The primary goal of it is containing Israel, note that the preceding Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement between Saudi Arabia & Pakistan was rushed through just over a week after Israel bombed Qatar. That caused a lot of alarm bells to ring in Saudi Arabia because Qatar has the largest US base in the region (Al Udeid Air Base) and while Israel justified it by saying they were targeting Hamas leadership there, the US were the ones who told Qatar to invite the leadership of Hamas in the first place. (It’s much more comfortable for American & Israeli diplomats to talk with Hamas officials in Doha, Qatar than out of Iran [which has taken previously taken American diplomats hostage] where they were based before.) So Qatar was basically doing as much as it could to back America and had even personally bribed Trump with the massive plane but America still let Qatar be bombed by Israel with very limited repercussions, which makes relying on the US for security look foolish to actors in the region.

Nevertheless, all in this pact (plus others not formally in but still on board with the faction like Egypt and Qatar) still maintain fairly decent relations with the US (and Trump in particular) and are happy to buy American weapons and so on, so to be clear it’s not really angled as a “US out” sort of alliance at all at this point. The inclusion of Turkey makes this very clear since Turkey is having a re-approachment with the US to obtain the F-35 but Israel has been propagandizing against Turkey as “the new Iran” heavily.

Other aims include countering the UAE, India, Greece and Ethiopia who are in an emerging faction with Israel. The UAE sees Islamists as an existential threat and has been backing coups and civil wars to get more secular alternative governments in power whether through outright flipping or fragmenting existing states. Ex. backing authoritarian Haftar’s side in Libya, the military coup in Egypt (though their relations later deteriorated), South Yemen separatists for splitting from Yemen (though Saudi Arabia recently squished them), Somaliland and Puntland in splitting from Somalia, and the Arab supremacist RSF in Sudan. If this all worked then that faction would have held sway over a massive chunk of Africa from Libya down through both chokepoints of the Red Sea and that would have been fantastic leverage over Saudi Arabia with the UAE parked at their only other sea export route. Ethiopia for its part wants access to the ocean for cheaper than Djibouti offers its portsfor and so has been saber rattling against Eritrea and providing support for the UAE in trying to flip Sudan and partition Somalia. (Note Egypt is scared of a powerful Ethiopia capable of throttling the Nile River since almost everyone in Egypt lives on the banks of that river so that led them to flip sides to try to keep Ethiopia from nabbing ports and becoming that powerful.) India of course opposes Pakistan’s efforts as their rival and has been massively expanding gas from the UAE while furthering strategic partnerships with Israel and Ethiopia as well.

Regarding Iran, I think Saudi Arabia would like the pact to be against them as well but I don’t think the other members are as interested in that. Pakistan’s economy is terrible and their only friendly neighbor right now is Iran so they’d prefer Iran be intact and not a chaotic place where their mutually shared separatists can grow strong dancing around the border. Turkey had some friction before in Iran supporting Assad’s Syria but with Assad & Hezb both out of Syria Turkey would prefer to focus on things they have in common like supporting Palestine and the recognized government of Sudan, plus their economy has had some difficulties and there are shared Kurdish militants on the border so again not wanting Iran to get destroyed as that worsens the economy and makes shared separatists stronger. Saudi Arabia on the other hand is in the hot seat because it has been directly targeted by Iran (easy to do as they have few economic links and with no adjacent army there isn’t much Saudi Arabia can do to punish Iran that they aren’t getting way worse from the US) and they have competing proxies in Yemen, the Saudi-supported recognized government with most of the land but about the quarter of the population and Iran-aligned Ansar Allah (aka Houthis) with the bulk of Yemen’s population and a small but strategically important bit of land that can choke travel through the southern end of the Red Sea and provide a launching point for their very capable drones.

With Saudi Arabia and Iran having terrible relations and competing proxies on Saudi Arabia’s doorstep while the others in the pact are invested in keeping things peaceful with Iran and trying to keep the focus on a shared disdain for Israel, I’m curious but hoping not to find out as to whether this pact will actually be enforced if Iran strikes Saudi Arabia again or if kind of nothing in military action comes of it and it looks flaccid like what happened with the SMDA when Saudi Arabia was bombed earlier and Pakistan mostly just kept championing the attempts at ceasefires.