instrument is expected to be signed on Saturday 8 August, covering joint military exercises, technology transfer, defence-industrial production and intelligence sharing⁠4. No signature has been reported. As of Friday the verifiable position amounts to three delegations in one city and a text nobody outside them has seen.

Nothing about the underlying obligation began this week, and the arrivals should not be read as an alignment forming from nothing. Ishaq Dar told Pakistan's parliament on Saturday 7 March that Islamabad had reminded Tehran of the Saudi-Pakistan mutual defence pact, under which an attack on one signatory counts as an attack on both. Pakistan Air Force F-16s were reinforcing Saudi airspace by mid-April. Dar carried that message in March and stands in the Jeddah delegation now negotiating its expansion.

Two things have changed. Turkiye sat outside the arrangement before, and a mutual defence clause is reportedly being widened into an industrial programme. That second difference outlasts the war. A defence clause binds a signatory during a crisis and lapses into paper once the crisis passes. Joint production lines, transferred technology and standing exercise cycles build capability that survives the emergency which justified it, and they commit procurement budgets for a decade.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Pakistan's prime minister, army chief and foreign minister flew to the Saudi city of Jeddah on 6 August, with Turkey's president due to join them the next day, ahead of a defence agreement the three countries have not yet signed. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia already have a mutual defence pact, and Pakistan sent fighter jets to help defend Saudi airspace earlier in the war. This visit would add Turkey to that relationship for the first time.

What could happen next?
  • Precedent

    A signed trilateral instrument would extend the Saudi-Pakistan defence relationship to include Turkey as a formal party for the first time this war.

Sources:CNN·Saudi Gazette·Euronews
Mentions:Shehbaz Sharif →Asim Munir →Ishaq Dar →Recep Tayyip Erdogan →Mohammed bin Salman →Saudi Arabia →Turkey →Pakistan →Khawaja Asif →Jeddah →Riyadh →Saudi Press Agency →Ankara →Tehran →F-16 →Islamabad →
First Reported In

Update #167 · Riyadh names its next targets; Najran is hit

CNN· 7 Aug 2026
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Causes and effects
Caused by
Pakistani F-16s reinforce Saudi airspace mid-war
The Jeddah delegation deepens the airspace-integration commitment Pakistan supplied in April into a wider trilateral instrument.
Occurred 15 Apr 2026
Read story →
Pakistan invokes Saudi-Iran defence pact
Dar, who told Pakistan's parliament in March that Islamabad had reminded Tehran of the mutual defence pact, is in the Jeddah delegation now negotiating its expansion.
Occurred 7 Mar 2026
Read story →
This Event
Sharif, Munir and Dar land in Jeddah
A mutual defence clause obliges a signatory during a crisis; joint production lines and transferred technology outlast it.
Led to
Le Monde reports a Mecca defence pact
The reported Mecca signing followed the prior Jeddah arrivals of Pakistani and Turkish leaders.
Occurred 6 Aug 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
Cross-border power traders
Cross-border power traders
The France-Germany day-ahead spread flipped from a EUR 17.20 German premium on 1 August to a EUR 4.15 French premium on 3 August, the same day French curtailment peaked. They cannot yet attribute the flip to curtailment alone, since a like-for-like overnight comparison shows French nuclear output rising while wind fell and demand returned on the weekday step.
EDF
EDF
River-cooling limits took 7.6 GW, 12 per cent of its fleet, offline on 3 August, the highest curtailment since the heatwave began, with an easing forecast to 4.3 GW on 4 August and 3 GW after. It manages the cut as a recurring seasonal constraint, expecting it to lift with river temperature, not repair.
Gasunie
Gasunie
TTF, the Dutch hub it operates, drifted to roughly EUR 55 to 58 per MWh across the window, staying inside its recent range through both the German spark reversal and the French curtailment. It reads a flat hub price as evidence that neither event this window carried enough weight to move the fuel leg on its own.
German gas-fired generators
German gas-fired generators
Record German solar of 18,761 MW on 2 August pushed the clean spark spread to minus 18.48 EUR/MWh, a loss-making day, before it returned to plus 16.20 on 3 August. They now price dispatch against post-solar residual load rather than wind alone, since the sign flipped inside 48 hours on unchanged fuel and carbon costs.
European Commission (DG Energy)
European Commission (DG Energy)
Its implementing-measures register logged transposition notices from only Portugal and Slovakia against Wednesday's Article 94 deadline for Directive (EU) 2024/1788, with 25 states silent. It expects the register to fill only gradually, since filing routinely lags legislating and any infringement track against non-notifying states runs on a slower clock than the deadline itself.
Spain's LNG terminal operators
Spain's LNG terminal operators
Spain's 9,145 GWh terminal inventory is the largest single stock in the EU LNG network, an option value that can reroute cargoes wherever the winter strip pays best rather than a cavern gas obligation tied to a fixed date. That flexibility matters more as Germany's cavern shortfall pushes more of the winter security question onto import infrastructure.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.