The New Saudi Strategy, With F. Gregory Gause III

LINDSAY:
A new Middle East is emerging. A dictatorship has fallen.

CNN:
Lightning fast rebel offensive ending fifty years of authoritarian rule in Syria.

LINDSAY:
New partnerships are forming.

AL-JAZEERA:
A historic deal brokered by the U.S. to normalize relations between the UAE and Israel.

LINDSAY:
Citizens are rising up.

AL-JAZEERA:
Thousands of Iranians have been protesting as a dire economic crisis takes a heavy toll on their daily livelihood.

LINDSAY:
And new players are arriving on the scene.

WION:
Saudi is now cozening up to China to strengthen bilateral and economic ties.

LINDSAY:
These changes have consequences for the United States, and particularly for its eighty-year relationship with Saudi Arabia.

ARAB NEWS:
The Arabian monarch goes aboard the president’s preserve centered on the potential American development of the oil concession granted by the King.

LINDSAY:
What began as a grand bargain of Saudi oil for American security has evolved into a complex network of sometimes contradictory interests, as Saudi Arabia’s crown print seeks to claim a more influential role for the kingdom and world affairs.

CBS:
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince accused of ordering the murder of a Washington Post contributor.

FRANCE 24:
The international criminal call to open an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Saudi-led coalition.

LINDSAY:
How are U.S.-Saudi relations adapting to these changes? Can Washington still count on Saudi Arabia as a critical ally in one of the world’s most volatile regions?

From the Council on Foreign Relations, welcome to The President’s Inbox. I’m Jim Lindsay. Today I’m joined by F. Gregory Gause, one of the world’s leading authorities on Saudi Arabia and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Institute. Greg, thank you very much for joining me.

GAUSE III:
My pleasure, Jim.

LINDSAY:
I want to dive into the question of U.S.-Saudi relations, Greg, but first I’d like to ask you to do a scene setter for me by making sense of politics inside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia these days. The ruler is the ninety-year-old King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. But of course, news reports basically say that his forty-year-old son, Mohammad Bin Salman, the Crown Prince is running the show. And I should note, he goes by the initials as often referred to by the initials MBS.
Is that an accurate depicture of what Saudi governance looks like or are we missing something by talking about the crown prince running the show?

GAUSE III:
No, that’s absolutely right. In fact, in 2022, the king who has been in decline gave up the position of prime minister. And the king, kings in Saudi Arabia have almost exclusively held onto the position of prime minister. In 2022, King Salman gave up the title of prime minister to Muhammad Bin Salman. So he’s been crown prince since 2017. He’s basically had the reign since then, although early on, the king would occasionally kind of pull him back from things, particularly on Israel, interestingly enough. But I think that’s from COVID, from 2020, basically, I think that the crown prince has been basically running the show.

LINDSAY:
Does he face many internal checks? I mean, I’m old enough to remember when people would talk about the ruling family in Saudi Arabia being very large. Lots of princes would have a say in matters or important family interests, not to alienate. There was a religious establishment that was seen as wielding great power. Have things changed or is that still the case?

GAUSE III:
I think they’ve changed. I think this is one of the most important things that’s happened in King Salman’s reign in the time of MBS is the centralization of power. Really from the 1960s up until 2015, Saudi Arabia was a kind of run by committee, committee of senior princes. Sometimes kings were stronger personalities, sometimes they weren’t. But on big things, you had to get a consensus of the major princes. And maybe it was four, five, six people, but that made decision making very conservative, very stodgy, unable to grasp opportunities, but also kept the Saudis from doing anything really dumb because there was that kind of a veto power.
After King Salman came in, he basically consolidated control in the hands of his son, MBS, cutting out numerous of his nephews, numerous of MBS’s cousins, even older brothers. And in that generation of the family, MBS is not particularly popular, but he has cultivated support among people his own age, most of whom are one generation lower than he is.
So he’s a grandson of the founding king. He’s cultivated support among people who are great grandsons. He’s brought many of them into administration, some in the cabinet, more in the provinces. So he’s cultivated support in that age group, and he still has top cover from his father.

LINDSAY:
So how would you describe MBS’s vision for Saudi Arabia, Greg, both at home and abroad?

GAUSE III:
I think it’s changed in interesting ways. When he came in… Let’s start with foreign policy. When he came in, he was really throwing his weight around. He thought Saudi Arabia was a superpower, and it could behave the way Russia does, China does, in the region the way Iran does. And almost everything he did turned out to be a failure.
He sent a…he launched a military expedition with the Emiratis into Yemen to try to defeat the Houthis, turned into a quagmire. He declared a boycott of his neighbor Qatar, fellow monarchy in the Gulf Cooperation Council because the Qataris were supporting Islamist groups. It’s really hard to do an economic boycott of a country that has the highest per capita income in the world and is open to the sea. And so the boycott of Qatar didn’t really work. He literally kidnapped the Prime Minister of Lebanon, who was an ally of his, tried to get him to create a political crisis back in Lebanon by resigning from Riyadh. MBS somehow thought this would hurt Hezbollah. In fact, it didn’t do anything to Hezbollah.
And finally, I think probably most importantly, and this will have the longest impact. He was very, very aggressive toward Iran in his rhetoric, in his open support for the maximum pressure policy that the first Trump administration followed and the tearing up of the Iran nuclear deal. He compared the Supreme Leader of Iran to Hitler. He threatened to take the fight into Iran. And the consequence of that was that in September of 2019, the Iranians fired missiles and drones at the most important Saudi oil facility, the gathering plant at Abqaiq, which processes about 50 percent of Saudi oil production, which is about 5 percent of the world’s oil production. You could argue—

LINDSAY:
It went offline for like forty-eight hours, correct?

GAUSE III:
Yeah. And it went offline for a couple of weeks actually. And the market was pretty stable then. There was excess supplies, so it really didn’t have a big price impact, but it had a huge impact, I would argue, on MBS in Saudi Arabia, not only because here’s the Iranians openly striking at the heart of Saudi wealth, but the United States did nothing in response.
And I think from that point, you see a much more low-key and realistic MBS, a real emphasis on regional stability, drawing back from Yemen, ceasefire with the Houthis, to the extent that when the United States went after the Houthis, both under the Biden administration and the Trump administration, second Trump administration, Saudis didn’t join in, composed his differences with Qatar, basically walked away from Lebanon and has been emphasizing regional stability. And most importantly, reestablished relations with Iran through Chinese mediation, which was probably the most interesting bit there.

LINDSAY:
Okay. I want to get to China a moment, but first I want to bring in the United States, Greg. This Valentine’s Day will mark eighty-one years since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt just off the Alta Conference, met with the King of Saudi Arabia and Bitter Lake in Egypt, part of the Suez Canal chain, really sort of cementing this relationship between the United States in Saudi Arabia. Donald Trump clearly has valued U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia. His first trip overseas in his first administration and in his second administration was to Saudi Arabia. What do you think President Trump’s vision for U.S.-Saudi relations are?

GAUSE III:
Well, I think President Trump visited Saudi Arabia on both of those occasions for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks, because that’s where the money is. And the president, I think, has a view of American economic interests, which are kind of coterminous with his own personal interests. So his family does a lot of business in the Gulf, including in Saudi Arabia, and he sees the Gulf as a place where America can do a lot of business, and many American industries do, particularly the arms industry.
But also, as we saw in the November 2025 visit by MBS to Washington, AI is becoming a potential area of cooperation between American companies in Saudi Arabia. We’ll have to see how that develops. But I think President Trump very much is interested in places that have ready cash and that… and that Saudi Arabia is really the only country in the world that can by its own actions affect the price of oil.
I mean, price of oil can be affected by weather, it can be affected by revolution, it can be affected by all sorts of things, but the Saudis can raise production and lower production in a way that really no other country can.

LINDSAY:
They’re the swing producer in oil markets as they like to say.

GAUSE III:
They are. They are. And that’s, that’s not as important right now when the market’s pretty, pretty oversupplied, but, you know, when the market’s not, like when the Russians invaded Ukraine, 2022, Saudi Arabia’s role becomes pretty central.

LINDSAY:
And I will note that the issue of human rights is not high on President Trump’s agenda. He has not made an issue out of the killing in 2018 of Jamal Khashoggi as candidate Biden did, though he walked that back as President Biden.

GAUSE III:
Right. And I think that this is not unusual… the Trump administration might be a little more bold faced about it, but every American administration has dealt with Saudi Arabia despite the human rights issues, despite the lack of democracy, because the Saudis have a lot of oil. I mean, that’s basically the key.
And they’re also the home to Mecca and Medina and, you know, our concentration in the post 9/11 world on Islamist radicalism and Sunni Salafi Islamist radical groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, the Saudis were important partners. And the fact that MBS, and this gets a little into domestic politics in Saudi, MBS has walked back from that strong public commitment to Salafi, Wahhabi Islam, this very kind of xenophobic and conservative and strict puritanical interpretation of Islam. The fact that MBS has walked back from that does have a ripple effect out into the Muslim world, I think.

LINDSAY:
How successful has that walk back been, Greg? Because my sense is among certain quarters of the Saudi public, that is their vision of the faith.

GAUSE III:
Every time I’m in Saudi, I ask the smart Saudis I know, where are the guys with the long beards? The folks who are real Salafis don’t trim their beards. So where are these guys? And the answers I get are really interesting. Some of them are clearly in jail and MBS has no compunction about putting people in jail. Some of them have just gone to ground. They have a long shadow of the future. They figure they can wake this guy out and that eventually they’ll come back.
But I think we have to realize that in the Sunni Muslim world, as opposed to the Shia world, as opposed to Iran, the men of religion are basically employees of the state. And for you as a man of religion to openly defy the state, yeah, you could end up in jail, but even if you are critical beyond a certain allowable point, which it’s hard to determine what that point is, you could lose your job and losing your job is a serious thing.
So the vast majority of the Saudi men of religion who are employees of various government ministries have basically toed the line on this kind of drawing back from the really strict social norms that were enforced in Saudi Arabia. And I have to tell you, I never thought I would see the kinds of things socially that I see in Saudi Arabia now.

LINDSAY:
Yeah. One of the things there is to what extent those changes are really going to sort of stick in society and become so accepted that people will resist efforts to try to walk things back and go back to some past. I want to bring in China into the conversation, Greg. What is China’s role in the Gulf in general, but specifically, are the Chinese looking to peel Riyadh away from the United States? Are they mostly there just to make sure they have access to oil, trying to provide stability and carve out a great power role for Beijing? How do you assess the Chinese role?

GAUSE III:
So I’m no expert on China, and I’m sure that there are other people that you can talk to will have a better sense of this, but I kind of see it from the consumer side, from the Middle East side, how are they looking at China? And in Saudi Arabia, China is seen as incredibly important economically. It’s Saudi Arabia’s biggest consumer of oil, of Saudi exports. China has become a major importer to Saudi Arabia. Well, some high-tech stuff, Huawei is there. They still prefer U.S. and Western products on that kind of high-tech level and on the military level. But China is a really important economic player. But I think that we saw in that November 2025 visit by MBS to D.C. that he still sees the United States as his primary partner, both in tech with the AI, in military and security issues, generally in economics, the public investment fund, which is his sovereign wealth fund, is not that heavily invested in China, much more heavily invested in the U.S. and the West.
And so back when Cold War with China was kind of the buzzword in Washington, and I would go to Saudi, Saudis would say, “Don’t make us choose.” I think that now that it’s kind of less of a buzzword, there’s the idea of Cold War with China, you don’t hear that as much, but Saudis say, “You’re our first choice.”

LINDSAY:
So let’s talk about some specific issues and we’ll begin with Gaza. Obviously, in the run-up to the October 7th attacks, there was a lot of speculation that MBS might agree to recognize Israel and join the Abraham Accords that sort of thinking, I think got drilled, at least in the short term, but where do you see the issue of Gaza sort of figuring into Saudi Arabia’s calculations and its dealings with the United States?

GAUSE III:
The war in Gaza raised the salience of the Palestinian issue in the Arab world, the Muslim world in general, and MBS does have ambitions for leadership roles in these two places and on these two platforms, so to speak. And so I think the cost for Israel of recognition by Saudi Arabia has gone up. In the pre-October 7th period, particularly if you talk to Biden administration folks, they said, “Well, the Saudis would be willing to settle for kind of Israeli commitments in the future to improve the situation for the Palestinians in West Bank in Gaza.” But after October 7th, with the increased salience of the Palestinian issue, it was on everybody’s phone in the Arab world, on the whole world. The Saudis kind of upped the ante and now they’re very specific that they want a pathway and timeline to Palestinian statehood, which of course the current Israeli government is not at all interested in giving them.
Now, the question I think is, you know, let’s think five years down the line, the Palestinian issue might be reduced in salience in terms of Arab and Muslim public opinion again. Not that Arabs don’t care about the Palestinian issue, but how high is it on their list of things they care about? Might there be an opening for Saudi-Israeli normalization? I think there could be, but there would have to be a turn in Israeli politics as well. If not toward Palestinian statehood, at least not, at least away from the current Israeli focus on, I would say, moving back from the Oslo Accords and increased settlement in the West Bank and increasing use of violence in the West Bank, and of course the violence in Gaza was horrific. There would need to be a change in Israel, maybe not toward Palestinian statehood, but the Saudis would want something.

LINDSAY:
So let’s sort of switch focus and look more close to Saudi Arabia, and that is the issue of Iran. The United States has built up its military forces in the region. I believe the USS Abraham Lincoln is now there, and there has been a lot of speculation that the Trump administration may attack Iran. This is happening at a time in which we are seeing a surge of protests by Iranians deeply disillusioned about the state of the economy, the corruption of their government.
As I understand it, last month when these deliberations seemed to be moving to a point in which United States might use military force, Riyadh said, “Please don’t.” And according to some news reports, refused to give the Trump administration overflight rights over Saudi airspace. Help me understand that sort of complex issue here where clearly Riyadh wants support from Washington, yet seems to be deeply skeptical of the Trump administration’s approach to Tehran.

GAUSE III:
Yeah. I think that this dates back to the shift that I talked about earlier in the Saudi view of where they want the region to go. In the first Trump administration, MBS would have been gangbusters behind a military attack on Iran. But the consequence of his tough rhetoric toward Iran was that Iran targeted Saudi Arabia. And the fear in Saudi Arabia is that a United States strike on Iran not only destabilizes the region, makes it a place people don’t want to do business, they don’t want to travel. And so much of MBS’s Vision 2030 domestic economic plan is tied up with increasing Saudi Arabia’s role in world investment, in world travel, in world trade. So they see that as anything that destabilizes the region, they see as negative, but also very immediately, they think that they’re going to be the target of the Iranian counterattack.
Now, when the Trump administration hit Iran back in the twelve-day war in June 2025, the Iranian response was very limited. Right, it was a short, small missile attack on the American basin cutter, which was basically…the Iranians told the U.S. that that was going to happen. They told the Qataris it was going to happen.

LINDSAY:
It was performative in that sense.

GAUSE III:
It was performative and it was kind of part of a deal where Trump basically told the Israelis, okay, war over. We’ve hit them, you’ve hit them, war over. I think that given the circumstances in Iran coming off this incredibly widespread set of protests against the regime earlier in January…that the Iranians would view an American attack,the Iranian regime would view an American attack now as aimed at changing the regime. And if they saw it as that, then all bets are off in terms of what their response would be. And I think they know that they tried to hit Israel a couple of times during the Gaza War, just not particularly successfully, but they can hit American and Gulf installations, the smaller Gulf states in Saudi Arabia. There’s American military bases in almost all of them, and of course, the oil facilities in all of these places, that these are very vulnerable targets.
And if the Iranians wanted to up the ante and perhaps bring in other international players, which I think that they think is in their interest, if the Americans hit them, then I think that they would be very tempted to hit targets in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States.

LINDSAY:
Greg, another country in the Gulf that is greatly concerned both about Iran and potential U.S. military action against Iran is the United Arab Emirates. One of the most striking things to me in recent months and years has been growing tensions between the Saudis and the Emiratis. And I’ve even seen people now writing about potential schism in the Arab world. We have, in essence, what’s referred to as the Abraham Accord countries on one side and the Islamic countries Saudi Arabia on the other side. This has played out in Yemen where the Saudis have targeted groups backed by the Yemenis, apparently told the Yemenis to get out. And they’re also the Emiratis and the Saudis backing different sides of the civil war in Sudan. Help me understand the nature of this conflict because, one, if you go back a number of years, would’ve thought for whatever differences existed between the two capitals, they were more marching in step as opposed to being at each other’s lapels.

GAUSE III:
Yeah. I mean, at the beginning of the MBS era, the UAE was Saudi Arabia’s closest partner. They had a joint military campaign in Yemen. So what’s separated them? Well, first, let me say just as background, I tend to not be as dramatic as some other people in describing the consequences of this split between Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It hasn’t gone to the point where, as the Saudis did earlier, they boycotted Qatar, and I would argue there’s good evidence that they tried to encourage opposition to the Emir of Qatar within his family. I haven’t seen anything like that happen with the UAE.
Yemen is a particularly neuralgic subject for Saudi Arabia, not for MBS, particularly for Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been involved in military actions in Yemen from the thirties, and they see Yemen as their backyard.
The split between the UAE and Saudi Arabia reflected in Yemen and these other places is, I think, a result of two different views of how to handle the instability in the region. The Saudis have, from about 2020, when I argue there was this shift in MBS’s perception of where Saudis should go. The Saudis are very much into, we deal with legitimate governments. We deal with the governments in power. We don’t want civil wars. We don’t want civil conflicts. We want legitimate governments. They always stress legitimacy. And the Emirates are more comfortable with the idea, “Well, these governments, they’re weak. There’s all sorts of groups in them. We’ll just play with these groups.” In many ways, this was the Iranian strategy for a long time. Still is. The Iranians tend not to have state allies. They have non-state actor allies, Hezbollah, the Houthis, various militias in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And the Emirates, and interestingly enough, the Israelis, which is where you get this Abraham Accord axis talk, which I think is exaggerated, but there it is. The Israelis are kind of playing that game in Syria right now, backing Druze militias that are opposed to the new central government at Damascus. So I think there’s this difference of opinion, it’s, it’s reflected in Yemen. The Saudis were very direct in Yemen because they see Yemen as their backyard and they’re not going to let anybody else mess with it.
You see it in Sudan, maybe in Somalia to some extent, but I don’t think that this is going to lead to a huge schism between the UAE and Saudi Arabia. In the end, all of these monarchical regimes, I think, understand that they hang together or they hang separately. And so their interests, fundamental domestic political interests are such that I think that that will prevent the schism from becoming too large. And in the end, Washington will also tell them to—

LINDSAY:
Well, I was going to ask you on that score, what has the Trump administration done looking at this sort of intramural fighting between the Saudis and the Emiratis? Is it essentially hands off? Are they trying to mediate, trying to help one side versus the other triumph?

GAUSE III:
It doesn’t seem like the Trump administration has picked sides. The only thing that we know from the public record, at least as far as I can tell, is that Secretary Rubio did call both the Saudis and the Emiratis after the Saudis bombed this shipment of Emirati materiale that went into Yemen that was going to go to the Emirati’s allies in Yemen. And one gets the impression that Secretary Rubio said, “What’s going on? You guys got to cool it.”
Now, the Trump administration has been in touch with obviously the Saudis and the Emiratis regarding Iran. And I think that what they’re hearing from these two parties is the same thing, which is, we worry about the consequences of an American military attack on Iran because we’re not sure that the kinds of attacks you will make will actually destabilize this regime and lead to its fall. And even if it did, we’re not sure who comes next. If , you know, whatcomes next is a military regime headed up by the revolutionary guard, that might be worse.

LINDSAY:
Well, it may also be worried about chaos. I mean, again, if you look at Libya, you lost a strongman and we have not gotten stability in its wake. And I think there’s a lot of concern about where Syria’s going to go.
Just on the question of Syria, how do the Saudis view what has happened in Syria and what are they trying to affect as an outcome there?

GAUSE III:
So on the Syrian front, they’re very much in favor of a strong central government under Ahmed Sharaa. The Saudis were the ones who introduced Sharaa to President Trump on his visit to Riyadh back in May of 2025, which led to the lifting of American sanctions for the most part on Sharaa personally. There was a price on his head, we had put a price on his head when he was an Al-Qaeda guy and on Syria in general, sanctions on Syria in general. So the Saudis are very supportive of Ahmed Sharaa.
The Emiratis, maybe not so much, but I don’t get the impression that they’re supporting other parties within Syria. The issue for Sharaa is really the Kurds who form the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the SDF, which we supported in the anti-ISIS campaign. And just in the last couple of weeks, Sharaa has moved and reduced the power of the SDF. This is, I think, a difficult issue for the U.S., but the Trump administration has basically said, “Okay, we’re with Sharaa.” The issue, of course, is the SDF now—

LINDSAY:
Not for the first time that the United States has changed its attitude or position toward the Kurds. Long history there.

GAUSE III:
Well, the Kurds throughout the Middle East know that, that American support is always temporary. And so, one of the issues though that comes up here is that the SDF, the Kurds, were running these prisons where ISIS guys were. And we have been trying to transfer some number of them into Iraqi prisons.
But the whole issue of does the movement by Sharaa and the central government against the SDF lead to a larger resurgence of ISIS? That’s, that’s a big deal. Sharaa also has to worry about Druze militias supported by Israel. He has to worry about elements of the old regime in the Western part of the country and that Akia province where there was violence back in the spring of 2025.
So, he’s got a lot of problems, but the Saudis are very much in favor of a strong central government in Syria. In that sense, they’re on the same page with the Turks who were the original allies of Sharaa and his group. And so that’s where the Saudis are on Syria.

LINDSAY:
Okay. Greg, I want to close by talking about Saudi Arabia relations with a country that is not Arab, but is Islamic, and that’s Pakistan. Back in September of last year, the two countries signed a mutual defense treaty. There has long been talk that there is this agreement between Islamabad and Riyadh that if Iran goes nuclear, Pakistan will provide Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons or put it under the Pakistani nuclear umbrella. Just give me a sense of what that relationship is like and how the Trump administration is viewing it and whether it’s sort of set up any red lights to the Saudis in terms of their relationship with the Pakistanis.

GAUSE III:
So I think there was an enormous amount of exaggeration when the Saudi-Pakistani military agreement was signed, was announced. We don’t know what the text is. I’ve never seen a public…I’ve never seen the text released in public.

LINDSAY:
That’s because it hasn’t been posted on the web as best I know.

GAUSE III:
There we go. There was a lot of speculation. Some of it, occasioned by a couple of loose-lipped references by the Pakistani defense minister, that Saudi Arabia was now under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella. The Pakistanis quickly walked that back, including the defense minister himself, quickly walked that back. And that makes a lot of sense, it seems to me. I mean, the Pakistani nuclear arsenal is meant to deter and in extremists fight the Indians. And for it to be diverted to other purposes, I think would be a profound change in Pakistani defense strategy. So the Pakistanis have always had a military relationship with Saudi Arabia. There have been Pakistani troops stationed in Saudi Arabia at various times, the seventiess and the nineties.
And for Pakistan, of course, Saudi Arabia is a useful financial partner. Pakistan always is in search of funds, right? But I think that the idea that the Pakistanis are going to, say, attack Iran if Iran attacks Saudi Arabia would be a real stretch. And conversely, the idea that the Saudis would take steps against India when the next Pakistani-Indian border skirmish happens is also farfetched. Saudi Arabia does eight times more trade with India than it does with Pakistan. India is a growth market for Saudi energy exports. The Saudis for the last twenty years have been cultivating a better relationship with India. And of course, there’s huge Indian populations in Saudi and throughout the Gulf. Pakistani populations too. And one of the things that all the Gulf countries have wanted to do is stay out of India and Pakistani fights because they don’t want to stir up that possibility within their own countries between two large expatriate labor communities.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I’ll close up The President’s Inbox for this week. My guest has been F. Gregory Gause, associate fellow at the Middle East Institute. Greg, thank you very much for coming on the President’s Inbox.

GAUSE III:
My pleasure, Jim.

LINDSAY:
Today’s episode was produced by Justin Schuster with Director of Video, Jeremy Sherlick, and Director of Podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. Our recording engineers were Jorge Flores and Bryan Mendives. Production assistance was provided by Oscar Berry and Kaleah Haddock.