Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as well as Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Riyadh on Wednesday during his first visit to the kingdom since he assumed the post last August. The visit comes as the specter of an Israel-Iran war grows.
Araghchi arrived Wednesday on the first leg of a regional tour, according to the Saudi Press Agency. Araghchi's first visit to Saudi Arabia as foreign minister comes as Riyadh grows increasingly concerned over potential blowback from an imminent Israeli strike on Iran following Tehran's retaliatory missile attack on Israel last week for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut along with Abbas Nilforoushan, deputy commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Operations.
During Araghchi's meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed, the two “expressed their shared satisfaction over the continuing positive trend in bilateral relations and underlined the need for further promotion of bilateral cooperation,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei wrote on X.
Araghchi also held one-on-one talks with Prince Faisal to discuss the latest developments in the region, with a focus on Gaza and Lebanon. The two foreign ministers “stressed that war on Gaza and Lebanon must stop and humanitarian assistance must be allowed to be provided to refugees and displaced persons immediately,” according to Baghaei.
The meetings in Saudi Arabia took place during a tense time for Iran, as it awaits a response to a ballistic missile attack it launched at Israel last Tuesday.
Options for Israel's retaliation have reportedly ranged from striking Iran's oil facilities to attacking its nuclear infrastructure. The former is a disturbing prospect for Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, whose leadership fears that an attack on Iranian oil could prompt Iran to respond in kind and strike oil assets in the region, as it has done in the past against Aramco.
Tehran has reportedly told Gulf states that it would be “unacceptable” to allow Israel to use their airspace for a strike on Iran, one senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday.
Just one day before the meeting, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud. In a post on X on Tuesday, Austin said that the call was to “review our efforts to promote security in the Middle East and underscore US commitment to KSA defense.” Although the details of the call remain under wraps, it is clear that Saudi Arabia is looking for reassurance surrounding its own security and the security of its assets should the situation between Israel and Iran continue to spiral — and particularly if the US intervenes.
Riyadh has in recent weeks accelerated its rapprochement with its main regional rival, Tehran, hoping to get ahead of any disruption to the Gulf's energy infrastructure. China brokered a deal in March 2023 between Riyadh and Tehran to restore diplomatic ties and revive a 2001 security cooperation agreement following seven years of severed bilateral ties, yet progress on the deal has largely stalled. Besides the two nations reopening their embassies, the deal has yet to lead to a spike in political or economic collaboration.
Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East analyst at the US risk intelligence firm RANE, said that Wednesday's meetings signal a step forward, but only to an extent. "If there was progress made, it was probably implicit progress in which Saudi Arabia was trying to reassure Iran that it would remain neutral despite the escalating tensions between Iran, Israel and the United States," Bohl told Al-Monitor. "I think the jury may still be out on where their relationship will go."
The expert sees two main possibilities for the future of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia — the first being a stay of the status quo "in which Saudi Arabia continues to showcase neutrality and tries to stay out of the regional war, and Iran is willing to accept that position given that Iran is eager not to be encircled."
Bohl added, however, "Should Israeli and Iranian attacks on one another escalate . . . the US becomes more likely to intervene on behalf of Israel against Iran. That last factor is most important. If the United States ever does intervene directly against Iran aggressively, it will almost assuredly mean that Saudi Arabia and Iran's relations will take a major dive."
In this case, "Iran will be strongly tempted to hit oil sites in the Gulf in order to threaten an energy shock to convince Washington to change its own policies toward Iran and towards Israel," he said.
The next and least likely scenario would follow a resolution to the Gaza war and subsequent regional de-escalation within the next six months to a year. "That would then allow Saudi Arabia to jump back on its normalization path with Israel, but that normalization path, I think, is now permanently altered by Saudi Arabia's interest in avoiding escalation against Iran," Bohl said.
Ahead of this week's visit, Araghchi had warned Israel on Tuesday that any attack on his country's infrastructure will be met with a "more severe and powerful counterattack."
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