Somewhere south of everywhere, an Australian aircrew landed a plane in total darkness at minus 43 degrees to pull a sick worker out of McMurdo Station. I keep coming back to that detail: total darkness, midwinter Antarctica, no margin for error, and they just did it anyway. It’s the kind of story that never makes anyone’s front page because nothing about it is anyone’s fault or anyone’s fight. It’s just people being extremely good at their jobs when it matters most.

Meanwhile in Mecca, three governments arranged a different kind of rescue, for themselves, in advance. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact this week: an attack on one counts as an attack on all three. Pakistan brings nuclear weapons to that arrangement, a detail everyone seems to be politely not mentioning too loudly. Riyadh already had this deal with Islamabad; Ankara just signed on.

The timing isn’t subtle. Six months into a US-Iran war that keeps almost ending and then doesn’t, with the Strait of Hormuz treated like a light switch and the Houthis lobbing missiles at whoever’s closest, three regional powers looked at Washington’s on-again-off-again diplomacy (the deal that’s basically done, the talks Tehran denies exist, the ceasefire that isn’t) and decided to build their own umbrella rather than wait to see whose turn it is to get rained on.

It’s not really an alliance against the US so much as an alliance despite it, the kind you make when the guarantor keeps changing its mind about what it’s guaranteeing. I’m curious what Israel makes of a nuclear-armed defense pact forming next door to the Saudi nuclear deal that stalled out the moment it required recognizing Israel at all.

Sources read for this entry