The three-year effort to rebuild relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran has effectively ended. Saudi Arabia declared the military attaché of the Iranian embassy, the assistant military attaché and three members of the mission staff persona non grata on Saturday, ordering them to leave within 24 hours. The expulsion represents the most significant diplomatic breach since the two nations agreed to restore ties through Chinese mediation in March 2023.
The strategic calculus here involves several competing considerations. Saudi Arabia, which holds the world's second-largest proven crude oil reserves, has come under attack by hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones since the start of the war, the vast majority of which have been intercepted. More troubling for Riyadh's economic interests, oil loadings at the Red Sea port of Yanbu were disrupted after a drone fell on the nearby Aramco-Exxon refinery, and the port is the only export outlet for Saudi Arabia after Iran effectively blocked tanker traffic leaving the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz. This creates not merely a security crisis but a direct assault on Saudi Arabia's chief source of national revenue and its Vision 2030 modernisation programme.
The Beijing Agreement of 2023 represented a genuine diplomatic departure, particularly noteworthy for the absence of United States involvement. Representatives of Iran and Saudi Arabia, who had been meeting secretly for five days in the Chinese capital Beijing, announced a Chinese-sponsored agreement to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries. Both nations invested substantial political capital: embassies reopened, ambassadors arrived, and early trade discussions took place. The agreement included security cooperation frameworks that had lain dormant since the 2016 severance of ties.
What is often overlooked in the public discourse is that this détente, rather than full rapprochement, was always fragile. The agreement's architects understood the depth of mistrust. Tehran and Riyadh saw dialogue as the only viable way to reduce tensions, and realized that further escalating hostilities would not advance either's national interest, though there remains no denying that Tehran and Riyadh remain extremely suspicious of each other. The underlying tensions persisted: Saudi Arabia maintained concerns about Iranian proxies across the region; Iran viewed the Saudi-US alliance as existential threat.
The current conflict has exposed the weakness of institutional guardrails. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said earlier in the week that trust in Iran had been "shattered", asserting his country's right to defend itself. Yet notably, Riyadh has not severed relations entirely. The Foreign Ministry said that continued Iranian attacks would lead to further escalation and have "significant consequences" for current and future relations. This carefully worded language suggests Saudi decision-makers recognise that even in wartime, maintaining a diplomatic channel preserves options for eventual de-escalation.
The regional implications are substantial. Qatar's decision on Wednesday to declare the Iranian Embassy's military and security attaches in Doha as personae non gratae, along with their staff, suggests coordinated Gulf strategy. Yet analysts note the Gulf Cooperation Council faces a genuine dilemma: expelling Iranian diplomats signals resolve, but severing relations eliminates communication channels essential during crisis. Saudi Arabia "still signals a preference for diplomacy, [but] its officials explicitly stated it will not rule out military action if necessary".
The expulsion marks the formal end of China's 2023 brokerage. Whether Saudi Arabia's reservation of military rights translates to actual military action depends on several factors: the pace of Iranian attacks, the effectiveness of existing air defence systems, and pressure from the United States and Israel to expand the conflict. For now, Riyadh has chosen the middle path: diplomatic rupture without total severance. That distinction carries geopolitical weight; it leaves space for eventual reconstruction, however distant that prospect currently appears.