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The surprise visit may have been intended to shore up various aspects of the Saudi-Pakistani defense relationship, perhaps including their suspected arrangement regarding access to nuclear weapons.

On August 28, Saudi deputy crown prince Muhammad bin Salman (aka MbS) made an unexpected three-hour stopover in Islamabad on his way to China and Japan. The Asia trip by King Salman’s favorite son has been heralded as an effort to boost economic ties with two major importers of Saudi oil. MbS, the architect of the “Vision 2030” plan to develop the Saudi economy, will also be representing his country at the G-20 economic summit in Hangzhou, China, on September 4-5. Pakistan is not an obvious fit in this itinerary; India would have been a more logical stop if the discussions were business oriented. So it is legitimate to speculate on other reasons for the visit, and defense issues — some of them potentially worrisome for Washington — are the most likely candidate.

According to the official Saudi Press Agency, the talks between MbS and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also included Pakistan’s defense minister and army chief, with an agenda focusing on “bilateral relations” and “the ways to further develop them in various fields.” Although these “fields” were not specified, MbS — who is also the kingdom’s defense minister — was quoted as saying the visit “underlined the depth of the strategic relationship between the two peoples.”

One aspect of the strategic relationship on which Riyadh has sought greater Pakistani buy-in is the ongoing Gulf intervention in Yemen, and the matter may have come up again given the ongoing stalemate in the kingdom’s proxy conflict with Iran. Islamabad has so far refused to send ground troops there. Pakistani officials were similarly reluctant when Riyadh sought to draft them into a so-called regional “antiterrorism coalition” in recent months.

At the same time, Pakistan has vocally supported the latter initiative, in addition to signing an as-yet-undetailed bilateral military cooperation agreement in January and pledging to take action if the kingdom’s territorial integrity were threatened. In this context, the oft-mentioned but never publicly confirmed nuclear arrangement between the two countries — under which Saudi Arabia might be able to borrow Pakistani nuclear weapons in a time of crisis — may once again have come to the fore during the latest visit.

Along with Libya, Saudi Arabia is ...