Saudi Arabia threatened by Israeli hegemony in the Middle East

Since the June 1967 war, the Middle East has been marked by the military superiority of the non-Arab regional player, Israel. This superiority, combined with its colonial and territorial ambitions, has given Tel Aviv a leading role, but without in itself altering the balance of power, even after the peace agreements with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994).

In the Arabian Peninsula, Israel remained politically insignificant. Even the Abraham Accords (2020)[6803], which led to normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and, to a lesser extent, Sudan, failed to integrate it into regional dynamics with any real strategic impact. The attempts of most of the Gulf States to draw closer to Iran, and the reconciliation between the latter and Saudi Arabia, are proof of this.

But the attacks launched by Hamas on Israel on 7 October 2023 have confirmed a change in Israel’s position in the regional political landscape. This is due to Israel’s ability to project its military omnipotence and impose its strategic dominance, not only in the Levant but also on both the Arab and Iranian sides of the Gulf and its shipping lanes. Israel’s latest attack on Iran, which began on 13 June 2025, is the culmination of its strategic superiority in the region, backed by the United States. This development has obvious consequences for the regional balance, particularly for Saudi Arabia, which wants to achieve a position of regional leadership.

The Syrian turning-point

Saudi Arabia has played a leading regional role since the end of Egypt’s Nasserite period in 1970. Despite the emergence of occasional Arab “challengers”, such as Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Saudi kingdom’s dominant position in the Sunni Arab world, thanks to its oil-based financial power and religious soft power, has never really been challenged. However, it faced a test after the “Arab Spring” uprisings of 2011, when Iran succeeded in extending its influence over four regional capitals - Beirut, Damascus, Sana’a and Baghdad - while Qatar and Turkey also challenged its regional influence, but to no avail. Above all, Saudi Arabia’s military weakness was highlighted by its military intervention in Yemen from 2015 and its failure to dislodge the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa.

With the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on 8 December 2024 and the takeover of power by Sunni rebels in Syria, Riyadh acquired a new ally in Damascus, strengthening its influence, this time at Iran’s expense. However, as in 1967, when it took advantage of the blow dealt by Israel to Egypt and Syria, its newly enhanced position is the indirect result of Israeli military operations. But today, Israel is no longer content with periodically influencing the region’s security architecture. It wants to dictate its terms as the sole regional hegemon¹ thanks to its undisputed military and technological power. The attack on Iran is a striking example of this strategy. So its hegemony can only threaten the economic governance of the Gulf States, as well as Iran’s attempts at regional integration².

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has attempted the beginnings of engagement with Israel, while strongly denouncing its actions in the region, criticism which has intensified since 7 October 2023. It chairs the Arab Contact Group on Gaza, set up at an extraordinary session by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to dialogue with international stakeholders to end the war³. Similarly, Riyadh led the Arab effort in March 2025 to put forward a counter-initiative for the reconstruction of Gaza - financed by the Gulf States - as an alternative to US President Donald Trump’s plan to transform the Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, a project that would mean the ethnic cleansing of its inhabitants.

Influencing the US administration

Riyadh’s greatest political victory vis-à-vis Israel undoubtedly came on 13 May 2025 when Crown Prince Mohammad Ben Salman (MBS) succeeded in convincing Donald Trump to lift the sanctions imposed on Syria. Thus, by judiciously using its economic and investment leverage, Saudi Arabia for the first time succeeded in influencing an American administration to change a pillar of its regional policy in a direction contrary to Israel’s interests. This is precisely what Israel lacks in its relationship with the United States: it remains largely a one-way street, even if the momentum continues.

Saudi Arabia has clearly understood that stability and peace in the region are essential to achieving the objectives of its Vision 2030 plan, attracting large-scale investment and making the kingdom a hub for inter- and intra-regional connection projects such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC)⁴. This has forced Saudi Arabia to adopt a “zero problems” approach⁵ with all players in the region, hence its rapprochement with Qatar, Turkey and Iran, and the truce with the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Violation of Qatar’s air sovereignty

Israel’s attack on the Islamic Republic triggered a cascade of events that culminated in the United States bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities on the night of June 21-22, prompting retaliatory but symbolic Iranian missile strikes against an American base in Qatar. So far, this confrontation has not degenerated into a regional war that could have resulted in the targeting of oil installations on both Iran and the Arab side of the Gulf, as well as a possible Iranian attempt to block maritime traffic in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. That said, it led to Tehran’s violation of the air sovereignty of a Gulf state, Qatar. Such an episode has the potential to sabotage Saudi Arabia’s efforts to achieve rapprochement with Iran.

It is also certain that the political benefit that Saudi Arabia has gained from the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the weakening of Iran, which it is trying to exploit to reap political and economic dividends through regional peace and stability, is being put to the test. With the risk of renewed hostilities between Iran and Israel still a possibility, Saudi’s ambitious strategy of transforming the kingdom into a hub for connections and investment could become difficult to achieve.

Moreover, the relative weakening of the Iranian regime will further encourage Israel to impose its vision of regional order throughout the Middle East. A case in point was Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s demand that Gulf Arab states and Europeans share the costs of the war against Iran, a proposal strongly condemned by the United Arab Emirates.

What’s more, in the event of future tensions with Israel, the Saudi air force, while far better equipped and more professional than its Iranian counterpart, remains dependent on the United States. And as Washington continues to support Israel’s rise as the region’s hegemon, Saudi Arabia will need to diversify its security relationships. If we draw lessons from the examples of Iran and Ukraine, we see that their main failing was their lack of credible deterrence.

As Saudi Arabia confronts this new regional reality, it will also have to revise its security approach. It needs to look for new security partners who will not only assist it in the defense sector, but who can also help it achieve a minimum level of credible deterrence.

However, these choices are bound to complicate relations between Riyadh and Washington. They plunge the Saudi leadership into an unprecedented strategic dilemma: while the systemic threat to the kingdom has been reduced, the new regional hegemon, Israel, cannot be considered a true partner.