ISLAMABAD (Dispatches) -- Pakistan’s military spokesperson has rejected suggestions that a new defense agreement with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye could complicate Islamabad’s relations with Tehran, describing the pact as purely defensive and complementary to Pakistan’s existing international relationships .
Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations, told Al Arabiya English that the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement formalizes decades-old strategic relationships and is not directed against any particular country.
Asked whether the new arrangement could complicate Pakistan’s relations with Iran, Chaudhry rejected the suggestion outright. “I don’t think, not at all,” he said, describing the agreement as the product of longstanding ties between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye.
“These relationships that Pakistan has with both these countries are special,” Chaudhry said. 
“They are based on people-to-people relationship. There is an emotional connection, there is a cultural connection, there is a government-to-government, a military connection which spans over decades.” 
He described the pact as “a formalization of these strategic relationship in a peculiar environment,” adding that it is based on “collective deterrence” with “no offensive, no interference, no aggressive element”.
The comments come as Pakistan seeks to maintain its longstanding relationship with Iran while strengthening defense cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye. 
Pakistan’s policy of “multi-alignment and multi-engagement” enables it to act as an “objective arbiter of peace,” Chaudhry said.
“Pakistan is a big proponent of peace in the region,” he said, adding that Islamabad’s longstanding relationship with the United States, together with its “brotherly, neighborly and very strategic relations with Iran,” has helped it engage with both sides.
“We don’t have any personal or own objective in this dispute,” Chaudhry said. “The only objective Pakistan is pursuing is that the conflict doesn’t spiral horizontally as well as vertically and the differences and issues are resolved” through negotiations rather than military means.
Chaudhry said Pakistan’s relationships with individual countries are not pursued at the expense of others. “Our relationship with the United States is independent and it is not at the cost of Iran. It is not at the cost of China. It is not at the cost of any other country,” he said.