Gaza War accelerates Saudi-Iran détente

Exactly one year ago, an announcement took the Middle East and its international partners by surprise. On March 10, 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a détente agreement in Beijing, heralding a new era of stability, which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) sought, to implement economic diversification under his Vision 2030.

But in the months that followed, the agreement produced only limited diplomatic results, blurring its real scope. While the war in Gaza and the opening of annex fronts have tested the agreement’s viability, it has also sped up the rapprochement to some extent. The Oct. 7 attack highlighted Iran’s destructive capabilities in the region, prompting Saudi Arabia to do everything in its power to avoid a direct confrontation.

Since October 2023, relations between Riyadh and Tehran hit their highest level in a decade. The Saudis were aware that Iran couldn’t prevent the Hamas attack, while the Saudi-Israel normalization talks were advancing apace.

Since the start of the war, MBS and Iranian President Ebrahim Raissi have discussed by phone the escalation in Gaza. They then met in November, on the sidelines of the Joint Arab-Islamic Summit on Palestine, which marked the first meeting between Iranian and Saudi leaders since they severed diplomatic ties in 2016. Before that, the last meeting between the two was held in 2012, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met King Abdullah in Mecca. The Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers have also increased their visits to each other’s countries since Oct. 7, although they already met several times before in the wake of the Beijing agreement.

Even more interestingly, Riyadh and Tehran are forging an unprecedented military and security rapprochement, after waging proxy wars across the region for decades. In mid-February, the Saudi ambassador to Iran met with Iran’s defense minister.

“It seems they agreed about improving defense cooperation and more exchanges of military delegations,” wrote researcher Abdolrasool Divsallar on X. A week earlier, a delegation of high-ranking Iranian officers made a high-profile appearance at the World Defense Show in Riyadh, where they held talks with the Saudi chief of staff. His Iranian counterpart spoke by phone to Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman in December.

Test in the Red Sea

Despite their symbolic significance, these high-level meetings have not yet led to any concrete decisions. “They do, however, indicate that the Saudis are interested in working with Iran in the field of defense production and, from the Iranian point of view, there is hope that in the future, this could become an area for Saudi investment,” said Umar Karim, a researcher at the University of Birmingham.

Riyadh also aims to gain a better understanding of Iran’s defense capabilities and security goals and system, he noted. “The pragmatism Tehran exhibited in recent months by not directly challenging Israel and preventing Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia is reassuring for the kingdom,” added the expert.

The real test for the Beijing agreement came in the Red Sea, on the hottest front as part of the Gaza war. Riyadh refused to join the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian in response to the Houthi attacks, for fear of jeopardizing the delicate peace talks that started with the Yemeni rebels in 2022. Apart from clashes at the border — which killed four Saudi soldiers in October 2023 — the Iran-aligned militia has not fired a single rocket at the Kingdom since the start of the Saudi-Houthi negotiations. The war in Gaza has not broken this status quo.

“The Saudis probably talked to Iran to have it understand that they would not support the US coalition in exchange for not being targeted by the Houthis,” said Cinzia Bianco, a researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Saudi Arabia’s interest is to coordinate as closely as possible with Iran to avoid escalation.”

However, this new capacity for dialogue and accommodation cannot mask the long-standing mistrust between Riyadh and Tehran. All the more so since, although they both seek to avoid conflict, the two countries adopted contrasting approaches to the war in Gaza. While Teheran is placing pressure on the US and Israel through “the resistance axis,” Riyadh is working behind the scenes to prepare a new model for Palestinian governance. “Coordination is not the same thing as cooperation,” said Ali Vaez, Crisis Group Iran’s project director. The relationship has moved from confrontation to neutrality, but it has not yet become cooperative. “If that doesn’t change, reconciliation is unlikely to last.”

Will pragmatism push the two regional powers to reach this stage? “On the Saudi side, there is certainly this desire because Saudi Arabia understands that it cannot afford an open conflict with Iran that would damage its economy, that the days of blind trust in the US security guarantees are over, and that the Yemeni front should remain closed. The Saudis will therefore push for the implementation of this strategy,” said Umar Karim.

Saudi investments

The fact that the “resistance axis” has flexed its muscles in the war in Gaza is likely to worry Saudi Arabia, pushing it to deepen its relations with Iran in the hope of guaranteeing its security. But paradoxically, Saudi fear does not put Tehran in a position of absolute strength in Riyadh’s eyes. Iran is in a disastrous situation overall: plunged into an economic depression, weakened by the 2022 popular uprising, and isolated by the death of nuclear negotiations with the West. At the external level, “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps lost Qassim Soleimani, and with him, full control over regional proxies,” added Bianco.

With the Beijing agreement, Tehran hoped to attract Saudi investment and stimulate trade, but this has not happened. How could Saudi Arabia invest in the Iranian economy without violating Western sanctions against Iran? This question remains unresolved, and Riyadh has not placed any pressure on its international partners to ease the sanctions. “Tehran therefore believes that the status quo is more beneficial to Riyadh,” which has so far managed to protect its territory from attacks, said Vaez. “It has always been clear that there would be a limit to de-escalation between Iran and Saudi Arabia as long as tensions between Iran and the West intensify,” Vaez said.

On the other hand, the Saudis are well aware that they do not currently have the means to confront the Iranian threat. So they have given up neither on normalization with Israel nor on the possibility of obtaining advanced security guarantees from the US. It is precisely these scenarios that could jeopardize the détente agreement with the Iranians.

This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Joelle El Khoury.