Pakistan and Kuwait have begun negotiations to broaden their bilateral defence agreement, with Kuwait seeking the stationing of thousands of Pakistani troops, fighter jets, drones and air-defence systems on its soil, according to Pakistani and Middle Eastern officials familiar with the talks. In exchange, Islamabad would receive energy cooperation and investment, including a possible bonded fuel-storage facility that would build on an existing diesel supply deal. The discussions remain preliminary, and a Pakistani security official stated that “we are not and we cannot consider a deployment of combat troops at this stage,” signalling a gap between Kuwait’s wish list and Pakistan’s willingness to replicate the depth of its decades-old defence alliance with Saudi Arabia.

Viewed from Gulf capitals, the outreach to Pakistan forms part of a wider search for security partners that can supplement or offer an alternative to the United States, amid mounting doubts about Washington’s reliability as an ally. A Middle Eastern source familiar with Kuwait’s planning described Pakistan as a “safe bet”: a Sunni Muslim nuclear power with a large, battle-tested military, indigenous fighter-jet production, and longstanding ties to both Riyadh and Washington. This logic has also drawn Bahrain and Jordan into preliminary conversations about weapons and training deals, while Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are drafting a separate trilateral mutual-defence pact.

For Islamabad, the calculus is shaped by acute economic pressures and the risk of being pulled deeper into the US-Iran war. Pakistani officials view defence pacts as a conduit for urgently needed foreign investment and energy-security arrangements, yet they are simultaneously alarmed by the trajectory of the conflict. After the Iran-aligned Houthi movement struck Saudi Arabia this week, nuclear-armed Pakistan conveyed to Tehran that it would treat any attack on the kingdom as an attack on itself, a commitment rooted in the mutual-defence agreement signed with Riyadh last year. That posture, Pakistani diplomats acknowledge, has effectively suspended Islamabad’s earlier role as a mediator between Washington and Tehran, a function it performed alongside Qatar in brokering a short-lived interim deal in June.

Analysts in Sydney caution that Pakistan “has to be cognizant of dangers of over-commitment,” while officials in Islamabad expect the pace of the Kuwait negotiations to quicken only if US-Iran tensions subside. Kuwait, which has come under repeated attack from Iran-aligned forces this year, is simultaneously pursuing defence procurement discussions, though a Middle Eastern source noted it is “not clear this will amount to a defence pact per se.” For now, the dossier remains at an exploratory stage, with no formal timeline for conclusion and the shadow of the regional war hanging over every calculation.