Saudi Arabia off-limits for strikes on Iran

On the morning of Saturday, Feb. 28, US President Donald Trump announced the beginning of a military campaign against Iran, in which America is taking part alongside Israel. They named the operation Epic Fury.

Its ultimate goal is to topple the mullah regime in Iran. However, it lacks a clear strategy or executable objectives, as the American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic in late February.

The campaign began with the assassination of the head of the regime, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in a way that cannot be compared with the kidnapping and trial of the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

However, both revolve around the idea of removing the head of the regime in order to eliminate it.

Naturally, the Iranian supreme leader does not have a deputy, unlike the case with the Vice President of Venezuela Delcy Rodriguez, who replaced Maduro and managed the affairs of the state in cooperation with the US.

It certainly does not resemble the regimes of Bashar Assad or Saddam Hussein, because it is not based on a single individual, but rather on a cohesive system that includes a group of councils that run the state.

Among them is an elected council of leadership experts, consisting of 88 members representing all Iranian regions, who voted on Sunday to elect Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, as the new supreme leader.

It is also known that Khamenei recommended granting extensive powers after his death specifically to Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council in Iran.

Alongside them are the tasks assigned to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the intelligence services, which are responsible for securing the revolution internally and externally, stopping external threats and internal disturbances, meaning that the matter is not easy at all. 

Any Saudi military response to Iran, assuming it occurs, would be limited and for sovereign reasons only. The Iranians would be notified of its location and would never be caught off-guard

The aforementioned justifies why Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, stood against the war on Iran during Trump’s first term.

As journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser mentioned in their 2022 book, “The Divider,” former Vice President Mike Pence suggested attacking Iran in early 2020.

When Gen. Milley asked him for the reason, Pence replied: “Because they are evil.”

The vastly experienced general responded that there are many evil people in the world, and America will certainly not go to war with every villain.

He stated that attacking Iran would lead to a broad, uncontrollable war.

Milley even met Netanyahu in Jerusalem that same year and warned him against inciting Trump toward war in Iran.

His method of handling the Iran file kept the situation as it was during Trump’s first term.

Among the indications is that the US stockpile of the THAAD missile system does not exceed 543 missiles, which is everything that has been received since it began operating in 2010, or 16 years ago.

In the first war with Iran in June 2025, the US launched one-quarter of these missiles within 12 days.

The cost of a single missile exceeds $13 million, which is about four times the average cost of the Iranian ballistic missile that it intercepts.

This takes us back to the year 1954, when US President Dwight Eisenhower asked Gen. Matthew Ridgway, the former commander in the Korean War, about what America needed to support French forces in South Vietnam.

He replied that they needed nothing less than eight years and eight military divisions. His advice was a failure par excellence, as it embroiled America in a war that lasted for almost 20 years and resulted in losses estimated at about 58,000 soldiers.

The later confirms what Emile Hokayem, a military and security expert on Middle Eastern affairs, stated in a press piece published by the Financial Times a short while ago.

In his view, the superiority shown by America and Israel at the beginning of the war may seem impressive for a while, but the most important factor is how the resulting regional chaos will be managed.

America will not be able to resolve it during the Trump administration’s term.

The greatest reproach of the war so far has been directed at America’s friends and allies, which has plunged the entire region into a confusing crisis.

Up to March 4, 21,300 flights heading to seven civil airports in the Gulf had been canceled, according to Reuters.

The resulting tourism losses are estimated in the billions, and the price of a barrel of oil has increased by 30 percent.

The Strait of Hormuz, which has been closed, is considered one of the most important waterways in the world.

The average value of oil and gas passing through it daily reaches $500 billion, and 25 percent of global trade movement takes place through it.

This means that its disruption will lead to an economic catastrophe.

Regarding the Kingdom, it possesses an alternative pipeline named the East-West Pipeline, which transports crude oil from Abqaiq in the east to the Yanbu port on the Red Sea in the west.

When comparing the current war to the 12-day war in June 2025, we find that the Iranian response to the latter took 18 hours, whereas in the first, it did not exceed two hours.

This indicates that Iran has become experienced in dealing with such conflicts, which is an uncomfortable reality.

The Kingdom’s relationship with Iran is not ideal. The Beijing Agreement, signed between them on March 10, 2023, which restored diplomatic relations, lasted only two years and collapsed in mid-2025.

Saudis know that their relationship with Iran will not always be stable or calm.

In my personal opinion, they are trying to “zero out” their problems with others to focus on domestic development and play a diplomatic rather than military role in regional issues.

Any Saudi military response to Iran, assuming it occurs, would be limited and for sovereign reasons only.

The Iranians would be notified of its location and would never be caught off-guard.

This is because I lean toward the view of Dr. Abdulaziz bin Othman Al-Twaijri, the former director-general of ICESCO, specifically his belief that repeated drone targeting of sites in Saudi territory and other Gulf states raises many suspicions that extend beyond Iran to others, and that it is carried out for suspicious purposes.

• Dr. Bader bin Saud is a columnist for Al-Riyadh newspaper, a media and knowledge management researcher, an expert and university professor in crowd management and strategic planning, and the former deputy commander of the Special Forces for Hajj and Umrah in Saudi Arabia. X: @BaderbinSaud.