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A person familiar with Riyadh’s thinking said Saudi Arabia did not want regime change in Iran, but a weakened republic was in the kingdom’s interests. “There is a cost to what’s happening, but to what extent do you want to say: ‘Let’s not stop now. Just give it another push,'” the person said. “You don’t want to end up in no man’s land.”
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Though Gulf states had worked to prevent a war in the first place, Maksad said some now wanted Trump to “finish the job” — even if “what that means is a whole different question.”
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“Some are wary about chaos,” he said. “But what it does mean for all is to significantly degrade Iran’s ability to fire missiles and drones at them, so at a minimum diminish Iran’s capacity further.” A Saudi official denied to Al Arabiya a report that Prince Mohammed has pushed Trump to keep hitting Iran.
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A concern if the conflict does not end is that continued fighting could lead to Iranian-backed Houthis, who fired hundreds of drones and missiles at the kingdom after it intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015, joining the conflict. A fragile truce between Riyadh and the Houthis has held since 2022.
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Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been wary about the threat Iran posed to the region since the 1979 Islamic revolution, viewing it as a malign force across the Middle East. But Riyadh restored diplomatic relations with Iran in a Chinese-brokered deal in 2023 to de-escalate tensions after a seven-year hiatus.
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The pair kept up regular channels of communication — the crown prince’s brother, defence minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, met then-supreme leader Khamenei in Tehran last year — during two years of regional conflict triggered by Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel.
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As tensions between the U.S. and Iran rose in recent months, Prince Mohammed sought to keep the kingdom out of any conflict, telling Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in January that Riyadh would not allow its airspace or territory to be used for military action.
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It was to little avail, as the Islamic republic, fighting what it considers an existential battle, attacked Gulf states in a strategy designed to raise the cost to the U.S. and its allies.
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“Prince Mohammed was hoping against hope that Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be attacked,” Haykel said. “The Iranians also signalled to him that, ‘If we are existentially threatened it’s going to be a scorched-earth policy, we’re going to burn the whole region down to make the Americans pay a very heavy price.’ And that’s exactly what they are doing.”
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Haykel added that Riyadh was engaging nuclear-armed Pakistan, with which it signed a mutual defence pact in September, and China, the main buyer of Saudi and Iranian oil, to pressure Tehran to de-escalate with the kingdom.
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Pakistan’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar this month warned his Iranian counterpart not to attack Saudi Arabia, citing the defence pact with Riyadh. Dar credited this with helping to keep “missile or drone attacks to a minimum”, but daily strikes have continued.
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Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base in al-Kharj, which hosts American forces, has been a regular target of Iranian fire, with one U.S. soldier killed. Two foreign workers have also been killed in attacks.
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The attacks have led to speculation about whether Riyadh could ultimately open its airspace to the U.S. offensive operations, or even join the conflict if there is a major attack on its oil facilities — like when a missile and drone assault blamed on Iran temporarily knocked out half the kingdom’s crude output in 2019.
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There was still communication between Riyadh and Tehran, but through ambassadors rather than a higher level, a person familiar with the matter said. “The illusion has been eliminated that a good working relationship with Iran could be developed,” the person said.
English (US)