Transformations in Saudi Strategy Towards the Middle East in Light of Regional and International Changes (2016-2026)
the international and political journal
Abstract
Since 2016, the Middle East has witnessed numerous regional and international transformations that have contributed to reshaping the region's strategic environment. This has prompted regional powers to reformulate their priorities and tools for managing their foreign relations. Consequently, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has emerged as one of the most important regional actors. Saudi Arabia has adopted a flexible strategy focused on utilizing the elements of national power, diversifying international partnerships, and adapting to the rapid transformations in the international system, in line with the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030. Therefore, this research aims to analyze the determinants of the transformation in Saudi strategy towards the Middle East, examine the repercussions of internal, regional, and international changes on Saudi foreign policy orientations, study the most prominent regional issues that have shaped Saudi Arabia's approach to the external environment, and anticipate the future of the Saudi role. In light of ongoing strategic shifts and competition among major powers, this research is based on the premise that Saudi strategy has undergone a significant transformation over the past decade. This transformation is characterized by a shift from reliance on traditional tools to a more comprehensive strategic approach that integrates economic, diplomatic, and soft power, as well as building diverse partnerships. This has begun to enhance Saudi Arabia's ability to protect its interests and solidify its international standing as a pivotal regional power. Consequently, the research concludes that the transformations in the Middle East's strategic environment have contributed to a reshaping of Saudi strategic priorities, making them more inclined towards building international and, in particular, economic partnerships, strengthening regional diplomacy, and linking foreign policy to the objectives of Vision 2030. The research also indicates that Saudi Arabia's future will remain contingent on its ability to balance the requirements of regional security with the demands of its national interest, as well as its capacity to navigate the rapidly evolving structure of the international system.
References
Alsrour, Abeer Aqeel Mohammad. “Recalibrated Strategic Hedging: Explaining the Evolution of Saudi Arabia’s Regional Foreign Policy (2010–2025) through Strategic Hedging and Regional Security Complex Theory.” Frontiers in Political Science 8 (2026). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2026.1952289.
“Kingdom of Change: Saudi Arabia’s
Evolving Foreign Policy,” Royal United Services Institute, 2023.
Baghernia, Niloufar. “China’s Marginal Involvement in the 2023 Iran-Saudi Arabia Reconciliation.” Asian Affairs (2024): 34–51.
Keynoush, Banafsheh “The Saudi-Iran Deal: A New Chapter in Middle East Diplomacy,” Middle East Institute, 2023, https://www.mei.edu /.
Borck, Tobias Seeking Stability Amidst Disorder: The Foreign Policies of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, 2010–20 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), 53–80.
Buzan, Barry, and Ole Wæver. Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Saudi Vision 2030 at Ten.” July 6, 2026. https://www.csis.org/.
Congressional Research Service. Saudi Arabia: Background and U.S. Relations. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.
European Parliamentary Research Service, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Policy (Brussels: European Parliament, 2025), https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2025/777922/EPRS_BRI(2025)777922_EN.pdf.
European Parliamentary Research Service. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Policy. Brussels: European Parliament, 2025. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/.
Financial Times. “The Realignment of the Middle East.” August 18, 2026.
Finley, Mark and Jim Krane, “The OPEC+ Phenomenon of Saudi-Russian Cooperation and Implications for US-Saudi Relations” (Houston: Baker Institute for Public Policy, October 18, 2022),
Flynn, et al. “The International Political Economy of Saudi Arabia: Sovereign Fund and Foreign Policy.” Digest of Middle East Studies (2024) .
Gray, Colin S. The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Ighani, Helia Managing the Saudi-Iran Rivalry: Insights from a CFR Workshop (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, October 2016), https://www.cfr.org/reports/managing-saudi-iran-rivalry .
Hetou, Ghaidaa “Saudi Arabia,” in Comparative Grand Strategy: A Framework and Cases, ed. Thierry Balzacq et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 239–261.
Hudson, Valerie M. Foreign Policy Analysis: Classic and Contemporary Theory. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Hwang, Won-June. “Forging Reconciliation Despite Antagonism: Examining the Normalisation of Ties Between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023.” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies 11, no. 3 (2024).
Alterman, Jon B. “China’s Saudi-Iran Deal: What It Means for the Middle East,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2023, https://www.csis.org/
Fulton, Jonathan China’s Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (London: Routledge, 2019.
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Vision 2030. Riyadh: Government of Saudi Arabia.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, “The Al-Ula Declaration and the Future of Gulf Cooperation,” Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, January 2021, https://agsiw.org/.
Mabon, Simon and Edward Wastnidge, Saudi Arabia and Iran: The Struggle to Shape the Middle East (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022).
Mason, Robert Foreign Policy in Iran and Saudi Arabia: Economics and Diplomacy in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2022).
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Foreign Policy and Vision. Riyadh: Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. “Joint Trilateral Statement by the People’s Republic of China, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.” March 10, 2023. الموقع الرسمي لوزارة الخارجية الصينية: https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/.
Mustofa, Ahmad Zainal. “Kepentingan China sebagai Aktor di Balik Rekonsiliasi Hubungan Arab Saudi dan Iran.” Politika: Jurnal Ilmu Politik 14, no. 2 (2023): 253–268.
Nye, Joseph S., Jr. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: PublicAffairs, 2004.
Partrick, Neil Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016).
Reuters. “Saudi Arabia Bets on Defensive Alliances to Deter Slide into War.” August 12, 2026.
Reuters. “Saudi Aramco Offers Crude Outside Hormuz to Some Asian Refiners.” August 17, 2026.
Reuters. “Turkey Lays Out Plans for Defence Pact with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.” August 13, 2026.
Reuters. “Yemen at Highest Risk of Major Conflict since 2022 Truce, UN Warns.” August 13, 2026.
U.S. Congressional Research Service. Saudi Arabia: Background and U.S. Relations. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.
Ulrichsen, Kristian Coates. “The Qatar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, and Implications.” The International Spectator 52, no. 4 (2017).
Ulrichsen, Kristian Coates. The Gulf States in International Political Economy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
United Nations Security Council, Letter Dated 26 March 2015 from the Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General, S/2015/217, March 26, 2015, https://undocs.org/S/2015/217.
Wang, et al. “Saudi Arabia’s US-China Hedging Strategy and Its Regional Impact.” Middle East Policy, first published December 7, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1111/mepo.70027
Wang, Xiaoyu, Salman K. Al-Dhafeeire, and Degang Sun. “Saudi Arabia’s US-China Hedging Strategy and Its Regional Impact.” Middle East Policy 32, no. 4 (2025): 18–34.
Zhang, Yuan. “Crucial yet Limited: China’s Role in the Saudi-Iranian Rapprochement.” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies 18, no. 3 (2024): 243–259.
Additional Files
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Journal Policies
All articles published in the International and Political Journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This means that the Authors can:
The journal allows reuse and remixing of content in accordance with a Creative Commons license.
Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
Policy of publishing in The International and Political Journal
The journal is committed to the ethics of scientific publishing, and according to the publication ethics report of the journal.
The decision to publish is based on the value of the scientific research, to what extent it meets the conditions of publication approved, the declared policy of the journal, and its specialty.
It is based on the principles of the scientific honesty, and originality of research submitted for publication. It deals with the names of reviewers and their reports with great confidentiality.
The opinions published in the journal reflect the views of the authors, and not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board.
The journal does not adhere to the publication of whatever comes to it. The time and place of publication are subject to technical considerations adopted in the editorial plan of the journal.
The journal does not abide to return the research papers to their owners whether accepted for publication or not.
The researcher is to be provided with the acceptance of publication within about 24 WEEKS. As for publication, the editorial board reserves its right in priority of publishing. The arrangement of the research papers in the same issue is subject to technical standards.
Diversify of publishing papers from solid universities and scientific centers from inside and outside Iraq is preferable.
The journal maintains hard copies and electronic archive of the published issues in addition to the publication of the research papers.
The journal also publishes the issues electronically through the website of the journal, and the official website of the Iraqi academic journals, and makes it possible to download. Thus, documenting the intellectual property of the research papers and publishing them internationally is achieved.
Terms of publication may be modified when necessary with no previous notice.
The researcher obtains a copy of his research paper. If he wishes to buy acopy of the journal, the volume costs ID 10000 from inside Iraq and $8from the outside.
The Editorial Board considers that the researcher who submits his research paper for publication in the journal has already read the terms and conditions of publication and agreed on them.
The journal publishes the research papers of the postgraduate students in special issues for this purpose.
Stages of editing and publishing:
The researcher undertakes that his research has never been published before, and has not been submitted for publication to other sides until the end of the evaluation procedures and the acceptance of publication in the journal.
The research papers submitted for publication are to subjected for preliminary examination by the editorial board to determine their suitability for the journal specialization, its policy and the safety of scientific research procedures, and then to indicate its eligibility for scientific evaluation. The editorial board may apologize for accepting the research all together or require the researcher to amend it in accordance with the journal policy before sending it to editors.
After conducting the scientific evaluation, the research paper returns back to the researcher to make the required amendments within a maximum of two weeks.
A copy of the final research paper is to be submitted to the secretariat of the journal a hard copy and a soft copy on a CD, in both Word and PDF format. The researcher is fully responsible for the typing and linguistic mistakes after submitting the full research paper on a CD.
Plagiarism checker
All research papers are subjected to Turnitin program to uncover plagiarism before being sent to scientific evaluation. The researcher undertakes a written pledge to take the legal and moral responsibility, in the event of the emergence of plagiarism or taking from the efforts of other researchers, without a reference to them. The journal uses appropriate anti-plagiarism software, such as Turnitin to check for plagiarism.
Dealing with Allegations of Research Misconduct
The Journal shall take reasonable and serious steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication.
Scientific Evaluation:
Scientific evaluation strengthens the research paper submitted to the journal and helps to take the appropriate decision by the editorial board to publish it. It also benefits the researchers to improve and correct their research papers.
The research paper is sent to three evaluators in the same specialty to evaluate
