Francesco Salesio Schiavi
The New Arab / August 5, 2026
From airstrikes to a maritime Red Sea coalition, Saudi Arabia is adapting to a regional war that no longer allows it to remain on the sidelines.
For five months, Saudi Arabia tried to stay out of the Iran war. Even as missiles and drones struck its territory, energy infrastructure, and military facilities, Riyadh avoided direct involvement, keeping channels with Tehran open while urging Washington to prevent a wider conflict.
Over the past month, that posture has grown more active. Saudi Arabia joined US strikes on Iran-backed militias in Iraq after a wave of drone attacks on the kingdom, backed a coalition to protect Red Sea shipping after Houthi forces blockaded the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and, most recently, helped persuade Trump to call off a new round of strikes on Iran in favour of renewed diplomacy over the Strait of Hormuz.
Taken together, these moves show how Saudi Arabia is adapting to a war that no longer allows it to remain a bystander.
Riyadh is using force more openly than at any point since the conflict began, while positioning itself as the Gulf’s most influential advocate for de-escalation – a dual-track approach that has given it unusual leverage over Washington’s next moves.
From covert retaliation to active defence
Saudi Arabia’s caution through the war’s early months reflected a calculation that the Gulf would bear the highest costs of any escalation. Riyadh maintained contacts with Tehran, backed mediation led by Oman, Qatar and Pakistan, and presented itself as a supporter of de-escalation rather than another belligerent.
The restraint was never unconditional. In March, Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan warned that Riyadh reserved the right to take military action, if necessary, after a sharp rise in attacks on the kingdom.
Saudi fighter aircraft then carried out several unacknowledged retaliatory strikes inside Iran, Western, and Iranian officials said, before both sides moved to contain the escalation. The episode set a pattern that recurred through the summer: force used selectively, kept proportional, and paired with a swift return to diplomacy.
The strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq marked another step in Saudi Arabia’s evolving approach. Unlike the covert operations carried out inside Iran in late March, this time Riyadh acted publicly alongside the United States – a message directed as much at Tehran’s regional network as at Iran itself.
“The strikes in Iraq were designed to restore deterrence at source,” Andreas Krieg, a security expert at King’s College London, told The New Arab. “Saudi Arabia was no longer prepared simply to intercept drones after they crossed into its airspace. By striking militia command and launch infrastructure, Riyadh was signalling that Iraqi territory cannot be used as a protected rear base for attacks on Saudi energy facilities.”
“This does represent a real doctrinal shift,” Krieg said. “The clearest formulation is that Saudi Arabia is adopting defensive objectives through increasingly offensive means.”
Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics, reads the shift similarly. Riyadh’s “maximum restraint” policy, he argues, had stopped deterring the actors targeting the kingdom. But he cautions against reading the strikes as a retreat from diplomacy.
“Saudi Arabia’s military actions should not be interpreted as an abandonment of diplomacy or as evidence that Riyadh believes its interests are best advanced through further military escalation,” he told The New Arab.
“Rather, the Kingdom remains committed to promoting regional de-escalation, and its use of force has been deliberately limited and carefully calibrated.”
For Cafiero, diplomacy and military strikes function as “complementary instruments of statecraft,” not alternatives.
Saudi planners, in practice, are expanding the range of tools available to protect the kingdom, with intelligence-led disruption and limited punitive strikes increasingly complementing air defence rather than replacing it – not embracing the kind of expeditionary approach that characterised the early years of the Yemen war.
Saudi officials said the strikes were meant to pressure Baghdad, which had failed to stop Iran-backed groups from using Iraqi territory to attack neighbouring states.
Eleonora Ardemagni, associate senior fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), argues the Saudi strategy itself has not changed – Riyadh still pursues de-escalation.
“Riyadh decided to strike because oil fields, infrastructure and corridors were targeted, and these represent red lines for Saudi Arabia,” she told The New Arab.
Ardemagni also points to growing coordination between the Houthis and Iran-backed Iraqi militias, reinforcing the perception in Riyadh that pressure against the kingdom is increasingly organised across multiple theatres rather than through isolated proxy actors.
The Red Sea becomes a second front
For months, Saudi Arabia held one advantage over its neighbours: as the Strait of Hormuz became unusable, Riyadh could still move crude west through the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu. The stakes were considerable: the kingdom’s economy contracted by 4.8 percent in the second quarter, its steepest yearly decline since the pandemic, as the war and Hormuz’s near-closure cut into oil revenue.
On 20 July, the Houthis announced a blockade on Saudi shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, claimed attacks on Saudi-linked tankers within days, and threatened to expand operations further – exposing the route Riyadh had counted on to offset Hormuz’s closure to many of the same risks.
“Riyadh has always been aware of the threats coming from the Red Sea-Bab route,” Ardemagni said. “For this reason, it has been accelerating diplomacy and planning for land corridors, including new routes through Egypt, Syria and Turkey.”
She argues the latest campaign shows infrastructure diversification alone is insufficient amid spreading political instability.
Shipping data illustrates the pressure. Two tankers carrying roughly three million barrels of Saudi crude crossed the Bab al-Mandab despite the blockade, both switching off their AIS transponders en route, while at least one tanker carrying Russian naphtha diverted around the Cape of Good Hope instead.
The proposed coalition is less about creating another naval mission than protecting the kingdom’s remaining strategic depth. Its composition is revealing: Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, and several Horn of Africa states have backed it, while the UAE and Oman have stayed outside – suggesting Riyadh is looking beyond the GCC for partners whose interests converge on protecting trade routes and containing instability.
“The Saudi-led Red Sea alliance could become militarily meaningful, but at present it is closer to a political framework than a functioning combat coalition,” Krieg said. “Fourteen states can sign a statement, but that does not mean fourteen states will provide warships, aircraft, interceptors or permission to use force.”
The coalition also reflects Saudi Arabia’s changing relationship with Washington. Riyadh still depends heavily on American intelligence, logistics and missile defence, but increasingly wants regional states to provide the political leadership while the US and Europe supply the high-end capabilities – what Krieg calls “the regionalisation of the front end of security”.
Riyadh’s voice in Washington
That logic extends beyond the battlefield. Over the first weekend of August, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman placed a call to Trump that both governments later called decisive in the decision to shelve a planned attack on Iran – one Trump said would have been “the biggest attack since World War II”.
The call, described as “candid and constructive,” came as Trump weighed a fresh strike after publicly saying he was “losing faith” in negotiations. Saudi officials said the crown prince pressed Trump for clarity on Washington’s strategy and warned that further escalation could severely damage the global economy if Tehran retaliated against Gulf states. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar were well placed to defend against further attacks, they indicated, but Kuwait was flagged as more exposed to Iran-backed militias in Iraq.
Trump credited the call directly. “I said to the crown prince, ‘What would you rather do? Would you rather us do this or not?'” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “They said we would much prefer a deal as opposed to an attack, because you don’t know where these attacks lead.” Of the decision to stand down, he added: “It would have been disastrous for them. And they didn’t want us to do it. And frankly, Saudi Arabia didn’t want it either. They thought that a deal is imminent.”
Riyadh was not alone in pressing for restraint: Qatari mediators separately proposed reopening the Strait of Hormuz to Tehran, which Iranian diplomats reportedly greeted with unusual openness. Not every Gulf capital shares that instinct, though: the UAE has reportedly pushed Trump toward more decisive action, betting the IRGC will not compromise without further US escalation.
Saudi Arabia’s position has been the more consistent one – Riyadh once blocked a US effort to open the Strait of Hormuz outright, straining relations with Washington before ultimately relenting.
Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan has meanwhile called his Qatari, Jordanian and Iranian counterparts to coordinate on de-escalation and freedom of navigation in the Gulf and Red Sea.
Analysts in Riyadh frame the kingdom’s calculus similarly: safeguarding Gulf security and the trade and energy flows underpinning its economic transformation plans, says political analyst Faisal Al Shammeri, while preventing Iran from acquiring the capability to threaten the region without letting confrontation escalate into full-scale war.
Nidal Al Saba adds that Saudi Arabia’s weight in global energy markets gives it leverage extending beyond Washington to Beijing, Moscow and European capitals – leverage Riyadh may increasingly bring to bear on Tehran directly, not only on Washington.
Cafiero expects that caution to hold: Saudi Arabia has too much to lose from being drawn deeper into the crisis, and Mohammed bin Salman remains, in his words, “above all, a pragmatist who harbours no illusions about Iran’s capabilities” – a reading, he says, that continues to shape the kingdom’s foreign policy.
“The Kingdom recognises the unbearable costs that an all-out war with Iran would entail and remains committed to finding a sustainable modus vivendi with the Islamic Republic,” he told The New Arab.
For Saudi Arabia, the through-line connecting Iraq, the Red Sea and Hormuz is the same: the kingdom is no longer content to absorb the costs of a war fought around it. It is using force more visibly to protect its territory, while working just as visibly to keep that war from escalating further – calculating that its influence in Washington still runs both ways.
Francesco Salesio Schiavi is an Italian specialist in the Middle East
