Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said on Saturday, during a session on regional security at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, that Damascus is considering joining the Mecca alliance, a mutual defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan.

Under the agreement, signed on August 7 in Mecca, an attack on one signatory is treated as an attack on all three, an arrangement similar in principle to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which has 32 member states. Samy Akil, an analyst at Syria Report, told Middle East Eye the talks are at an early stage and that Syria is unlikely to become the pact's fourth member in the near term.