What IOS-05 proposes
Research purpose. IOS-05 develops a common warning and assessment method that allows the three founders to compare nationally owned findings, express confidence and uncertainty consistently, preserve material dissent and move decision-relevant warning to the appropriate political and military channel without creating a supranational intelligence service.
Joint warning does not require pooled raw intelligence. Nationally owned findings can be released at controlled levels and combined into a common decision picture while sources and methods remain under national authority.
Warning should distinguish seriousness, attribution confidence and decision urgency. Protective assessment can accelerate even when responsibility remains uncertain, provided the uncertainty travels with the judgement.
Explicit dissent strengthens the common record. Full convergence, qualified convergence and material national divergence should remain visible when they change the decision faced by the founders.
Boundary of the proposal. Public records confirm intelligence cooperation as an immediate field of work, but no public trilateral intelligence-sharing protocol, common warning threshold, pooled repository or mandatory release rule has been identified. The Warning Horizon, convergence model, release gradient, joint record and access rules remain Makkah Alliance analytical proposals.
The 25 September meeting of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement military chiefs placed intelligence cooperation alongside military coordination and capability integration as an immediate field of work. The chiefs had reviewed the security situation and threats facing Saudi Arabia, while the foreign ministers had already discussed an urgent military meeting to examine assistance under the Agreement and were reviewing the emerging General Secretariat, committees and working groups.34 The institutional requirement is therefore no longer confined to establishing channels of contact. The three founding states need a disciplined method for deciding what constitutes warning, what can be shared, how uncertainty is expressed and how different national assessments are carried into a common decision process.
A trilateral warning system does not require the founders to pool raw intelligence or surrender source control. The more realistic objective is a common decision picture built from nationally owned findings that can be released at different levels of detail, corroborated across separate channels and accompanied by explicit confidence, information gaps and national caveats. This approach also fits the broader public character of the Agreement, which combines collective deterrence with regional de-escalation and political consultation rather than treating every security indicator as an automatic trigger for military action.12
The strongest common warning arrangement would protect national intelligence ownership while standardising the form in which decision-relevant findings are exchanged.
National agencies can retain raw holdings, collection methods and unilateral judgements. The joint requirement is narrower: common terminology for warning status, a releasable assessment format, a method for recording confidence and dissent, and an agreed path for accelerating review when indicators move closer to a threat against a founding state.
The institutional requirement is a common assessment method rather than a common intelligence service.
The founders enter the Makkah Alliance with separate intelligence organisations, national legal authorities and different security priorities. The published Agreement does not establish a supranational intelligence body. The 25 September military record establishes a mandate to develop intelligence cooperation, which can begin with common outputs and shared warning standards while national collection systems remain intact.4
Collection priorities, raw holdings and sensitive accesses remain under each founder's authority.
A founder can retain a different judgement when evidence or interpretation diverges.
Sharing can occur through extracted findings rather than unrestricted access to underlying material.
A common warning assessment informs consultation but does not itself release forces or capabilities.
The same decision question is put to all three national systems.
Agreement across separate sources matters more when dependence on one reporting stream is avoided.
The joint product shows what remains uncertain and what evidence would alter the assessment.
Successive judgements can be compared without requiring the Secretariat to hold every underlying source.
The Makkah Alliance Warning Horizon.
The Makkah Alliance Warning Horizon separates the seriousness of an observed development from the decision required by the Alliance. The four concentric states are analytical thresholds rather than treaty language. They are intended to indicate when a security issue can remain under routine observation, when a common assessment becomes necessary, when senior consultation should be prepared and when immediate joint attention is warranted.
Air and missile warning
Indicators affecting the air and missile threat picture require rapid corroboration because warning time can be short and the cost of late recognition can be high. The common assessment should separate verified attack indicators from uncertain attribution and from broader assumptions about an adversary's intent.
Joint assessment should converge where evidence permits and preserve divergence where it does not.
The Makkah Alliance Assessment Convergence model treats three national assessments as parallel inputs rather than votes. A common judgement is produced when releasable findings support it. When evidence remains divided, the joint product records the common factual baseline and preserves the national caveat instead of forcing a lowest-common-denominator conclusion.
Corroborated finding
Independent national findings support the same core judgement. The common product can carry the shared conclusion while retaining source descriptions, confidence and any non-material national qualification.
Information can become more useful collectively without exposing the underlying source.
The Makkah Alliance Information Release Gradient separates raw national holdings from the increasingly shareable products derived from them. The model allows a founder to contribute to a common warning judgement even where the source, collection method, technical parameters or wider national file cannot be released.
National custody
Raw reporting, technical collection, source identities, collection methods and national working files remain under the authority of the originating state unless separately approved for release.
The joint product should be short enough for decision-making and detailed enough to expose uncertainty.
A common warning product becomes more reliable when it distinguishes evidence from judgement, probability from confidence and consensus from national qualification. Comparative intelligence standards, including ODNI analytic standards, place similar emphasis on source credibility, explicit uncertainty, alternatives and meaningful differences in judgement; NATO's JISR model likewise recognises that national sources and methods remain nationally controlled even while relevant information is shared for a common picture.78
Time, location, affected founder, strategic object and the most concise factual description that all three states can support.
Releasable national findings, corroborating indicators, source-quality descriptors and material gaps without disclosing protected sources unnecessarily.
Confirmed, assessed or unresolved attribution should remain distinct from the separate question of what defensive action is immediately required.
The common judgement should state probability and confidence separately and identify indicators that would materially change the view.
A founder's material dissent, stronger warning or reservation remains visible rather than being diluted into neutral language.
The assessment identifies the relevant consultation question, warning status and the next review point without substituting for sovereign policy decisions.
Warning thresholds should be tied to decision questions rather than dramatic language.
The same incident can carry different significance depending on persistence, attribution confidence, proximity to a founding state's territory, effect on critical functions and evidence of further intent. The threshold below concerns the urgency of common assessment. It is separate from the Collective-Defence Response Ladder, which addresses the form of political or military response after the threat has been assessed.
| Domain | Routine | Developing | Elevated | Immediate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct territorial threat | Routine No verified hostile action against a founder; monitoring remains national. | Credible indicators of preparation, probing or proxy activity with possible relevance to a founder. | Repeated or converging indicators suggest a material threat requiring senior common assessment. | Attack, imminent attack indicators or rapid degradation of territorial security requiring immediate joint attention. |
| Air & missile warning | Routine Normal regional activity without a founder-specific warning requirement. | Changes in launch posture, flight activity or associated indicators require corroboration. | Warning indicators converge on a founder or critical facility, while some uncertainty remains. | Launch, confirmed inbound threat or similarly time-sensitive warning demanding immediate common situational awareness. |
| Maritime security | Routine Commercial and military activity remains within expected conditions. | Threat reporting, interference or route disruption begins affecting shared interests. | Repeated attacks, mining risk, closure pressure or significant disruption affects founder access or critical supply. | Founder vessels, ports, sea approaches or critical navigation face an immediate serious threat. |
| Cyber & communications | Routine Routine hostile activity without material effect on defence or critical services. | Coordinated probing or disruption affects a sensitive sector and warrants cross-checking. | Material degradation, credible strategic targeting or cross-domain indicators increase concern. | Severe disruption threatens defence command, strategic infrastructure or essential state functions. |
| Critical infrastructure | Routine Normal protective monitoring and national resilience activity. | Threat reporting or suspicious activity targets a facility of strategic significance. | Credible hostile intent, repeated incidents or converging indicators raise the prospect of major disruption. | Confirmed attack or imminent threat to infrastructure whose loss would materially affect national defence or essential state functions. |
| Regional military movement | Routine Observed movements remain consistent with established training or posture. | Unusual concentration, readiness change or proxy mobilisation warrants contextual assessment. | Movements, rhetoric and supporting indicators together alter the threat picture for a founder. | Deployment and intent indicators jointly point to a near-term threat or active support to an attack. |
National disagreement should remain visible when it changes the decision.
A three-state assessment will sometimes produce different national judgements because the founders possess different information, relationships, legal authorities and perceptions of acceptable risk. Suppressing that difference can create false certainty. The joint record should distinguish full convergence, qualified convergence and material national divergence.
Preserved dissent
The common product records where agreement ends, which founder holds the different judgement and what information could reconcile the difference.
Differences are minor and do not alter the warning status, attribution or decision question.
The founders support the main judgement but differ on confidence, timing, intent or the weight of one indicator.
The dissent is recorded explicitly, including the alternative judgement and the evidence or assumption driving the difference.
Joint access should follow the product, while custody follows the source.
A common warning function can operate through differentiated access. The originating state retains custody of raw intelligence. The Secretariat and authorised joint bodies receive the level of information necessary for continuity and decision support. Higher-detail access remains subject to national release and need.
| Information product | Originating state | Other founders | General Secretariat | Strategic Political & Defence Committee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raw source / method | Primary custody | Only when separately authorised | Not required for routine continuity | Only where national release is specifically approved |
| Releasable finding | Origin and source-quality description retained | Shared where relevant to common assessment | May record the finding and update history | Available when relevant to the decision under consideration |
| Corroborated assessment | Contributes evidence and caveats | Common analytic access | Maintains the joint record and review history | Principal common assessment input |
| Joint judgement | Retains national position alongside joint language | Common distribution | Permanent institutional record | Direct decision support |
| National caveat | Owns wording and release level | Shared to the extent required to understand the divergence | Records the existence and authorised text of the caveat | Visible when it affects the decision |
Initial implementation can begin with common products and review discipline before deeper technical integration.
The first institutional gains do not depend on building a large pooled intelligence organisation. The more immediate requirement is to make the three national systems understandable to one another at the level of warning, confidence, release and decision support. This can be developed alongside the broader committees and working groups now being prepared under the Agreement.3
Common assessment format
Adopt one concise record for event description, source-quality language, confidence, attribution status, national caveats, decision relevance and next review point.
National release authorities
Identify the officials or institutions authorised to approve releasable findings so that time-sensitive sharing does not depend on improvised crisis permissions.
Warning-domain contacts
Maintain designated national contacts for territorial, air and missile, maritime, cyber and critical-infrastructure warning so that the correct expertise enters the joint assessment quickly.
Dissent and change log
Record how a judgement changed, what evidence caused the change and whether any founder retained a materially different view.
Secure exchange baseline
Agree minimum technical and handling standards for releasable findings, including origin marking, onward-release control, integrity and auditability.
Joint warning exercises
Test the method against representative scenarios so that warning status, release decisions and assessment language are validated before a live crisis compresses decision time.
Sources and published record.
The factual basis of this assessment is drawn from official records of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, subsequent ministerial and military meetings, and documented bilateral security and intelligence cooperation. The warning horizon, convergence model, release gradient, joint assessment format and access rules are Makkah Alliance analytical proposals. Comparative NATO and ODNI material is used only to identify established analytic principles concerning information-sharing, uncertainty and national source protection; it is not presented as an institutional model adopted by the Makkah Alliance.
No public source reviewed for this paper establishes a Makkah Alliance joint intelligence centre, intelligence-sharing protocol, common classification system, common warning thresholds or mandatory release rule. None is presented here as existing policy. Proposed mechanisms are designed to preserve national ownership while making common warning and consultation more reliable.
Method, limits and editorial status
Public-source institutional design based on official Makkah Alliance records, bilateral security precedent and comparative NATO/ODNI material used only for general analytic principles concerning information-sharing, uncertainty and source protection.
Methods & Sources →No public source reviewed for IOS-05 establishes a trilateral intelligence centre, common classification system, common warning thresholds, pooled raw-intelligence repository or mandatory release rule. Private arrangements may exist beyond the public record.
Intelligence cooperation, military coordination and capability integration are part of the published implementation agenda. The Warning Horizon, convergence model, release gradient, joint assessment format, access rules and initial priorities are Makkah Alliance analytical proposals.
Makkah Alliance is an independent, non-governmental research initiative and the institutional author of IOS-05. Faizan Imam retains editorial responsibility as Founder & Publisher. No paper-specific external funding or conflict has been declared in this record.
Funding & Independence →Citation and permanent record
Makkah Alliance. The Makkah Alliance Strategic Warning and Joint Assessment Framework. Institutional Operational Series IOS-05, 29 September 2026. https://makkahalliance.com/articles/makkah-alliance-strategic-warning-joint-assessment.html.
The Makkah Alliance Institutional Operational Series
The six-paper series covers operating method, consultation and response, collective capability, defence-industrial cooperation, strategic warning and future accession. Each paper stands independently while connecting to the same institutional architecture.
A proposed operating doctrine for consultation, sovereign decision-making and collective action.
IOS-02 · RESPONDConsultation and Collective ResponseDecision thresholds, consultation routes, readiness states and collective-response packages.
IOS-03 · BUILDThe Makkah Alliance Capability FrameworkA common method for mapping contributions, interoperability requirements and collective capability gaps.
IOS-04 · PRODUCEDefence-Industrial CooperationJoint requirements, co-development, production and supply resilience across the founding states.
IOS-05 · ANTICIPATEStrategic Warning and Joint AssessmentCommon assessment, warning thresholds and information-sharing while preserving national ownership.
IOS-06 · EXPANDThe Makkah Alliance Accession DoctrineA proposed method for assessing future membership against commitment, capability and institutional readiness.