If the agreement remains limited to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, it will remain important, but it will not necessarily turn into a complete regional system. Therefore, the next step must be to expand the circle of joining countries, not as a matter of numerical expansion, but rather as a matter of building a strategic bloc that is truly capable of changing the balance of power.
Egypt and Syria stand out here as two additions of different natures, but they are strategically complementary. Egypt represents the largest Arab weight in terms of population, army, location and political ability, and Cairo’s accession will give the agreement an Arab weight that is difficult to overcome, in addition to its location that connects the Gulf to the Levant and North Africa and its supervision of the Suez Canal, one of the most important strategic passages in the world.
As for Syria, its importance stems from its location in the heart of the Levant and from its being a geographical node at which the accounts of Türkiye, Iran, Israel, and the Arab world intersect. Including Damascus into this framework, if the necessary political conditions are met, will not be merely a new expansion in membership, but rather a step towards returning Syria to the state’s regional security system, and gradually extracting it from the logic of open arenas and the struggle for influence. With the joining of Egypt and Syria together, the agreement gains what it lacks: Arab weight from the south and Levantine depth from the north, and it transforms from a tripartite understanding into a project capable of redrawing the region’s balances on broader and more independent foundations.
The participation of Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait also seems to be a logical step in this path, especially with their official welcome of the agreement. Their accession could open the door to the rest of the Gulf states, and gradually transform the agreement from a limited formula to a more expansive Gulf, Arab and Islamic framework.
The real equation is: Can the countries of the region move from a position of reaction to a position of creating balance? The region does not lack more power, but rather it lacks the distribution of power in a way that prevents one party from deciding the fate of others. The value of the third axis will not lie in the number of its armies or the size of its economy alone, but rather in its ability to say to the other two axes: This region is not a strategic vacuum, and its future will not be shaped without its people.
If the “Mecca Agreement” turns into an institutional structure for consultation, coordination, and joint defense, it may fill one of the largest strategic voids in the region: the absence of a deterrence system based on large regional powers that possess both legitimacy and capacity.
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