标签： Asia

As tensions across the Middle East surge to new heights, Saudi Arabia has issued a stark intelligence-backed warning that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is orchestrating coordinated cross-border attacks against the kingdom, carried out jointly by Iraqi armed factions and Yemen’s Houthi movement.

A senior anonymous Saudi official shared details of the intelligence assessment with Reuters Thursday evening, noting that the collaborative threat assessment was compiled by Saudi authorities, U.S. intelligence agencies, and regional partner nations. According to the official, the planned attacks are set to target high-value civilian and economic infrastructure across the kingdom, with critical energy facilities, commercial ports, and major airports listed as the primary potential targets.

Saudi security forces have already detected unusual movements of drone and missile systems consistent with pre-attack preparations, the official confirmed, adding that hostile forces are positioning to launch strikes from two directions: Iraq along the kingdom’s northern border and Yemen to the south. In a firm statement of intent, the official added that Riyadh has completed defensive preparations and is prepared to deploy all necessary measures to repel and respond to any act of aggression against its territory.

This latest warning comes against a backdrop of rapidly escalating regional confrontation tied to the expanding Israeli-U.S. campaign against Iran-aligned groups that launched in late February. Tensions spiked further late last month, on July 29, when joint Saudi-U.S. airstrikes hit positions held by Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq. The strikes targeted command headquarters operated by the Popular Mobilisation Forces, leaving more than 20 fighters dead and at least 30 others injured.

In the wake of the airstrikes, Iraqi aligned factions publicly vowed to carry out retaliatory attacks against Saudi and U.S. targets. However, Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the prominent Iraqi Badr Organisation, has called for a delay in any retaliatory action. In a televised address carried by Iraqi media outlets, Amiri urged fighters to hold off on responses to what he labeled “American-Saudi aggression” and set aside immediate grievances for the sake of Iraq’s national strategic interests.

Beyond the northern threat from Iraqi factions, Saudi Arabia has also faced a sharp uptick in cross-border attacks from Houthi forces based in Yemen. The Houthi movement confirmed it launched an assault on Saudi Arabia’s Najran airport earlier this week on Tuesday, part of its ongoing wider campaign targeting Saudi military positions, civilian infrastructure, and commercial shipping connected to the kingdom.

On Thursday alone, Houthi assaults on Saudi-backed Yemeni government deployments in Yemen’s Marib and Hadramout provinces left at least 17 government soldiers dead, according to Yemen’s internationally recognized government. Multiple independent regional sources have put the confirmed death toll as high as 58. The Houthi movement has also compounded pressure on Saudi Arabia by disrupting the kingdom’s crude oil exports through a de facto blockade of Red Sea shipping lanes, pulling Riyadh deeper into the broad regional confrontation with Iran-aligned groups.

In response to the growing array of threats, regional diplomatic sources familiar with defense planning confirm that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey are set to sign a new trilateral joint defense agreement during a meeting scheduled Friday in Mecca. As of Friday morning, neither the Houthi movement nor the Iranian government has issued an immediate public response to Saudi Arabia’s warning of planned coordinated attacks.

Exclusive reporting from Middle East Eye (MEE) has uncovered a landmark decision by International Criminal Court (ICC) pre-trial judges, who have ordered prosecutors to launch a fully standalone investigation into accusations of systematic gender persecution at the hands of the Taliban. The order splits this inquiry from the court’s decades-old overarching Afghanistan war crimes probe, which previously included allegations against United States nationals.

Court documents acquired by MEE via independent channels confirm that a three-judge panel from Pre-Trial Chamber II issued the formal directive to the ICC Office of the Prosecutor in mid-July 2025. If prosecutors move forward with the order, the investigation into Taliban conduct will be formally separated from the broader Afghanistan inquiry, which has examined alleged war crimes dating back to 2003 involving multiple parties: the former Afghan National Security Forces, U.S. military and CIA personnel, the Taliban, and the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K).

Legal observers note the move is almost certain to fuel speculation that the court is seeking to de-escalate tensions with Washington, signaling a potential end to active pursuit of allegations against U.S. forces and their Afghan former allies. The judicial directive comes just days after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly threatened to “dismantle the ICC, brick by brick” in remarks criticizing the court’s 2020 decision to greenlight the full Afghanistan investigation.

Since February 2025, the U.S. has enforced retaliatory financial and visa sanctions against multiple ICC officials linked to the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations, justifying the measures as a response to efforts to prosecute U.S. nationals or U.S. allies. The first high-profile target was Karim Khan, the ICC’s former chief prosecutor, who was controversially removed from office by ICC member states last month following an 18-month misconduct investigation. Eight additional ICC judges have also been sanctioned, including three members of the 2020 Appeals Chamber that authorized the full Afghanistan investigation: Kimberly Prost, Solomy Bossa, and Luz Ibanez.

These U.S. sanctions were imposed even after Karim Khan’s 2021 decision to deprioritize the segment of the Afghanistan probe focused on U.S. military and CIA personnel, as well as forces of the former Afghan government, in order to refocus investigative resources on the Taliban and IS-K. A year ago, the ICC issued high-profile arrest warrants for Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and the group’s Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, charging both with the crime against humanity of gender persecution against Afghan women and girls. Those warrant applications were drafted by a legal team led by Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan, who oversees the overall Afghanistan investigation, and Professor Lisa Davis, the court’s Special Adviser on Gender Crimes and the author of the prosecutor’s office policy on gender-based violence. Both officials have faced U.S. pressure: Nazhat Shameem Khan is among the sanctioned ICC leaders, while Davis successfully won a court case in New York to block potential punitive action from the U.S. administration.

MEE previously reported in December 2024 that diplomats attending the ICC’s annual Assembly of States Parties meeting in The Hague revealed the Trump administration had pressured the court to abandon both the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations as a precondition for lifting U.S. sanctions. The U.S. also demanded ICC member states amend the court’s founding document, the Rome Statute, to block prosecution of nationals from non-member states including the U.S. and Israel. In a rebuke of these demands, the assembly issued a public declaration rejecting calls to amend the Rome Statute, resisting U.S. pressure without explicitly naming the country in the final text.

The ICC’s involvement in the Afghanistan situation traces back to November 2017, when then-Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda first requested authorization to investigate alleged crimes committed after 2003 across all involved parties. The request was initially rejected by a differently composed pre-trial chamber in 2019, but the Appeals Chamber overturned that ruling in March 2020 and authorized the full investigation to move forward. Just months later, Bensouda was sanctioned by the U.S. government for her efforts to bring Americans under the court’s jurisdiction.

The probe was suspended later in 2020 following a deferral request from the then-sitting Afghan government, and only resumed in late 2022, with that decision upheld on appeal in April 2023. In November 2024, six ICC member states—Chile, Costa Rica, Spain, France, Luxembourg, and Mexico—submitted a joint referral detailing allegations of widespread crimes against women and girls committed after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in August 2021, asking prosecutors to incorporate these claims into the existing Afghanistan investigation. Weeks later, in January 2025, then-Prosecutor Karim Khan applied for arrest warrants, arguing the gender persecution allegations already fell within the scope of the 2020 investigative authorization. The warrants for Akhundzada and Haqqani were issued shortly after.

In the latest judgment obtained by MEE, Pre-Trial Chamber II found that the Taliban’s post-2021 conduct is “materially different” from the armed conflict-related violence that formed the core of the original 2020 conflict-linked investigation. The panel, led by presiding judge Rosario Salvatore Aitala alongside members Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez and Haykel Ben Mahfoudh, directed prosecutors that if they determine the legal threshold for an investigation is still met, they must open a fully separate probe rooted in the 2024 state referral, and formally notify the ICC Presidency of the referral—a step that had not yet been taken as of the court’s order.

“The Referral concerns allegations of gender and political persecution through the adoption, implementation and enforcement of discriminatory decrees, policies and restrictions made possible by the Taliban’s exercise of de facto governmental authority, rather than conduct allegedly committed by the Taliban as an insurgent armed group during the armed conflict,” the judges wrote in their ruling. They echoed a prior recognition from the prosecution that after seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban’s actions did not center on armed attacks against civilian populations, but instead on imposing “discriminatory rules and prohibitions on the population directly” and punishing people who “did not conform” to the group’s policies.

“The allegations in the Referral therefore arise in a materially different factual and institutional context, involve distinct alleged modes of commission, do not appear to be related to any armed conflict, and concern conduct occurring after the Taliban’s assumption of governmental de facto authority,” the ruling continued. “In light of the above, the Chamber considers that the conduct identified in the Referral constitutes a sufficiently distinct subset of alleged events that, in the interests of the proper administration of justice and the orderly management of the Court’s proceedings, warrants a separate investigation.”

The judges also drew attention to the fact that the original overarching Afghanistan investigation, which nominally covers alleged crimes by all parties, has remained dormant for years. They directed prosecutors to a newly implemented court procedure that allows for formal closure of inactive situation records. In a footnote, the chamber noted: “Considering that more than three years have elapsed since the Chamber authorised the resumption of the investigation into the Situation in Afghanistan and that no proceedings are presently pending in relation to the conduct covered by that authorisation, the Chamber draws the Prosecution’s attention to the recently implemented regulation 66 ter of the Regulations of the Court, which allows the Prosecution to request the closure of a situation record when it does not anticipate any further investigatory or prosecutorial activities in relation thereto.”

As of the publication of MEE’s reporting, the Office of the Prosecutor has not yet announced a decision on either closing the original Afghanistan investigation or opening the new standalone probe into Taliban gender persecution. When contacted by MEE for comment, a court spokesperson stated the office “does not comment on investigations.”

An anonymous senior source based in Turkey’s capital Ankara has confirmed to independent outlet Middle East Eye that three major Muslim-majority nations — Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan — are scheduled to sign a historic joint defence agreement on Friday.

Negotiations over the framework have been underway for more than a year, and the final deal comes at a moment of cascading crisis across the Middle East, sparked by recent joint Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iranian territory. The signing ceremony will be hosted in Mecca, one of the most sacred sites in Islam, with the heads of state of all three countries in attendance.

One senior Ankara-based insider described the pact as a development that will reshape regional geopolitics. “If successfully implemented, the deal will enhance the stability and security of people living in this part of the world,” the source stated.

According to insider accounts, the agreement will cover all domains of defence collaboration between the three nations. Crucially, officials have emphasized that the new trilateral framework will not supersede or weaken any existing bilateral or multilateral alliance commitments that each country currently holds.

Officials have declined to publicly confirm whether the text includes a binding mutual defence clause, which would codify that an armed attack on one signatory counts as an attack on all three. A second anonymous source noted that such a clause is likely to be included, but added that final negotiations over the agreement’s text are still ongoing, so no details can be formally confirmed.

In the lead-up to the signing, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will depart for Saudi Arabia early Friday, where he will be received by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif already arrived in the Saudi port city of Jeddah, a short distance from Mecca, on Thursday to prepare for the ceremony.

A completed pact would unite three of the most strategically significant powers in the broader Middle East and South Asia, each bringing unique geostrategic strengths to the alliance. Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, holds the distinction of being the only Arab nation with a seat in the G20, and it hosts Islam’s two holiest cities: Mecca and Medina. Pakistan stands as the only nuclear-armed state in the global Muslim community, while Turkey, which bridges Europe and Asia, boasts the second-largest standing military within the NATO alliance. Both Pakistan and Turkey have also rapidly grown into major independent weapons manufacturers and defence exporters in recent years.

Historically, Pakistan has maintained warm, stable relations with both Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but ties between Riyadh and Ankara have long been strained by geopolitical disagreements. During the 2011 Arab Spring, Erdogan publicly supported popular pro-democracy uprisings that Saudi Arabia’s leadership viewed as an existential threat to its monarchical governance model. A decade ago, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates backed opposing forces to Turkey in Libya’s civil war, and Riyadh supported current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi after his 2013 coup — a move that drew fierce condemnation from Erdogan at the time.

However, regional alliance dynamics have shifted dramatically in recent years, driven by shared alarm over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which the United Nations, leading human rights organizations, and dozens of historians have formally recognized as a genocide, as well as escalating Israeli attacks on Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Erdogan and el-Sisi have since moved to repair bilateral ties over these shared concerns, and Saudi Arabia and Turkey began a gradual process of normalizing relations starting in 2021, laying the groundwork for the new defence pact.

Middle East Eye, the outlet that first reported this development, provides independent, on-the-ground coverage of the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions.

Amid a wave of escalating security uncertainties across the Middle East and South Asia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan have formalized a landmark trilateral defense cooperation agreement, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry confirmed in an official statement released Friday. The signing ceremony took place in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, bringing together three of the region’s most influential leaders: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

The core principle of the new pact is designed to build unified collective deterrence against external threats: according to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry’s text, any armed aggression against one of the three signatory nations will be considered an attack on all three members. Beyond this mutual defense commitment, the agreement lays the groundwork for expanding defense collaboration across every relevant domain, bringing together three nations with distinct strategic strengths: oil-rich Saudi Arabia, nuclear-armed Pakistan, and Turkey, which boasts NATO’s second-largest standing military and a fast-expanding domestic defense industry.

According to preliminary reporting from Turkey’s Haberturk television and other local Turkish media outlets, the pact is expected to open the door to deeper practical cooperation, including joint military training exercises, cross-border defense technology transfers, and real-time intelligence sharing between the three states.

The agreement marks a significant step in Saudi Arabia’s ongoing push to diversify its network of defense partnerships, a shift that comes after the kingdom’s critical energy infrastructure and oil facilities faced repeated targeted attacks amid escalating regional confrontation linked to tensions with Iran. It also builds on a separate bilateral mutual defense pact Islamabad and Riyadh signed just months earlier in September, which already established the principle that an attack on one constitutes an attack on both.

For Turkey, the new trilateral alliance comes at a moment of sharp diplomatic friction with Israel over the ongoing conflict in Gaza, alongside widening instability across the broader Middle East, including active conflicts in Iran and Lebanon.

Sharif arrived in Saudi Arabia on Thursday for a three-day official visit, accompanied by a high-level delegation that included Pakistan’s Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, signaling the military’s strong backing for the new partnership. Beyond the defense pact, regional officials noted that the three leaders used the summit to discuss strategies to de-escalate ongoing tensions between the United States and Iran, while also exploring opportunities to expand cross-border trade, deepen economic ties, and build out broader security cooperation frameworks across the region.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry emphasized that while Sharif’s visit unfolded against the backdrop of heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf, the engagement was not limited to addressing the immediate crisis. Instead, the long-term goal of the trilateral partnership is to strengthen bilateral ties between all three nations and boost coordinated policy action on shared regional and international challenges.