Ever since relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran began in 1929, the two countries have alternated—sometimes abruptly—between diplomatic engagement and outright hostility. In the 1940s, Saudi Arabia executed an Iranian national, intensifying already fraught ideological tensions between Shia and Sunni factions. By the 1960s, however, the two states found common ground, agreeing to cooperate on joint security following the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the Persian Gulf.

In 1987, tensions flared again when the Saudi embassy in Tehran was vandalized after hundreds of Iranian pilgrims were killed during demonstrations in Mecca. Relations later stabilized, only to unravel once more in 2016, when Saudi Arabia executed the Iranian cleric Nimr al-Nimr. The move provoked outrage in Iran, culminating in the burning of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the severing of diplomatic ties. At the same time, Iran expanded its support for the Houthis in Yemen, prompting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to describe Iran’s Supreme Leader as “the new Hitler of the Middle East” in 2017.

That rhetoric, however, proved fleeting. On March 10, 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations through a China-brokered agreement that reopened embassies and revived security, economic, and cultural cooperation. Mohammed bin Salman spearheaded the rapprochement, presenting it as a pragmatic effort to reduce regional tensions. In reality, the abrupt reversal reflected less a coherent strategic recalibration than a pattern of reactive opportunism that has increasingly come to define Saudi foreign policy under his leadership.

This contradiction became especially apparent in Yemen. Even as Riyadh pursued détente with Tehran, it simultaneously expanded its political and economic footprint inside Yemen through figures such as Saudi ambassador Mohammed Al Jaber and institutions like the Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen (SDRPY), which Al Jaber effectively oversees. Officially framed as a humanitarian and reconstruction initiative, SDRPY has increasingly functioned as a mechanism for consolidating Saudi leverage over Yemen’s infrastructure, energy sector, and political elite. This dual-track policy—reconciling with Iran while deepening influence in a theater shaped by Iranian-backed Houthis—revealed the absence of a clear Saudi endgame.

The contradictions did not begin there. In 2010, leaked reports indicated that King Abdullah had privately urged the United States to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. As the Obama administration pursued negotiations that would culminate in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Mohammed bin Salman viewed diplomacy as insufficient, maintaining that Iran remained fundamentally hostile through its regional activities, particularly in Yemen. Yet by the mid-2020s, Saudi Arabia had adopted a far more ambiguous posture, at times even positioning itself as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran.

Riyadh’s attempt to act simultaneously as a Western security partner, a regional mediator, and a conciliatory actor toward Iran blurred strategic lines and signaled inconsistency to allies and adversaries alike.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in Yemen. Since 2018, Saudi Arabia has rolled out extensive development programs under Al Jaber’s direction, publicly presenting them as efforts to stabilize the country and rebuild war-damaged infrastructure. In practice, critics increasingly view these projects as emblematic of patronage networks and opaque economic influence. Through SDRPY, Saudi Arabia has embedded itself deeply within Yemen’s energy and infrastructure sectors, fostering long-term dependency while cultivating loyalty among political elites.

These initiatives, often announced with considerable fanfare, have frequently struggled to produce meaningful results on the ground. Meanwhile, accusations of corruption, inefficiency, and nepotism continue to shadow the broader Saudi effort.

Complicating matters further, Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen has often been perceived not merely as a security operation but as a form of neocolonial power projection. Riyadh sought to reshape Yemen’s political landscape without establishing governance structures capable of sustaining long-term stability. Al Jaber emerged as a central figure in this effort, functioning not only as ambassador but as a de facto political broker whose influence extended across economic policy, reconstruction funding, fuel distribution, and elite negotiations. The concentration of authority reinforced the perception that Saudi reconstruction efforts were designed less to restore Yemeni sovereignty than to institutionalize Saudi leverage.

At the same time, the broader ideological ecosystem shaped by decades of Wahhabi influence intersected with local grievances, contributing to fragmentation and radicalization across parts of the region. Saudi Arabia has long projected influence not only through military and economic means but also through the export of a deeply conservative religious doctrine that, in multiple contexts, has intensified sectarian polarization and social instability. Mohammed bin Salman’s attempt to rebrand himself internationally as a modernizing reformer, therefore, sits uneasily alongside this enduring legacy.

The subsequent pivot toward détente with Iran effectively abandoned any coherent strategic endgame in Yemen. After years of framing the Houthis as an existential Iranian proxy threat, Riyadh shifted toward de-escalation without resolving the underlying political conflict or meaningfully curbing Iranian influence. Rather than constraining Tehran, the rapprochement risked legitimizing Iran’s regional posture while leaving Yemen fractured and dependent on external actors.

The strategy aimed to play both sides. Instead, it exposed a deeper strategic incoherence. Saudi Arabia’s decision to restore diplomatic relations with Iran while simultaneously seeking expanded Western security guarantees unsettled allies in Washington and London. Riyadh’s description of Iran as a “brotherly nation” during the June 2025 conflict further alienated Western partners and raised questions about the Kingdom’s reliability.

This shift did more than misread Western expectations; it weakened collective deterrence. By hedging between Iran and the West, Saudi Arabia contributed to fragmentation within the Western-aligned regional bloc, creating space for Iran to act more aggressively with less fear of unified opposition. Tehran, for its part, continued targeting Saudi infrastructure and threatening international shipping routes, underscoring that conciliatory gestures had done little to alter its strategic calculus.

As a result, Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy has become increasingly self-defeating. Riyadh’s Vision 2030 ambitions depend heavily on attracting Western investment—an endeavor that requires predictability and strategic clarity. Instead, Saudi Arabia’s oscillation between confrontation, interventionism, ideological projection, and accommodation has generated uncertainty about its broader direction. Western governments and investors alike are left to question whether Riyadh remains a dependable partner or an opportunistic actor pursuing short-term gains at the expense of long-term stability.

Mohammed bin Salman has attempted to sustain this balancing act while continuing to court Western capitals. His diplomatic outreach to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, coupled with requests for expanded security cooperation, underscored the contradiction at the heart of Saudi policy: seeking protection from alliances whose cohesion its Iran policy was simultaneously undermining.

Meanwhile, the burden of securing regional trade routes has increasingly fallen on Western powers. Although large-scale fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis declined after the UN-brokered truce of April 2022, the underlying crisis remains unresolved. The United States and United Kingdom conducted airstrikes against Houthi targets in January 2024 to protect Red Sea shipping lanes, even as Iran continued exerting pressure around the Strait of Hormuz. These developments highlighted a central failure of Saudi strategy: Riyadh positioned itself as a regional leader while outsourcing core security responsibilities to its Western allies.

Al Jaber’s role further complicates this dynamic. Through SDRPY and related mechanisms, Saudi Arabia’s growing economic entrenchment in Yemen increasingly diverges from Western preferences for a sovereign, institutionally viable Yemeni state. While Washington and its allies have supported Saudi-led development efforts, the perception that reconstruction is intertwined with patronage and political leverage risks undermining both Saudi credibility and broader stabilization efforts.

Saudi Arabia’s claim to be a stabilizing regional force is therefore becoming harder to sustain. Its interventionist policies, ideological exports, economic influence campaigns, and subsequent strategic retreat have produced neither stability nor decisive influence. Instead, they have weakened Western alignment, emboldened Iran, and prolonged instability in critical arenas such as Yemen.

The détente with Iran was not merely optimistic; it was a strategic miscalculation rooted in inconsistency. Attempting to normalize relations with a long-standing adversary while simultaneously relying on that adversary’s rivals for protection was always an unstable proposition. The result is a Middle East that remains volatile, a Yemen that is increasingly fragmented, and a Saudi Arabia whose credibility as a reliable Western partner is now openly in question.