It’s looking increasingly like Donald Trump had two voices in his ear when he was persuaded to launch American airpower against the Iranian regime, not just that of Israel’s Binjamin Netanyahu but that too of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman—and that MBS has been playing an adventurous but ultimately reckless game that has exposed his Gulf neighbours to massive risk.

It seems that the Saudi Crown Prince not only welcomed but actively helped to shape this conflict—despite Riyadh’s recent Chinese‑brokered rapprochement with Tehran. This appearance of a Saudi “double game” is becoming central to how analysts explain both the timing of US escalation and the relatively calibrated nature of Iran’s retaliation against Saudi territory in the war’s early stages. 

The Washington Post reported on Day 1 of the conflict that Trump’s order for “sweeping attacks on Iran” came “after weeks of lobbying by two key US allies in the Middle East—Israel and Saudi Arabia,” noting that “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private calls to Trump over the past month advocating military action, despite publicly supporting diplomacy.” 

On March 15, a New York Times report went further, stating that “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been in regular contact with Donald Trump during the ongoing conflict,” and that he “urged Donald Trump to intensify strikes against Iran,” telling him to “keep hitting the Iranians hard.” 

These reports couldn’t be clearer: MBS not merely green‑lit the US-Israeli escalation, but urged them into the war, casting him as an informal co‑architect, even as official Saudi statements have stuck to careful language about de‑escalation and “protecting civilians on all sides.” 

Saudi Arabia’s posture stands in some contrast to the effort it initiated three years ago with the support of China, to lower the temperature with Tehran. In March 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced in Beijing that they had agreed to restore diplomatic relations, reopening embassies after a seven‑year rupture. Foreign Policy described the China‑brokered accord as a “diplomatic milestone” that “appeased the seven‑year rivalry between the two Gulf powers,” while CNBC quoted former US ambassador James Westphal arguing that from Riyadh’s perspective, normalization with Iran “clears hurdles in its reform and economic transformation efforts,” because “ongoing conflicts with Iran hinder progress and delay their advancements.” Analysts told CNBC the deal was a “much needed pressure valve amid heightened regional tensions,” even if “significant changes are far from guaranteed.” 

This may explain why, at the outset of the conflict, Iran’s opening retaliatory rounds were letting Saudi Arabia off more lightly by far than its Gulf neighbours. But now it must be looking to the Iranians that Saudi Arabia, looking to insulate itself while the costs of its Vision 2030 and Noem projects were rising so sharply by signalling Tehran that it wasn’t in the regime change business, was just hedging its bets all along. 

This apparent double game appears to have had at least three aims. One was to outsource the risk of attacking Iran and keep itself out of the firing line. Another was to play both sides of the US-China competition and avoid making any definitive choice between them. And a third has been about how this all plays at home and across the Arab world. By publicly owning the China‑brokered détente, MBS has presented himself as a statesman reducing the risk of war; by privately backing Trump’s offensive, he presents himself as the Gulf leader who finally seized the chance to cut Iran down to size. 

The trouble is, these two stories are starting to collide. As international media keep quoting lines like “keep hitting the Iranians hard” and “weeks of lobbying by Israel and Saudi Arabia,” it becomes harder for Riyadh to sustain the fiction that it is merely a cautious bystander. Other GCC countries will now be asking some hard questions, like: “Look what you’ve done. What did you think you were up to?”. With the Gulf states now contemplating years of effort and expenditure to repair the infrastructural and reputational damage this war has done, MBS will have some serious explaining to do.

© Eurasia Review