Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, and their host, Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince (pictured). Instead of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the ceremony took place in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Afterwards, the three leaders prayed at the city’s Grand Mosque. One purpose of the deal is to act as a counterweight to Israeli influence. The rapid succession of Israeli military operations in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, the attack that killed Hamas negotiators in Qatar, and a sense that Israel’s appetite for regional dominance is not yet sated, have set off alarms across the Middle East. Such concerns are most acute in Turkey, which some Israeli politicians and officials have described as a threat on a par with Iran. Meeting the threat from Iran itself is another key aim. Though badly hobbled, its regime has proved capable of wreaking havoc across the region when under attack, especially in the Gulf. It has also shown how much leverage it wields by disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. “Using Hormuz against regional countries has become one of the pillars of Iran’s new strategy,” says Murat Yesiltas, the head of SETA, a think-tank close to Mr Erdogan’s government. The three signatories “will not target Iran”, says Mr Yesiltas, “but they want to show collective deterrence.” Iran said it saw no reason to fear the pact. The deal also reflects mounting concerns about American priorities and the credibility of its security guarantees. Turkey, like other NATO members, is worried about the risk of a broader American pullback from both Europe and the Middle East. Saudi confidence in America was shaken after Iran made large holes in the air-defence umbrella that America has helped spread over the Gulf. Israel’s government has not responded publicly to news of the pact, but the announcement was greeted with dismay there. The country already sees Turkey and Pakistan as hostile powers and resents the cosy relations their leaders have fostered with America’s president, Donald Trump. The pact also underscores how remote the prospect of normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia remains. “It will have to wait until there is a new government in Israel,” says an Israeli diplomat, “and even then, it will take time.”
The chances that any of the deal’s signatories would actually intervene on behalf of the others appear slim. Saudi Arabia and Turkey would not come to Pakistan’s defence if war with India broke out; Pakistan or Turkey would not respond in kind to Iranian missile launches against Saudi Arabia. For the time being, says Mr Yesiltas, the pact is less a muscular military alliance than a platform for security and defence co-operation. Saudi Arabia’s deep pockets and procurement needs, Turkey’s defence sector and Pakistan’s military-industrial base make for a potent combination. Turkish defence tech firms in particular are rubbing their hands. Baykar, a Turkish drone-maker, signed a landmark contract with Saudi Arabia in 2023. Pakistan used Turkish drones during its conflict with India last year. But Turkey is hungry for more. Its defence projects, including an indigenous fighter jet known as the KAAN, a new “Steel Dome” air-defence system, and long-range ballistic missiles, are expected to cost tens of billions of dollars. Turkey’s economy, plagued by inflation that continues to hover above 30%, cannot shoulder that cost alone. Saudi defence contracts and investments would go a long way to help fund the plans, says Caglar Kurc, a Turkish analyst. That may be where the Mecca Agreement pays its first dividends. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/08/13/what-to-make-of-a-new- saudi-led-defence-pact
Middle East & Africa | Down, but not out The Muslim Brotherhood is more divided and weaker than ever But it is far from finished in the Middle East Aug 13th 2026 The heat inside Mornaguia prison, on the edge of Tunis, climbed past 50°C this summer. On July 17th Rachid Ghannouchi, the 85-year-old founder of Ennahda, the Tunisian political party inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, passed out in his cell. His story seems destined to end like that of Muhammad Morsi, the Brotherhood figure elected as president of Egypt in 2012, only to die in prison in 2019. Mr Ghannouchi’s fate illustrates the declining influence of his ideological comrades across the Middle East. A decade and a half ago parties associated with the Brotherhood held the presidency of Egypt and a plurality of seats in Tunisia’s parliament. Its triumphal message was pumped out to the Arab
masses by Qatar’s popular Al Jazeera television channel. The group seemed the early winner of the Arab spring that erupted in Tunisia in late 2010 and spread through the Arab world in 2011. But autocracies soon reimposed themselves. In the years that followed, the Brotherhood’s leaders were imprisoned or scattered into exile. The past year has been especially punishing. In November Donald Trump told his administration to designate the group’s various chapters as terrorists. On January 13th it listed the Egyptian and Jordanian branches as “global terrorists” for aiding Hamas, which grew out of the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch; the Lebanese version was officially deemed a “foreign terrorist” organisation. In May, under a new American counter-terrorism strategy, the Brotherhood was included alongside al-Qaeda and Islamic State as a wellspring of modern jihadism. Jordan banned the group completely in April 2025 and has since curbed its political wing, the Islamic Action Front. It is unclear which bit of the fractious Brotherhood America is targeting. There have been two main factions since 2021, when Ibrahim Munir, running the group from exile in London, dissolved its structures in Turkey, as Mahmoud Hussein, the movement’s secretary-general, claimed that Mr Munir had himself been deposed. Each faction now has its own leader, its own Shura council and its own website; each insists it alone is the real thing. Salah Abdel Haq, who took over Mr Munir’s faction after the latter’s death in 2022, has promised to contest the American designation in American courts. But the branch in Istanbul has let it be known that it does not consider its parent organisation qualified to answer for anyone. Even as they face an existential crisis, the two halves cannot speak with a single voice. Mr Hussein of the Turkish branch controls the property, investment companies in Turkey and the cash, whereas Mr Abdel Haq stakes a claim to run the transnational organisation but has little to show for it. Former members have urged both men to drop politics and revert to preaching. In Egypt, the movement’s ancestral heartland, its period in power is being scrubbed from official memory. Muhammad Badie, the movement’s “supreme guide” in Egypt, is in prison. On religious holidays President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issues pardons—but rarely for the Brothers. He has shut
down the businesses that once sustained their welfare programme. Tunisia’s president, Qais Saeed, is emulating Mr Sisi by jailing Mr Ghannouchi. In Gaza Israel has pounded Hamas, which remains a close ideological associate, into the Mediterranean sand. Its territory has been all but destroyed, while Israeli hit squads hunt Hamas’s leaders across the region. Though Hamas clings on, its power has shrivelled. Many Gazans have turned against it. Syria is another site of humiliation. When the Assad regime fell in 2024, it was Sunni jihadists who took Damascus, not the Brotherhood. It had spent the war dithering and found itself outflanked by the men who did the fighting. It is almost absent from Syria’s new parliament. Ahmed Zeidan, an adviser to President Ahmed al-Sharaa with long-standing Brotherhood ties, has suggested that its Syrian branch should fold itself up. Writing for Al Jazeera, Abdulrahman al-Haj, a Syrian expert on Islamist groups, argues that political Islam is no longer so relevant in the new Syria. Perhaps so. But it has long been unwise to write the Brotherhood off. It was dissolved in 1948 and crushed again by Gamel Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s leader, in 1954. Its chief theorist, Sayyid Qutb, was hanged in 1966. The group spent most of the next four decades outlawed, yet its followers still took 88 seats in Egypt’s parliament in 2005 and won the presidency after a democratic election in 2012. “They are just excellent at weathering the storm,” says a Western intelligence official in the region. Repression can officially efface the organisation. But it does not remove the reasons people join it. In Egypt, those reasons are as sharp as ever. The country’s shoddy economy survives on IMF handouts and Gulf deposits. Its young graduates are as grumpily underemployed as they were in 2010. Tunisia, too, is as badly off as it was when it sparked the Arab spring. Israel’s war in Gaza has left Arab governments looking impotent or complicit. With the strip destroyed, the Brotherhood’s founding claim—that the Arab world’s humiliation is spiritual before it is material—still makes sense to many of the region’s aggrieved. The Brotherhood laid its roots with social-welfare programmes and a strong appeal to Arab dignity, both sorely lacking among leaders across the Middle East. When the group turns 100 in
March 2028, expect it to be alive and kicking, however divided its leadership. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/08/11/the-muslim-brotherhood- is-more-divided-and-weaker-than-ever
Sexually transmitted infections are surging in Europe A liberal party is barred in Russia for implicitly opposing the war Europe must do more to guard its airports from Russian drones Might Moldova merge with Romania? Europe’s dry rivers are exposing mammoths and Nazi warships Europe’s true architects of integration
To restrain them, countries must increase testing and reduce stigma Aug 13th 2026 TRACKING sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is not easy. Many who carry them show no symptoms. Testing is patchy. And risky behaviour tends to go unnoticed, since sex (thankfully) is usually performed in private. But public-health authorities do their best, and in recent years they have reported a sharp increase in cases of STIs in Europe. Rates are up dramatically over the past decade (see chart), though they dipped during the pandemic because of a combination of less diligent surveillance and less casual shagging. After 2021 they leapt upwards. In May the European Union’s Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported that in 2024, the most recent year for which it has figures,