Ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia have proved an unlikely Middle East safety valve

Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up to the Middle Eastern politics & society myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

The writer is author of ‘Black Wave’, distinguished fellow at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics and an FT contributing editor

A year has passed since Saudi Arabia and Iran made their surprise announcement in Beijing about resuming diplomatic ties after seven years of rupture. The pragmatic move worked mostly to reduce tensions between the two foes but little of substance has been resolved and the rapprochement remains limited. 

Yet it has withstood the shock of the war in Gaza, one of the most cataclysmic events in the Middle East’s recent history — in fact it has proved a fortuitous but essential safety valve that has spared the region an even wider conflagration, for now. The relationship has also been useful for the US, as an additional channel of communication in a region on the edge and a buffer in what is often a complex triangle between Washington, Riyadh and Tehran. 

Last week, the FT revealed that the US had held secret talks in Oman with Iran in January to convince Tehran to rein in Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea. Secret talks between America and Iran have happened occasionally in the past, notably during the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s and more recently those that led to the 2015 nuclear agreement. The Saudis were furious at having been left in the dark back then. While de-escalation talks don’t rise to the same level of importance as nuclear negotiations, the potential for upset remains. Except on this occasion, a senior official in the region told me, Riyadh had been informed, not only by Washington but also by Tehran.

In the hours and days following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, much was still unclear about its planning process, Iran’s level of involvement and whether Iranian proxies were about to join the fight. Riyadh worried it could become a target again too. Israel was planning on launching a pre-emptive strike against Hizbollah in Lebanon. 

By October 11, Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi had initiated a phone call with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the first ever between them and the first conversation at this level between the two countries since before the 2016 breakdown in relations. A week later, Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian travelled to Jeddah for a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Iran’s message was understated but clear: we don’t want war. Absent this channel, the risk of misreading intentions of the different players in the region would have been considerable.  

Since then, Iran and Saudi Arabia have had a flurry of meetings and visits. This hasn’t stopped Tehran from slowly deploying its friends with guns as the war in Gaza drags on — first Hizbollah in Lebanon, then Shia militias in Iraq and Syria and, of course, the Houthis, ostensibly in support of Hamas and the Palestinians. But there are two wars running in parallel in the Middle East. They look indistinguishable in the headlines, but they are in fact separate: the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and the slow-simmer war that Iran has been waging by proxy against the US. 

The Islamic Republic’s use of proxies, which provide a first line of defence away from Iran’s borders, is an art it has perfected over the past four decades but which appears to have reached its limits in recent months. Iran is keen to preserve its key asset in the region, Hizbollah, so the latter has exercised surprising restraint while Israel expands the range and intensity of its missile strikes, degrading some of the group’s capabilities along the border and further inland. The destruction of civilian infrastructure in southern Lebanon has been extensive. Hizbollah’s approach has caused some disquiet within the group’s support base. 

In Iraq and Syria, Shia militias attacked US forces 170 times over four months. Then on February 2, the US retaliated with several missile strikes. Iran quietly asked its proxies to put the brakes on. Tehran has also kept its distance from Hamas. That leaves the Houthis, and of course Iran’s nuclear programme, its ultimate shield.   

But this remains one of the most testing periods for Tehran as it risks losing the considerable regional gains it has made since the war in Iraq began in 2003. It is negotiating by fire to maintain its position in a new dispensation in the Middle East, one in which its new partner in rapprochement, Saudi Arabia, remains open to normalising ties with Israel under certain conditions, including recognition of a Palestinian state.

Such a scenario feels out of reach amid warnings of famine in Gaza, but it is one that Washington is pursuing nonetheless. Iran will ultimately have to choose between openly disrupting it and facing dire consequences, or acquiescing obliquely to ensure the survival of the regime.