Saudi Arabia and Iran: Spoilers or Enablers of Middle Eastern Conflicts?
Rohan Dange
Roundtable IAS
The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the devastating Gaza conflict that followed have reshaped the geopolitics of West Asia in ways that UPSC aspirants must understand deeply. A crucial — and often under-examined — dimension of this crisis is the role played by the region's two most influential middle powers: Saudi Arabia and Iran. Drawing on the analysis of scholar Banafsheh Keynoush, a compelling case emerges that both nations, through their respective strategic calculations, contributed to enabling the conditions that made October 7 possible, and have subsequently proven unable to resolve the conflict they helped create. This dynamic is highly relevant for GS-2 (international relations, India's foreign policy) and Essay.
Iran's role is the more direct. As the architect and principal financier of the "Axis of Resistance" — a network encompassing Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi movement in Yemen, and various Iraqi Shia militias — Tehran provided the strategic umbrella under which Hamas operated. Iranian financial support, weapons transfers, and military training contributed to Hamas's operational capability. Iran's advocacy for a one-state solution that would effectively eliminate Israel as a political entity left little room for diplomatic engagement. Crucially, the Axis of Resistance framework meant that the October 7 attack was not an isolated event but part of a broader Iranian strategy of asymmetric confrontation with Israel and, by extension, the United States.
Saudi Arabia's role is more indirect but no less significant. Riyadh's pursuit of normalisation with Israel through the Abraham Accords framework — signed in 2020, notably just nine months after the US assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani — effectively sidelined the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. That Saudi-authored initiative had offered Israel comprehensive Arab recognition in exchange for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. The Abraham Accords, by enabling normalisation without Palestinian statehood, removed what Palestinians and their supporters viewed as the last meaningful source of Arab diplomatic leverage. Saudi Arabia's simultaneous arrest of Hamas members on its soil, while pursuing a normalisation deal that included US nuclear technology cooperation, signalled to Palestinian factions that conventional diplomacy was a dead end — arguably contributing to the conditions of desperation that radicalised Hamas's strategy.
The post-October 7 landscape has exposed the limitations of both powers. Iran's Axis of Resistance has been systematically degraded — Hezbollah's leadership was decapitated by Israeli strikes, and Hamas's military infrastructure in Gaza has been devastated. Yet Iran has been unable to translate its network of proxies into diplomatic leverage to halt the conflict. Saudi Arabia, despite its economic weight and custodianship of Islam's holiest sites, has found that its pursuit of normalisation gave it little influence over Israeli military operations. The January 2025 US-brokered ceasefire represented a first phase of de-escalation, but the fundamental divergence remains: Saudi Arabia supports a two-state solution within the international consensus, while Iran advocates a one-state framework that the international community has not embraced.
For UPSC aspirants, this case study illuminates several critical themes. First, the concept of "niche diplomacy" and the structural limitations of middle powers in resolving conflicts they helped create. Second, the tension between normalisation and justice — the Abraham Accords delivered strategic gains for signatories but at the cost of marginalising the Palestinian question. Third, the nuclear threshold dynamics involving Iran's enrichment programme, Israel's undeclared arsenal, and Saudi Arabia's stated interest in nuclear capability. India's stakes are direct: West Asia accounts for a significant share of India's energy imports, hosts approximately 9 million Indian diaspora workers, and is a theatre where India must balance relationships with Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE simultaneously. Aspirants should frame answers around the structural constraints of regional conflict resolution rather than attributing outcomes to individual actors alone.
