24 April 2026

Can Saudi Arabia Keep Hedging?

Maria Fantappie

Over the course of six weeks of war between Iran, Israel, and the United States, Saudi Arabia’s restraint has perplexed some onlookers. After all, the war almost immediately spilled into the Persian Gulf. Iran’s retaliatory attacks on infrastructure in Gulf countries—and then Tehran’s closure and Washington’s subsequent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—ended a security paradigm that had dominated for decades and facilitated the astonishing rise of the Gulf’s economies. Although Saudi Arabia allowed U.S. forces to use its bases, it refrained from directly responding to Iran’s strikes. It issued terse

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