Amid regional setbacks, how Iran and Saudi Arabia kept the peace in 2024

The past year of conflicts in the Middle East have led to major tectonic shifts across the region.

One of the most significant developments has been the weakening of Iran's so-called "Axis of Resistance" – a coalition of Tehran-backed actors, including Hezbollah and other groups across Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

Iran's decline marks a major change in the balance of power and influence, which will likely manifest in profound though unpredictable ways throughout the Middle East in 2025 and beyond.

Yet, for all of Tehran's regional setbacks this year, the Iranian-Saudi detente has remained on track. This is notable especially given all the tests that Iranian-Saudi normalisation faced this year.

Diplomatic relations between Tehran and Riyadh renormalised in March 2023 through an agreement brokered by China, Oman, and Iraq.

Both sides have taken steps to keep this detente on track and avoid a return to the sky-high tensions of the 2016-21 period, despite ongoing regional conflicts, highlighting a pragmatic commitment to stability.

Prior to this agreement, relations had dramatically deteriorated with the Iranian-Saudi crisis of January 2016. Following the Kingdom's execution of the Shia cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, Iranians attacked Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran in anger. Riyadh then severed diplomatic ties with Tehran.

That episode followed years of friction in bilateral affairs intensifying with Iran and Saudi Arabia challenging the other in various civil wars and political crises throughout the Middle East, from Bahrain to Lebanon and Syria to Yemen.

Yet, by April 2021, Iranian and Saudi officials began talks in Baghdad which later manifested in the renormalisation of relations 23 months later.

Throughout 2024, symbolic moments underscored the warming of bilateral relations. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)'s meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in October and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan's attendance at the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's funeral five months earlier both spoke to the warming of bilateral ties.

So did Saudi Arabia's condemnation of Israel's attack against Iran in October.

"It is becoming apparent that the Saudi ruling elite are becoming more confident that they made a strategic choice with re-establishing ties in 2023, and the fact that things did not get worse is welcome," Aziz Alghashian, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation Middle East (ORF-ME), tells TRT World.

Mutual interests in detente

Iran faces major dilemmas in the aftermath of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the Syrian regime's fall earlier this month.

Therefore, at this point, Tehran has no interest in any reversal of the improvements in relationships with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states.

They have been key to Iran's "Neighbours First" foreign policy strategy, which seeks to stabilise relations with regional neighbours while the West continues putting pressure on the Islamic Republic.

Saudi Arabia also understands the extent to which Iran could remain a major threat to the Kingdom and does not seek hostilities with Tehran, especially as the leadership in Riyadh remains focused on advancing Vision 2030 (Saudi Arabia's ambitious economic diversification plan unveiled in 2016), which hinges on stability at home and in the region.

Within this context, Riyadh has adopted a carefully balanced approach.

Rather than supporting Israel in its confrontations with Iran, Saudi Arabia is choosing to steer clear of the hostilities between Tehran and Tel Aviv while making it clear to Iran that it is not in any way supporting, let alone facilitating, Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic.

This stance reflects Saudi Arabia's desire to de-escalate regional tensions and avoid being drawn into conflict.

Impact of Gaza war

Israel's nearly 15-month-old war on Gaza has, to some extent, highlighted how Iran and Saudi Arabia maintain some degree of alignment vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue.

Tehran frequently depicts its foreign policy as being in line with the wider Arab-Islamic world and presents itself as playing a leadership role in the Middle East on the Palestinian issue.

Without a doubt, Iranian and Saudi diplomats participating in an Arab League-Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) emergency summit this year, following one held in 2023 early on in Israel's war on Gaza, was a boost to this Iranian narrative.

Although both countries oppose Israeli aggression in Gaza, Tehran's support for armed groups in the region, for example in Yemen and Lebanon, is problematic in Riyadh's eyes.

"The war has shown that Saudi Arabia and Iran do agree more on the basics of important issues such as Palestine. There is disagreement on the manner of support, but agree on the need to…cooperate," notes Alghashian.

One consequence of Israel's war on Gaza is that it has halted expansion of the Abraham Accords' scope, meaning that there is hardly any possibility of new Arab states joining the Israeli normalisation camp under current circumstances.

Even if a ceasefire in Gaza were to go into effect today, it is doubtful that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states could enter the Abraham Accords. For its own geopolitical and security interests, Iran welcomes this reality.

"Events in Gaza dampened Saudi Arabia's enthusiasm for normalising relations with Israel. This helped relations with Iran as did some Saudi statements regarding the necessity of setting up a Palestinian state, even though that goal remains even more out of reach than it did before,” Shireen Hunter, an honorary fellow at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, who served as an Iranian diplomat before 1979, tells TRT World.

Defence cooperation

Perhaps the most significant sign of progress in Iranian-Saudi relations in 2024 has been the military cooperation between the two countries.

Last month, Saudi Arabia's top military official, Chief of General Staff General Fayyad al-Ruwaili, paid a visit to Iran for discussions with his Iranian counterpart, General Mohammad Bagheri, regarding Saudi Arabia's security cooperation with Iran.

This visit followed previous engagements between military delegations of the two countries earlier this year.

Also, in October, Iran and Saudi Arabia's navies took part in joint drills in the Sea of Oman, and the Iranian, Omani, and Russian navies participated in IMEX 2024.

The series of naval drills in the Indian Ocean of which Saudi Arabia was one of the observers aimed at bolstering "collective security in the region, expand(ing) multilateral cooperation, and display(ing) the goodwill and capabilities to safeguard peace, friendship, and maritime security."

Mindful of how hostile relations were between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the 2016-21 period, the military dimensions of the Tehran-Riyadh detente are, to say the least, significant.

Economic dynamics

Following the restoration of bilateral relations, some Iranians were of the belief that the March 2023 diplomatic agreement could lead to significant Saudi investment in the Iranian economy and a boost in bilateral trade.

In the immediate aftermath of the agreement, Saudi Arabia's Finance Minister Mohammed al Jadaan addressed the Financial Sector Conference in Riyadh, saying that Saudi investments in Iran could "very quickly" take place.

"There are a lot of opportunities for Saudi investments in Iran. We don't see impediments as long as the terms of any agreement would be respected," stated al Jadaan.

But on this front, Tehran has had reason for disappointment.

"Iran's hopes of economic boost from its better relations did not materialise. However, according to Iranian news sites the number of flights between (Saudi Arabia) and the city of Mashhad, a major Shia pilgrimage site, increased. This could mean that Saudi Shias are now allowed to visit Iran's holy sites," Hunter tells TRT World.

The 'New Syria'

The evolving situation in post-Assad Syria could have major implications for the state of Iranian-Saudi relations.

Given how much Tehran stands to lose now that the Syrian government has fallen, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab monarchies may find relief in the fact that Iran's influence in the Levant is set to diminish.

Nonetheless, Syria's future is highly uncertain, and it is difficult to predict how, in practice, the end of Baathist rule in the country will impact Iranian-Saudi relations.

"If the Gulf countries can successfully integrate Syria into their partnerships through investments, incentives, and genuine support for stability, Iran's grip on the region will weaken," Gökhan Ereli, the Gulf Studies Coordinator at Ankara-based ORSAM, tells TRT World.

"This approach could also demonstrate to the Syrian people that returning to Iran is not their only option. Overall, this development shifts the balance of Saudi-Iran relations in favor of the Gulf states, altering the regional power dynamics," he adds.

Hunter believes that Riyadh, pleased by the potential collapse of the Damascus regime, and the subsequent reduction – if not elimination – of Iran's influence in Syria, may have less incentive to maintain improved ties with the Islamic Republic.

Yet, she caveated that point by observing that "with growing Turkish influence in Syria and also possibly in Iraq, Saudi Arabia might use Iran to balance Türkiye."

The China factor

Factors outside the region could also keep Iran and Saudi Arabia invested in maintaining their detente.

For example, with China emerging as an increasingly important partner to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, policymakers in Tehran and Riyadh are aware that moves taken by either side which undermine the March 2023 agreement would constitute a blow to the Asian giant's geopolitical standing in the Middle East.

An unraveling of the renormalisation deal would undermine Beijing's efforts to present China as an ascendant actor in the Middle East, capable of advancing the cause of peace in the region through its diplomacy. With neither the Iranians nor Saudis seeking to upset China, this factor could give one optimism about the future of Tehran-Riyadh relations.

Addressing this dynamic from the Iranian side, Javad Heiran-Nia, the director of the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran, notes, "The guarantor of the Iran-Saudi agreement is China, and it will not be easy for Tehran to disrupt this agreement because it will negatively affect relations with China and will shake the prospects of long-term cooperation between Tehran and Beijing."

Trump 2.0

Meanwhile, with President-elect Donald Trump returning to the White House early next year, the Iranians are preparing for a "maximum pressure 2.0" campaign led by the US.

Given the chances of Trump's administration being increasingly aggressive toward Tehran, Iranian officials can likely take some comfort in the fact that Saudi Arabia will probably not join any anti-Iranian alliance or coalition led by the US.

With Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council members set not to partner with a renewed "maximum pressure" agenda by the US in 2025, the second Trump administration's quest to further squeeze Iran may prove less effective than it did during his first term.

That said, Riyadh could be forced to strike some delicate balancing acts. An increasingly hawkish and anti-Iranian US administration taking actions vis-a-vis Iran could test the Tehran-Riyadh detente in significant ways, according to Alghashian.

"I think the Saudi willingness to develop economic relations with Trump, yet distance itself from their likely antagonistic stance on Iran, is a challenge that Saudi has to manage," he tells TRT World.

Nonetheless, it is worth seriously considering the possibility of Saudi Arabia leveraging its relationships with both the US and Iran in ways that could position the Kingdom as somewhat of a diplomatic bridge between the two sides during Trump's second term.

Some experts do believe that Saudi Arabia may do just that, ultimately using Riyadh's influence to lower friction between Washington and Tehran.

It appears as though "Iran will count on Riyadh's mediating role more than Qatar and Oman in the future," assesses Heiran-Nia.