How the Iran War Weighs on the U.S.-Saudi Partnership and Prospects for Normalization with Israel

The Iran war was a conflict Saudi Arabia had not sought and on which it had not been meaningfully consulted. It began with frustratingly little clarity about the United States’ shifting goals, much less assurances about the U.S. commitment to protect the kingdom, even while it had profound implications for Saudi security and its economy—far more profound for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, in fact, than for the United States. In that sense, the war was a test case for the recently enhanced U.S.-Saudi security partnership.

It was the looming prospect of war with Iran that had motivated Saudi Arabia to pursue a stronger security partnership with the United States, one that would bring the clarity and assurances they would need if such a conflict came to pass. In fact, security guarantees were of such importance that the Saudi leadership had been willing to contemplate something as controversial among the Saudi population as normalizing relations with Israel as the price of a formal treaty relationship with the United States.

The experience of the Iran war has now colored these calculations, and weighs on Saudi perceptions of its partnership with the United States and on the desirability of a relationship with Israel. This war also came as some of the United States’ Middle Eastern partners were already doubting the reliability of the United States as their principal defense partner (and questioning the United States’ ability to restrain Israel), even leading Saudi Arabia to sign a mutual defense treaty with Pakistan in September 2025.

The U.S.-Saudi Security Partnership: Unsettled, but Enduring

The U.S.-Saudi security partnership dates to the 1950s, and has endured and expanded through the vicissitudes of the region and the bilateral relationship. During the Biden administration, the United States and Saudi Arabia pursued a significant upgrade in that partnership, including the negotiation of a formal mutual defense treaty. That deal foundered in the aftermath of the Gaza war and because of Israel’s refusal to support a path to Palestinian statehood, but Saudi Arabia’s desire for an upgraded partnership endured.

When the Saudi crown prince visited Washington in November 2025, he didn’t get a mutual defense treaty, but short of that, he did extraordinarily well. Saudi Arabia came away with designation as a major non-NATO ally, signed a new strategic defense agreement, and extracted a U.S. commitment to sell Saudi Arabia the F-35, the most sophisticated fighter jet currently in production. The kingdom arguably advanced into the top tier of U.S. defense partners, and that happened without paying the political price of normalizing with Israel.

That bolstered status still didn’t stop the United States from launching a war that implicated Saudi Arabia very directly, but with little consultation with the Saudi leadership on its timing or objectives, and with no clarity on how it might help Saudi Arabia protect itself from inevitable Iranian reprisals. Even more disconcerting, media reports suggested that Washington quickly began struggling to keep up with the defense needs of its Gulf partners. The United States was at that point enmeshed in a conflict that was going on longer than expected and found itself facing a scarcity of critical defense articles for its own war effort. This led Riyadh and other Gulf states to seek cheaper and more readily available systems, such as counter–unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) from Ukraine. In doing this, Saudi Arabia was not simply hedging; it was making rational decisions about its urgent operational requirements during wartime.

A ceasefire was announced in April 2026, by which point it had become exceedingly clear that Washington’s ill-conceived objective of regime change would not materialize. Saudi Arabia’s preoccupation then became avoiding a return to open conflict, which it believed would inevitably bring renewed Iranian attacks on Saudi targets. Saudi Arabia was so concerned about possible Iranian retaliation that when President Trump announced in May 2026—again, apparently without consulting partners in the region—that the U.S. Navy would escort commercial ships under “Operation Freedom,” the kingdom reportedly denied overflight and basing rights to U.S. forces. This led the United States to abandon the operation only two days later, after which Saudi Arabia reportedly restored permissions to the U.S. military.

Was the troubled Iran war experience the beginning of the end of the U.S.-Saudi defense partnership? The short answer is no, but the implications of the Iran war are nonetheless paradoxical. Saudi Arabia’s desire for a U.S. security partnership was premised, in significant part, on the notion that alignment with Washington would reduce rather than amplify its exposure to Iranian threats. The 2026 war has inverted that logic. Riyadh now finds itself absorbing the consequences of a military campaign it neither chose nor endorsed. The United States is thus perceived in Saudi strategic calculations not only as the kingdom’s primary security partner, but now also as a source of considerable risk. In these circumstances, Saudi leadership might reasonably be asking itself whether a mutual defense treaty would have made any of this better.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia’s exposure to Iranian missile and drone bombardment created an acute and immediate demand for advanced air defense systems, intelligence sharing, and access, basing, and overflight arrangements with U.S. forces. Only the United States could reliably supply these critical war-fighting elements at the scale and speed the threat environment demanded. Each Iranian strike on Saudi infrastructure would generate a new operational requirement that in theory would draw Riyadh closer to Washington’s operational architecture. In that sense, the Iran war experience should not only validate the existing logic of U.S.-Saudi security cooperation, but could also accelerate its operational depth, including the basing decisions, procurement agreements, and real-time intelligence-sharing that are at the operational heart of bilateral security cooperation. Add to that the long history of bilateral military collaboration, and there is no easy substitute for the United States, as frustrating as Washington might be to work with. It is also difficult to imagine an alternative partner, whether Pakistan or China, that could tip the balance militarily in a conflict between Saudi Arabia and its principal antagonist, Iran.

Saudi Normalization with Israel: Complicated, Unlikely, but Not Impossible

According to conventional wisdom, the recent experiences with Iran, including Iranian missile and drone attacks on Israel in April and October 2024, the “12-day war” of 2025, and the Iran war that began in February 2026, should have demonstrated the value of an integrated regional defense and therefore incentivized Saudi Arabia to move closer to Israel. But the logic of normalization was always partly constructed around the premise that alignment with Israel would—like the security partnership with the United States—confer strategic benefits, including reduced vulnerability to external attacks, access to advanced U.S. technology, and regional stability, that offset the reputational cost of association.

The Iran war may actually have dismantled this premise—the more Saudi Arabia was associated with Israeli war objectives, the greater was its exposure to Iranian attacks. It would not have been lost on Saudi leaders that the United Arab Emirates, which has strong relations with Israel and brought the Israeli Iron Dome to Abu Dhabi along with Israeli military personnel to operate it, was targeted more than any other Gulf country. And, ironically, if the war were truly successful on Israeli terms—a long-term Iranian strategic weakening or even a chance of regime change resulting in a more moderate Iranian government less hostile to Israel and the region—it would actually reduce the normalization incentive. Why, after all, pay the political price of a public relationship with Israel if the shared Iranian threat was disappearing? So, if an association with Israel is only seen as increasing the threats to Saudi Arabia, the Saudi case for normalization comes out of the Iran war weaker than before.

Israel’s conduct during the Gaza war has also influenced Saudi Arabia’s normalization calculus, as has Israel’s continued refusal to accept a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and effect a full withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza. Saudi Arabia’s official threshold for normalization has been stated repeatedly, and conditions recognition of Israel on Israel’s commitment to pursue a path to Palestinian statehood. Saudi Arabia had also been issuing increasingly pointed statements, often jointly with other Arab and Muslim countries, criticizing Israeli actions in the West Bank.

Israeli official positions, meanwhile, have definitively ruled out Palestinian statehood. The Israeli stance means the Palestinian question offers little room for creative ambiguity: Either Palestinian statehood is credibly advanced, or Saudi normalization does not occur. No amount of U.S. pressure, economic inducement, or promise of a regional air defense has altered that calculus. Even during his November 2025 meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office, the Saudi crown prince gave no ground on this issue.

Aggravating this is the sense that the Iran war of 2026, along with Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, its unprecedented airstrike on Hamas leadership in Qatar, its campaign in Lebanon, and its decision to establish military outposts in Syria, has created an unfortunate new narrative in the Arab world: Israel, and not Iran, is increasingly seen as the principal destabilizing force in the region. None of this is to say that Saudi Arabia won’t decide at some opportune moment to pursue relations with Israel. But that would require very different regional circumstances and a very different Israeli approach to Palestinians. 

Conclusion: Two Paths, Not Yet Converging

The Iran war exposed both the strengths and the limitations of Saudi Arabia’s security partnership with the United States, underscoring its enduring centrality while raising difficult questions about U.S. predictability and the costs of unilateral U.S. military action. The U.S.-Saudi relationship is not at a point of rupture, but that doesn’t mean the war hasn’t frayed it. When the dust has settled on the Iran war, it will be worth investing in stabilizing the partnership. As CENTCOM planners will emphasize, this is a relationship the United States needs in the volatile region into which it is continuously, even inevitably, drawn.

Meanwhile, the conflict eroded the strategic rationale for Saudi normalization with Israel by increasing its perceived risks without addressing the political conditions that Riyadh has consistently identified as prerequisites for recognition. While certainly off the table in the near term, normalization might still be possible if a future Israeli government eventually chooses to support Palestinian statehood. That is a possibility worth working toward because the value of a truly integrated region to U.S. security is only going to grow.

Michael Ratney served for over three decades as a U.S. diplomat, most recently as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He is currently a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Abdullah Alhenaki is a consultant with the CSIS Middle East Program. He recently received his doctorate in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.