As the Middle East moves toward a more multipolar regional order, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is positioning itself as a central actor in shaping outcomes. Amid shifting alliances and geopolitical recalibrations, Riyadh has reasserted its presence in key arenas such as Syria and Lebanon, aiming to sketch its strategic interests and redraw the contours of regional influence. Meanwhile, since the signing of the Abraham Accords, Saudi Arabia has been at the centre of speculation regarding potential normalisation with Israel. Despite Israel’s efforts to bypass Palestinian statehood as a prerequisite for normalisation, Saudi Arabia continues to navigate the diplomatic landscape in a stalled situation through initiatives like the New York Declaration; thus, it seeks to reframe the regional conversation and revive the international momentum toward a political solution for the Palestine Issue.

Saudi Arabia in the Middle East

Saudi Arabia’s regional importance and strategic relation with the US date back to the milestone meeting of King Abdulaziz with President Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy in 1945, establishing a durable partnership between Riyadh and Washington based on the exchange of oil for security. Its foreign policy was cautious and domestically focused, gaining its legitimacy from religion. However, the ideological threat posed by Nasserist pan-Arabism in the 1950s and 60s compelled Saudi Arabia to gradually recalibrate its regional posture. Nevertheless, the decline of pan-Arabism, particularly after Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War and the end of the war in Yemen by agreement, led the Kingdom to reassess its security priorities, increasingly viewing Israel as a focal point. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War brought the first significant rupture in US-Saudi relations, as the Kingdom imposed an oil embargo in response to American support for Israel, demonstrating the former’s readiness to wield oil as a political weapon in defense of Arab and Islamic causes.

The general post-war trend of the Arab states toward accepting the fait-accompli reality of the existence of the Israeli state dates back to 1967, overcoming the “three No’s” of the Khartoum Summit. Egypt and Jordan had peace agreements with Israel in 1978 and 1994, respectively, while Saudi Arabia proposed a plan, which was agreed upon by the Arab states in the 1982 Fez Summit. Despite the various interpretations that it has been subjected to, it was a clear indicator that the confrontational and combative approach was being put aside in favour of calling for a regional peace that included the right of Palestinians to establish a state.

The Saudi Kingdom's security concerns shifted once again, but towards Iran following the 1979 Islamic revolution, as it held a genuine physical and ontological security threat. However, through its leadership roles in various organisations such as Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)  and the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Kingdom has continued to assert influence by shaping both economic dynamics and Islamic discourse, leveraging its vast oil wealth, and prompting a particular vision of Islamic orthodoxy across the Muslim world as part of a broader strategy to project soft power and insulate the regime from ideological and geopolitical challenges in an increasingly multipolar Middle East.

Over the decades, Saudi Arabia has avoided direct military entanglement, preferring proxy strategies to balance power and maintain its regional position. It supported Iraq in its war with Iran as a bulwark against the revolutionary Shia regime in Tehran, only to turn to US military protection following Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. This marked the consolidation of a new Gulf security architecture characterised by an increasing American military presence through its bases in the region, a dynamic rooted in the Carter Doctrine and institutionalised with the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Since the 2000s, the Kingdom has sought to navigate the dual challenge: balancing the growing threat of the expanding Iranian footprint in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and intensifying efforts to counter terrorism in light of September 11 and the proliferation of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. These challenges did not fade with the passing of the decade; instead, they remained deeply entrenched. Nevertheless, there was another stratum of menace with the Arab Uprising wave, as popular demands threatened to oust incumbent regimes. The Kingdom ultimately emerged as a major force in the formation of an anti-Arab protest campaign, and for more than a decade has advocated for the preservation of the status quo in the region, opposing both Sunni and Shia revisionist blocs.

Saudi Arabia’s Regional Position Since October 7

Following Hamas’ attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel initiated a military operation on Gaza, which then spilled across the region, including Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. The Gaza war and its profound repercussions have opened the “Pandora’s Box” in the region. The Arab Uprisings that began in 2011 had marked a new era in the Middle East, causing power structures to be reconfigured towards a series of loose and shifting alignments. Thus, the relatively stable regional power balance tracing back to the Arab Uprisings has begun to diminish, leading to the increasing profile of Iran, as well as the weakening of the Axis of Resistance that it led.

Within this context, it is not an overstatement to characterise the period after October 7 as era-defining, not only in terms of re-structuring Middle East power dynamics, but also in the formation of power constellations relative to the retrenchment of the US from the region. For some, the Gaza war marks “the end of the long decade” since the 2011 Arab Uprisings. With the Gaza war, the Palestine issue has been brought back to the international agenda abruptly, and in such a manner that the future of normalising relations between Israel and Arab states – specifically Saudi Arabia – has become a matter of concern. Although the Abraham Accords with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan have not been terminated, in the case of the Kingdom of Jordan, the “warm peace” that had been enjoyed has become a source of criticism among opposition groups in the country.

Israel has been seen as one of the major winners of this new era, which has even been characterised as making “Netanyahu’s new Middle East”; the Palestine Issue continues to retain its salience at the forefront of a relatively stable regional politics, along with the realisation of the Abraham Accords 2.0. In light of this, despite the fact that regional power dynamics remain largely similar since October 7, nascent nuances can also be observed to have evolved since then. Seemingly, although the normalisation paradigm that has dominated day-to-day politics in the region has not been invalidated or overridden by the escalation in the region, increasing criticism from the Arab Street seems to have influenced the postponement of Saudi-Israeli normalisation.

Trump’s Gulf tour

Going back to 2015, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) implemented a foreign policy that has broken from traditional Saudi responses by becoming more actively engaged in regional politics. One of the manifestations of this foreign policy has been Saudi-Emirate intervention in the Yemeni civil war, and also the Chinese-brokered Saudi-Iranian normalisation prior to the Gaza war. With the US move toward withdrawal from the region, the KSA-led GCC power constellation found ground for manoeuvre regarding the reconfiguration of power throughout the region. The public protests in Egypt and Tunisia, which paved the way for power alternations and the eruption of a prolonged civil war in Syria have left a power vacuum where both the KSA and Israel took steps swiftly to turn this shifting regional power equilibrium to their advantage using both the waning hegemonic role of the US and the dividend of the loose multi-power international system.

For more than a decade, discussions on the regional power balance and alignments in the Middle East have been centred on the future role of the US as an extra-regional power, and the repercussions of its possible withdrawal from the region entirely. From the Obama era until the present, the objective of the US administration has been unclear. What has come of the latest developments in the region can be labelled as a retrenchment from the region, not a complete withdrawal. Having said that, the changing nuances of US foreign policy during the second Trump administration in particular need to be elucidated in a wider scope following the turmoil and escalation in the region since October 7. One of the most decisive upshots of this change – but which simultaneously embeds continuity into US policy – was seen during US President Donald Trump’s recent trip to the Gulf region in May, which not only reflects the drivers of the US administration’s approach to the changing Middle East, but also signified key nuances in the making of politics and order in the region since the Gaza war.

As he known for embracing the “art of the deal”, Trump’s visit concluded an implacable economic and military agreement. Saudi Arabia stands the tallest among its Gulf peers in arms purchases with the historic 142 billion deals. Even amid a sharp decline in global arms imports, it remained the world’s largest recipient of US weapons from 2020 to 2024, reaffirming the strategic partnership. Meanwhile, amid the collapse of the Assad regime and Iran's influence in Syria is diminishing, Riyadh identified a timely opportunity to step in and play a role in shaping Syria’s political future and reconstruction efforts. Thus, it has positioned itself as a facilitator and actively championed measures to soften the diplomatic and economic constraints on Damascus; Trump addressed this by lifting the sanctions. To Saudi Arabia, reviving and stabilising Syria is essential to prevent any issues in a neighbouring country, and to rebuild its status as a geopolitical counterweight to Iran and also Israel. Despite their troubled past and divergent policies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey have so far found common ground in their support for the Syrian regime. And the Kingdom is using its regional and international weight to ensure this.

Towards the epicentre of the Middle East?

Saudi Arabia did not gain from its adventurous policies between 2015 and 2020, but it showed that it had the flexibility to retreat and maintain its weight in the increasingly multipolar order and among shifting alliances. Thus, the Kingdom’s foreign policy can be overwhelmingly characterised through the notions of regime survival and regional power balance. That being said, the period since October 7 has reflected a shift in focus and a redefinition of what constitutes a security threat to the Kingdom – depending on conjectural changes, as well as the spillover effects of the Gaza war in particular and the Palestinian cause in general, as well as the reconstruction of Syria in the post-Assad era. In this regard, along with Qatar, the KSA’s pledge to pay off Syria’s debt to the World Bank, and announcement that it would be supplying 6.4 billion dollars in the form of both investment and partnership agreements with the new Syrian transitional government, explicitly demonstrates Saudi Arabia’s “constructive pragmatist” tone as it shifted its approach toward Syria. In other words, the end of Assad rule, which has brought structural change to the region, reinforced the Kingdom’s desire to turn the crisis into an opportunity and mitigate its challenges. Having said that, the ensuing war in Gaza and its ramifications for the West Bank have caused it to consider whether it should relinquish its support for the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution.

To some observers, the rise of a multipolar Middle East is seen not as a disruption, but as a restoration of the region’s natural balance of power. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is taking advantage of these developments by exploring political and diplomatic avenues in response to growing Israeli military aggression across the region – in particular the revival of the Arab (Saudi) Peace Initiative tracing back to 2002. Holding the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution alongside France during the plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) shows the centrality of the Palestinian Issue to Middle East politics. It also sheds light on Saudi Arabia’s disinclination to resume normalisation (let alone peace) talks with Israel. This makes the Kingdom a regional epicentre (along with Egypt and Jordan), taking a constructively pragmatic approach to the forces restructuring the region. It also aims to manoeuvre the positioning of Israel in the emerging Middle East – notably after Israel’s recent attack on Qatar, which is trying to reconfigure the regional order almost completely under its sphere of influence.