Over the last few weeks, colleagues, bosses, mentors, and friends from high school have asked me some version of the question “What’s up with Mohammed bin Salman?” On Nov. 11 at a summit of Islamic nations in Riyadh, the Saudi crown prince called on the international community (translation: the United States) to compel Israel to “respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not to violate its lands.” At the same gathering, he described what the Israel Defense Forces had wrought in the Gaza Strip as a “collective genocide.”
This rhetoric runs against everything that most folks in Washington have come to believe about Mohammed bin Salman, thus prompting the “What’s up with him?” questions. And this time at least, the Washington foreign-policy community is not imagining things.
Over the last few weeks, colleagues, bosses, mentors, and friends from high school have asked me some version of the question “What’s up with Mohammed bin Salman?” On Nov. 11 at a summit of Islamic nations in Riyadh, the Saudi crown prince called on the international community (translation: the United States) to compel Israel to “respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not to violate its lands.” At the same gathering, he described what the Israel Defense Forces had wrought in the Gaza Strip as a “collective genocide.”
This rhetoric runs against everything that most folks in Washington have come to believe about Mohammed bin Salman, thus prompting the “What’s up with him?” questions. And this time at least, the Washington foreign-policy community is not imagining things.
Mohammed bin Salman’s words at the summit do seem to be a qualitative change. After all, the crown prince once asked: “How do you have a dialogue with a regime built on an extremist ideology … which [says] they must control the land of Muslims and spread their Twelver Jaafari sect in the Muslim world?” He was being rhetorically coy, but for those in the know, it was clear he was referring to Iran. To be fair, that was in 2017, a year after mobs had stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, prompting a break in relations between the two countries. Yet, even after the Chinese government brokered a resumption of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March 2023, officials in Riyadh still express skepticism about Tehran’s intentions and remain distrustful of the Iranian leadership.
On Israel, Saudi officials have heretofore signaled that normalization was not a question of if but a matter of when. They said it so often that after a while, no one took much notice; it just became part of Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic messaging. Of course, with the brutal war in Gaza, the price the Saudis were demanding of the Israelis for normalization has steadily increased. Still, throughout the last year, officials in Riyadh nevertheless seem committed to settling with Israel. Although the Israelis have been accused of genocide from the earliest days of the war, Mohammed bin Salman never used that term before the summit on Nov. 11.
So, what is the deal? Are the Saudis “pivoting”? I have three working theories to explain the change in Saudi rhetoric.
First, it is an opening bid in negotiations with President-elect Donald Trump over the long-discussed security pact between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Mohammed bin Salman may have shifted his on Iran—but only cynically. Improving Saudi-Iranian ties, if only rhetorically, at the same time that Trump’s transition officials are vowing to reimpose “maximum pressure” on Iran could be part of a strategy to extract benefits from Team Trump to keep the Saudis on side. It’s almost as if the crown prince is saying, “OK, Mr. President-elect, you fancy yourself a master negotiator. I’ll play. What do you have?”
I was convinced of this theory for a few days. But ultimately, it does not feel right. Trying to manipulate senior U.S. officials by making nice with the Iranian leadership is something Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did in the 2010s, but I don’t remember the Saudis ever following suit. Mohammed bin Salman could be taking a page from Erdogan, but it does not strike me as his style.
Second, it is more compelling to believe that in running to Iran, Mohammed bin Salman is running away from Israel and the possibility of normalization. The brutality of Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip has outraged many in Saudi Arabia. During a recent visit, my colleagues and I were subjected to a fusillade of criticism of the Biden administration over the ongoing carnage in Gaza. The word “shameful” came up in at least one of these fraught conversations. That certainly must be part of Mohammed bin Salman’s thinking. The crown prince is all powerful, but he is not immune from public opinion. Normalization with Israel is hardly worth it for him in the short run, given the depth of the public’s anger at the destruction of Gaza.
The crown prince’s use of the word “genocide” is also a clear warning to the incoming Trump administration, which places great importance on normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia as a follow-up to the Abraham Accords. There is no way Saudi leaders want to be associated with normalization at a time when Israeli settlers have come to believe that Trump will not get in the way of annexation. His appointment of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee—an advocate of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank—to be ambassador to Israel suggests they may not be wrong. It would be deeply embarrassing for the crown prince to go down the path of normalization only for the Israelis—with Trump’s blessing—to extend Israel’s formal sovereignty to even parts of the West Bank. By invoking genocide, he is signaling to the president-elect that under the current circumstances, the Saudis are not prepared to move forward.
Finally, there is the most compelling explanation for Mohammed bin Salman’s apparent pivot: that, after intervening in Yemen’s civil war, laying a blockade on Qatar, forcing a Lebanese prime minister to resign, supporting opponents of the internationally recognized government in Libya, and failing to achieve any of his goals, the crown prince has concluded that bending the region to his will is not within his power. Instead, he has now turned inward, seeking to ensure stability within the kingdom. Leaning toward Iran is one way of keeping the chaos outside Saudi Arabia’s borders.
This shift is of utmost importance to Mohammed bin Salman because he is laying out hundreds of billions of dollars to shape Saudi Arabia’s future. One can question the wisdom of his mega- and giga-projects, including the new city of Neom and the Qiddiya Coast tourism project in Jeddah. But now that he has invested so much in them, it would be unwise for the Saudi leadership not to seek basic economic and political stability to give them a chance of success, even if they have to hold their noses to achieve it. There is no indication that the Saudis suddenly trust the Iranians, but they don’t want to give them any excuses to muck up what the Saudis have going on domestically.
In the not-so-distant past, the Saudis practiced riyalpolitik, basically paying to make sure that regional problems did not envelop the kingdom. There is an echo of this in what Mohammed bin Salman was doing when he called on the world to restrain Israel and made clear that he saw Iran as a member of the family (sans the bags of cash). From where the crown prince sits, this is not a pivot to Iran but rather a pivot to Saudi Arabia.
The post The Real Reason for Saudi Arabia’s Pivot to Iran appeared first on Foreign Policy.
