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Riyadh returns to force as the regional order slips beyond its control
Saudi Arabia's renewed military posture in Iraq and Yemen exposes the limits of its de-escalation strate
05.08.2026
By Abbas al-Zein
Source:https://thecradle.co/articles/riyadh-returns-to-force-as-the-regional-order-slips-beyond-its-control
For several years, Saudi Arabia sought to recast its regional role through de-escalation, diplomatic accommodation, and economic statecraft. That strategy now faces its sharpest test. Riyadh is again reaching for military pressure to redraw the region’s rules of engagement, even as the wars surrounding it become harder to contain.
After stepping back from open confrontation in Yemen and repairing relations with several regional powers, the kingdom presented itself as an actor moving beyond direct wars toward the management of influence through politics, economics, and diplomacy.
Recent developments, however, raise the possibility that this phase is beginning to recede – and that Riyadh is returning to calculations whose results it has already tested over the past decade.
Deterrence or anxiety?
The US-Israeli war on Iran and the regional shifts it unleashed may have convinced Saudi Arabia that the region has entered a different phase, one in which the margin for using force has widened. Riyadh may see an opportunity to rebuild deterrence equations eroded over recent years, particularly if it believes its adversaries emerged from the confrontation exhausted or that the balance of power has begun tilting toward the camp to which it belongs.
But there is another reading. Saudi Arabia may be moving toward security options because it senses that regional changes are not unfolding in its favor. Riyadh did not remain insulated from the war on Iran. Its territory hosts US military facilities, while its energy infrastructure and other strategic interests became targets.
As a result, every shift in the regional balance has been reflected directly on the kingdom, whether to its benefit or at its expense. The use of force may therefore represent an attempt to avoid losing ground while those balances are being recast, rather than confidence in the outcome.
An analysis published by Chatham House in May concluded that the war had forced Saudi Arabia to reassess its security strategy after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz exposed a critical vulnerability in its trade and energy routes.
The kingdom’s priority remains protecting Vision 2030 and avoiding conflicts that would drain the resources required for its economic transformation. A return to security options, particularly in the Red Sea, may therefore stem more from anxiety over regional shifts than from an environment that Riyadh considers favorable.
This is what distinguishes today’s resort to force from that of a decade ago. Saudi Arabia then acted from the conviction that it could impose new realities and achieve defined objectives. Today, the same tools may reflect confusion over the direction of regional change and a fear that waiting will allow new facts to emerge that will later be difficult to reverse.
The danger is that this choice places Saudi Arabia at the center of a US project whose outcome remains undecided. Washington has not established stable regional equations or closed any of the region’s theaters of conflict, while the project’s political and security costs continue to rise.
If Riyadh proceeds on the assumption that this path will impose a new regional order, it may find itself reusing failed tools under more complex conditions, at a moment when the destination of the region remains unclear.
Nor does military coordination necessarily provide the kingdom with control over the pace or scope of escalation. Washington’s priorities are shaped by its confrontation with Iran, while Riyadh must live with the immediate consequences across the Gulf, the Red Sea, and its own borderlands.
The two may share targets without sharing the same tolerance for a prolonged war. That difference becomes decisive once retaliation begins and the initiative passes to actors outside either capital’s control.
Iraq tests Riyadh’s new role
The recent joint US-Saudi strikes in Iraq open a question far wider than their stated military objectives. They suggest that Riyadh is approaching the Iraqi arena differently and is prepared to pursue immediate security options after years of presenting itself as a state that preferred to manage disputes through political engagement and regional openness.
The issue is not only Iraq, but the role Saudi Arabia now accepts for itself. Riyadh has sought to establish the kingdom as an Arab center of gravity capable of rallying or influencing regional positions, giving it broad political room to maneuver in crises.
Its participation in joint military action against targets in an Arab country raises questions about whether it is redefining that role – from an Arab partner into a participant in a Washington-led security project.
The escalation is closely connected to the war on Iran and the alignments it imposed, but the Iraqi theater cannot be reduced to that dimension. Saudi Arabia said attacks launched from Iraq had targeted critical infrastructure and Riyadh.
Baghdad, however, said that no evidence had been provided to substantiate the allegation, while the Ansarallah-aligned Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) claimed responsibility for drone attacks on Saudi interests. Even if Riyadh viewed the Iraqi factions as responsible, why did it choose to respond through a joint operation with the US?
That decision carries its own political significance. It places the handling of an Arab file within a broader US security framework and suggests that coordination with Washington has expanded beyond confronting Iran into the military management of Arab arenas.
Baghdad’s condemnation also demonstrates the diplomatic cost. Saudi engagement with Iraq had expanded in recent years through investment, border links, and political outreach intended to draw the country closer to its Arab surroundings.
Military action threatens to weaken that accumulated influence and strengthen the very factions Riyadh seeks to contain by allowing them to present themselves as defenders of Iraqi sovereignty. A tactical strike can therefore produce the opposite strategic effect.
The Guardian reported that the strikes killed at least 20 members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), an official Iraqi state security body, and cited analysts who described Riyadh’s acknowledged participation as a major shift that had pushed the region into “uncharted territory.”
Placed in the context of Saudi policy, the operation suggests that Riyadh is redefining its regional role through deeper integration into the US-led security architecture. It also raises questions about the limits of independent Saudi decision-making as the kingdom’s involvement in Washington’s regional project grows.
The present course could prove still more dangerous if it is repeated. During the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Saudi Arabia publicly distanced itself from the war while quietly facilitating some US operations, even as it faced accusations of funding and fueling extremist ideology that contributed to the rise of ISIS in Iraq. Today it has openly participated in strikes coordinated with Washington.
This path could gradually turn the kingdom into a direct combatant in inter-Arab and regional conflicts, rather than a power that manages balances or tries to influence them from outside. Each new operation increases the likelihood of confrontation with other Arab actors and may open fronts that were not part of Riyadh’s original calculations.
Yemen’s unfinished war
In Yemen, a return to the military option carries a different meaning. Saudi Arabia would not be embarking on a new experiment, but returning to one it knows well – including the forms of resistance its intervention produced throughout the war.
If Riyadh calculates that current regional shifts offer an opportunity to impose new conditions on the Sanaa government, it is also assuming that the other side will now submit to pressure it withstood for years. Yemen’s own experience offers little support for that assumption.
Sanaa reads the regional moment differently. It views the escalation as an opportunity to pursue a specific objective: lifting the blockade. It therefore treats military pressure as a means of increasing pressure on Saudi Arabia itself.
Both sides are responding to the same regional shifts, but Sanaa also draws on its record of frustrating Saudi objectives. The previous war’s consequences were not confined to Yemen. They reached deep into the kingdom, affecting its security, economy, and oil infrastructure as the YAF demonstrated its ability to expand the confrontation across the border.
If Saudi Arabia believes regional developments allow it to impose its terms, Sanaa believes the same developments can force an end to the blockade. July events reflected the equation. After the Sanaa airport strike – claimed by Yemen’s Saudi-backed government in Aden, but blamed on Riyadh by Sanaa – the YAF targeted Abha International Airport with missiles and drones. The Ansarallah-led army later declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia, invoking a siege-for-siege equation.
The exchange served as a reminder that renewed escalation will reopen direct pressure on the kingdom. Riyadh must therefore reckon with a cost different from the one it may imagine. Its forces and allies can strike Yemen, but they cannot assume that the consequences will remain within Yemeni territory, or that the economic arteries upon which Saudi strategy depends will be spared.
The Red Sea gives this confrontation a reach that the earlier border war did not possess to the same degree. Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in western ports and alternative export routes precisely because the Hormuz crisis exposed its dependence on vulnerable chokepoints. An escalating struggle with Sanaa could place that attempted escape route under pressure as well, leaving the kingdom exposed on both of its maritime flanks.
A wager without a settled endgame
If Saudi Arabia is betting that expanded military pressure will allow it to reimpose favorable equations, it cannot ignore that its adversaries are betting on the same regional shifts to achieve opposing goals. Riyadh may believe current developments permit it to regain the initiative, but the realities produced by the war on Iran show that its adversaries are also seeking to exploit the moment and impose new facts.
The war has neither determined the region’s future nor produced a stable balance of power upon which any state can safely build. Instead, it opened a phase that changes by the day, with every party attempting to turn the disorder to its advantage.
Any new Saudi escalation may prompt its adversaries to expand their own instruments of pressure against economic interests, energy infrastructure, or sea lanes. Recent experience has shown that such tools can shape the course of a conflict as decisively as conventional military operations.
Opening another front would therefore carry consequences for the economy, energy, shipping, and internal security – precisely the areas Saudi Arabia is most determined to shield. Its development model depends not only on military deterrence but on predictable trade, investor confidence, secure infrastructure, and the image of a stable state capable of insulating itself from the region’s wars.
Each new front leaves Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation hostage to military outcomes that Riyadh cannot control.
US President Donald Trump said he held off on a planned large-scale attack on Iran after appeals from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) and the leaders of Qatar and the UAE, who requested more time for diplomacy. AP reported that Gulf leaders’ concerns weighed heavily in his decision. Yet Saudi Arabia’s own military turn risks undermining the de-escalation it urged Washington to pursue.
Riyadh is returning to force in a geopolitical environment far more interconnected than the one it confronted a decade ago. Iraq is no longer separate from Yemen or Iran; Yemen is no longer isolated from the broader war; and the confrontation with Tehran has shown how quickly fire crosses nominal boundaries.
By joining the US in striking Iraq while edging back toward war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia risks becoming not the regional stabilizer it sought to portray, but another front in a conflict too expansive for any one capital to control – and too costly for the kingdom’s ambitions to absorb.
Saudi Arabia's renewed military posture in Iraq and Yemen exposes the limits of its de-
05.08.2026
By Abbas al-
For several years, Saudi Arabia sought to recast its regional role through de-
After stepping back from open confrontation in Yemen and repairing relations with several regional powers, the kingdom presented itself as an actor moving beyond direct wars toward the management of influence through politics, economics, and diplomacy.
Recent developments, however, raise the possibility that this phase is beginning to recede – and that Riyadh is returning to calculations whose results it has already tested over the past decade.
Deterrence or anxiety?
The US-
But there is another reading. Saudi Arabia may be moving toward security options because it senses that regional changes are not unfolding in its favor. Riyadh did not remain insulated from the war on Iran. Its territory hosts US military facilities, while its energy infrastructure and other strategic interests became targets.
As a result, every shift in the regional balance has been reflected directly on the kingdom, whether to its benefit or at its expense. The use of force may therefore represent an attempt to avoid losing ground while those balances are being recast, rather than confidence in the outcome.
An analysis published by Chatham House in May concluded that the war had forced Saudi Arabia to reassess its security strategy after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz exposed a critical vulnerability in its trade and energy routes.
The kingdom’s priority remains protecting Vision 2030 and avoiding conflicts that would drain the resources required for its economic transformation. A return to security options, particularly in the Red Sea, may therefore stem more from anxiety over regional shifts than from an environment that Riyadh considers favorable.
This is what distinguishes today’s resort to force from that of a decade ago. Saudi Arabia then acted from the conviction that it could impose new realities and achieve defined objectives. Today, the same tools may reflect confusion over the direction of regional change and a fear that waiting will allow new facts to emerge that will later be difficult to reverse.
The danger is that this choice places Saudi Arabia at the center of a US project whose outcome remains undecided. Washington has not established stable regional equations or closed any of the region’s theaters of conflict, while the project’s political and security costs continue to rise.
If Riyadh proceeds on the assumption that this path will impose a new regional order, it may find itself reusing failed tools under more complex conditions, at a moment when the destination of the region remains unclear.
Nor does military coordination necessarily provide the kingdom with control over the pace or scope of escalation. Washington’s priorities are shaped by its confrontation with Iran, while Riyadh must live with the immediate consequences across the Gulf, the Red Sea, and its own borderlands.
The two may share targets without sharing the same tolerance for a prolonged war. That difference becomes decisive once retaliation begins and the initiative passes to actors outside either capital’s control.
Iraq tests Riyadh’s new role
The recent joint US-
The issue is not only Iraq, but the role Saudi Arabia now accepts for itself. Riyadh has sought to establish the kingdom as an Arab center of gravity capable of rallying or influencing regional positions, giving it broad political room to maneuver in crises.
Its participation in joint military action against targets in an Arab country raises questions about whether it is redefining that role – from an Arab partner into a participant in a Washington-
The escalation is closely connected to the war on Iran and the alignments it imposed, but the Iraqi theater cannot be reduced to that dimension. Saudi Arabia said attacks launched from Iraq had targeted critical infrastructure and Riyadh.
Baghdad, however, said that no evidence had been provided to substantiate the allegation, while the Ansarallah-
That decision carries its own political significance. It places the handling of an Arab file within a broader US security framework and suggests that coordination with Washington has expanded beyond confronting Iran into the military management of Arab arenas.
Baghdad’s condemnation also demonstrates the diplomatic cost. Saudi engagement with Iraq had expanded in recent years through investment, border links, and political outreach intended to draw the country closer to its Arab surroundings.
Military action threatens to weaken that accumulated influence and strengthen the very factions Riyadh seeks to contain by allowing them to present themselves as defenders of Iraqi sovereignty. A tactical strike can therefore produce the opposite strategic effect.
The Guardian reported that the strikes killed at least 20 members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), an official Iraqi state security body, and cited analysts who described Riyadh’s acknowledged participation as a major shift that had pushed the region into “uncharted territory.”
Placed in the context of Saudi policy, the operation suggests that Riyadh is redefining its regional role through deeper integration into the US-
The present course could prove still more dangerous if it is repeated. During the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Saudi Arabia publicly distanced itself from the war while quietly facilitating some US operations, even as it faced accusations of funding and fueling extremist ideology that contributed to the rise of ISIS in Iraq. Today it has openly participated in strikes coordinated with Washington.
This path could gradually turn the kingdom into a direct combatant in inter-
Yemen’s unfinished war
In Yemen, a return to the military option carries a different meaning. Saudi Arabia would not be embarking on a new experiment, but returning to one it knows well – including the forms of resistance its intervention produced throughout the war.
If Riyadh calculates that current regional shifts offer an opportunity to impose new conditions on the Sanaa government, it is also assuming that the other side will now submit to pressure it withstood for years. Yemen’s own experience offers little support for that assumption.
Sanaa reads the regional moment differently. It views the escalation as an opportunity to pursue a specific objective: lifting the blockade. It therefore treats military pressure as a means of increasing pressure on Saudi Arabia itself.
Both sides are responding to the same regional shifts, but Sanaa also draws on its record of frustrating Saudi objectives. The previous war’s consequences were not confined to Yemen. They reached deep into the kingdom, affecting its security, economy, and oil infrastructure as the YAF demonstrated its ability to expand the confrontation across the border.
If Saudi Arabia believes regional developments allow it to impose its terms, Sanaa believes the same developments can force an end to the blockade. July events reflected the equation. After the Sanaa airport strike – claimed by Yemen’s Saudi-
The exchange served as a reminder that renewed escalation will reopen direct pressure on the kingdom. Riyadh must therefore reckon with a cost different from the one it may imagine. Its forces and allies can strike Yemen, but they cannot assume that the consequences will remain within Yemeni territory, or that the economic arteries upon which Saudi strategy depends will be spared.
The Red Sea gives this confrontation a reach that the earlier border war did not possess to the same degree. Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in western ports and alternative export routes precisely because the Hormuz crisis exposed its dependence on vulnerable chokepoints. An escalating struggle with Sanaa could place that attempted escape route under pressure as well, leaving the kingdom exposed on both of its maritime flanks.
A wager without a settled endgame
If Saudi Arabia is betting that expanded military pressure will allow it to reimpose favorable equations, it cannot ignore that its adversaries are betting on the same regional shifts to achieve opposing goals. Riyadh may believe current developments permit it to regain the initiative, but the realities produced by the war on Iran show that its adversaries are also seeking to exploit the moment and impose new facts.
The war has neither determined the region’s future nor produced a stable balance of power upon which any state can safely build. Instead, it opened a phase that changes by the day, with every party attempting to turn the disorder to its advantage.
Any new Saudi escalation may prompt its adversaries to expand their own instruments of pressure against economic interests, energy infrastructure, or sea lanes. Recent experience has shown that such tools can shape the course of a conflict as decisively as conventional military operations.
Opening another front would therefore carry consequences for the economy, energy, shipping, and internal security – precisely the areas Saudi Arabia is most determined to shield. Its development model depends not only on military deterrence but on predictable trade, investor confidence, secure infrastructure, and the image of a stable state capable of insulating itself from the region’s wars.
Each new front leaves Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation hostage to military outcomes that Riyadh cannot control.
US President Donald Trump said he held off on a planned large-
Riyadh is returning to force in a geopolitical environment far more interconnected than the one it confronted a decade ago. Iraq is no longer separate from Yemen or Iran; Yemen is no longer isolated from the broader war; and the confrontation with Tehran has shown how quickly fire crosses nominal boundaries.
By joining the US in striking Iraq while edging back toward war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia risks becoming not the regional stabilizer it sought to portray, but another front in a conflict too expansive for any one capital to control – and too costly for the kingdom’s ambitions to absorb.