Kuwait is negotiating an expanded defence agreement with Pakistan in exchange for energy cooperation and investment with the South Asian country, according to a Reuters report.
A Pakistani official told Reuters that Kuwait wanted Islamabad to deploy “thousands of Pakistani troops on the ground, fighter jets, drones, an air defence system, and other defence-related facilities”.
The talks, while at an early stage, underscore how the regional security landscape is being upended by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Oil-rich Kuwait has endured some of the most intense Iranian strikes in retaliation for the war. On Friday, Kuwait said a power and desalination plant had been seriously damaged by Iranian strikes.
Kuwait’s outreach to Pakistan is notable because the Gulf state is home to around 14,000 US troops, more than any other country in the Middle East. The US also has two large bases there – Camp Arifjan and Ali al-Salem Air Base.
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Pakistan is a US security partner and enjoys particularly close ties with the Trump administration. It also has cordial ties with Iran, which has allowed it to carve out a key mediator role.
The ceasefire that Pakistan and Qatar helped broker between Washington and Tehran is under serious pressure amid an escalation in fighting.
But the talks with Kuwait reveal how Islamabad is becoming an alternative, or supplementary power, to the US in the Gulf. In September 2025, Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defence agreement with the Muslim world’s only nuclear-armed state.
Kuwait’s vulnerability
During the height of Iran’s strikes on Gulf states, some Saudi commentators raised the defence pact with Pakistan, saying it places them under the latter’s nuclear umbrella. A US official told MEE at the time that Islamabad was wary of some of this language and discussed it with Saudi Arabia.
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Pakistan has leaned on its cordial ties to Iran to lobby against strikes on the kingdom, including from Iran’s allies in Yemen, the Houthis.
Reuters reported in May that Pakistan also deployed 8,000 troops, a fighter jet squadron and a Chinese air defence system to the kingdom.
Pakistan and Kuwait signed a security agreement in 2023 that outlined mutual training and exercises, but expanding the agreement to include a mutual defence clause, similar to the Saudi deal, would likely carry greater risk for Islamabad.
Saudi Arabia is the Arab world’s largest economy and home to the two holiest cities in Islam, Mecca and Medina. It has much more leverage over Iran than Kuwait, a country of just five million people.
The US military only entrenched itself in Kuwait in the 1990s, after Saddam Hussein’s invasion.
During the Ottoman era, Kuwait was part of a province that included Basra, Iraq.
Kuwait’s geography in the Gulf has made it especially vulnerable to missile and drone attacks from both Iran and Iraqi militias during the war.
