Saudi Arabia entered the U.S.-Iran war on Wednesday with airstrikes in Iraq. Its delayed entry, six months into the war, illustrated the bind the kingdom faces as it tries to deter attacks without getting sucked into the broader conflict, analysts say.
The kingdom’s defense ministry announced the airstrikes, accusing Iran-backed militias in Iraq of attacking Saudi oil facilities this week. No Iraqi militias have claimed responsibility for those attacks.
Iraq’s National Security Council said in a statement that the strikes had caused the deaths and injuries of “a number of innocent people,” and Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi of Iraq called the strikes “an unacceptable aggression.” The Saudi government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, Saudi government statements appeared keen to portray the strikes as a limited reaction to specific attacks, rather than an entry into the wider U.S. and Israeli war with Iran.
“The kingdom confirms that it is not seeking escalation but that it will respond to any aggression,” said a Saudi defense ministry spokesman, Maj. General Turki al-Malki.
His statement invoked the right to self-defense and quoted a line from the Quran calling for believers to attack those who attack them in a similar manner.
His language underscored the dilemma that Saudi Arabia has faced since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, setting off a military conflagration across the region and threatening the kingdom’s security and economic ambitions. While Saudi Arabia has long had antagonistic relations with Iran, Saudi officials had been pursuing warmer ties for several years — viewing them as the most pragmatic way to manage the threat posed by Iran.
The war dashed those efforts at diplomacy. In retaliation against U.S. attacks, Iran launched thousands of missiles and drones at Persian Gulf states that host U.S. military installations, including Saudi Arabia.
This month, the kingdom also entered into a renewed confrontation with the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen, which has claimed responsibility for several attacks on Saudi soil and declared a blockade against Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea.
Analysts say that while Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman probably saw benefits to the potential weakening of Iran, the war has, in reality, posed major risks for his plans to turn Saudi Arabia into a business and tourism hub.
It has also imposed an economic cost on Saudi Arabia by restricting routes for the export of oil, which provide the lifeblood of the Saudi government budget. As fighting has dragged on, it has strained the kingdom’s relations with the Trump administration, with American and Saudi officials increasingly at odds over how to approach security in the region.
The joint Saudi-American strikes marked the first time the kingdom acknowledged direct involvement in the U.S. war effort, although Saudi Arabia had carried out secret strikes against Iran earlier in the war.
Abdulaziz Alghashian, a senior nonresident fellow at the Gulf International Forum, a Washington-based research organization, said the Saudi leadership likely decided to take overt action this week because it was aware that its reluctance to enter the war “has been misunderstood as acceptance” of attacks against it.
The kingdom is now trying to deliver a message, to its enemies on all sides, that “there are costs to attacking Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Faisal Al-Hamad, a retired Saudi Air Force brigadier general and defense analyst, called it an attempt to “draw clear red lines” to deter further attacks.
This is the first time that Saudi Arabia has acknowledged any attacks against armed groups in Iraq, noted Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow for Middle East policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The strikes could also be read as a warning to Iran that escalating further could push Saudi leadership to align even more closely with the United States, he said.
