The Saudi Pivot

 The Saudi Pivot: The Logic and Structure of the New Middle Eastern Cold War

In the mid-1960s, Malcolm Kerr’s The Arab Cold War introduced an analytical discipline that viewed the Middle East through the lens of intra-Arab rivalry rather than just the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this system, Arab states competed ruthlessly for primacy, legitimacy, and the authority to define the regional agenda, often using the conflict with Israel as a source of symbolic capital. While this perspective faded after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the rise of transnational Islamist movements, it is now time to recognize a renewed dynamic of competition for hierarchy.

The Strategic Shift For over a decade, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) acted as a central axis of "moderate" Arab politics, coordinating on Yemen and confronting Qatar. However, following failures in Yemen, the inability to subordinate Qatar, and the underwhelming returns of Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia is repositioning for regional primacy. This pivot involves a consolidating relationship with Turkey, a deliberate freeze of normalization with Israel, and public confrontation with the UAE. Riyadh is no longer a conservative stakeholder but a revisionist manager seeking to lead the region in a "post-liberal" world where American-led conditions are thinning.

Post-liberal Conditions and the Dual Vacuum The global operating environment has shifted to a post-liberal order where American hegemony is no longer rule-based or reliable. In this environment, status must be won through position and leverage—such as control over logistics corridors and energy flows—rather than institutional compliance.

Regionally, a "dual vacuum" has emerged as the United States has shifted from a system manager to a selective participant, and the Iranian-led "Axis of Resistance" has been systematically degraded. Israeli military operations have decapitated proxy networks and paralyzed the Iranian nuclear program, leading to the collapse of residual bipolarity. In this permissive system, middle powers now compete directly through distinct portfolios of capabilities:

• Saudi Arabia: Anchors its power in wealth, scale, and religious authority as the custodian of Islam’s holy sites, allowing it to mobilize mass legitimacy in ways smaller states cannot.
• The UAE: Compensates for demographic limits with concentrated material and network power, embedding itself into global supply chains and logistics infrastructure.
• Qatar: Specializes in narrative production (Al Jazeera), Islamist patronage, and mediation, generating leverage by keeping "open files" in unresolved conflicts.
• Turkey: Utilizes geographic centrality and coercive capacity, including a large military and an expanding drone-based defense industry.
• Israel: Relies on technological superiority and military dominance, prioritizing the disruption of adversarial integration over formal alliance structures.

Consolidation versus Denial Current regional disputes center on which political units are permitted to consolidate and which must remain fragmented.

• Yemen: Riyadh seeks "end-state control" to prevent a rival-controlled Red Sea corridor, while Abu Dhabi focuses on modular access to maritime nodes.
• Syria: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar favor a consolidated Sunni-led state, whereas Israel views a unified Islamist Syria as a "Turkey 2.0" and prefers strategic denial and disruption.
• Iran: Israel’s goal is regime change to break the Islamic Republic permanently. Conversely, Saudi Arabia prefers a weakened, pariah "Islamic" Iran. A normalized, secular Iran would become a formidable competitor for Western capital and could return millions of barrels of oil to the market, structurally undermining OPEC+ leverage and Saudi pricing power.

Palestine as an Instrument of Competition The collision between Saudi interests and Israeli/Emirati strategies has led Riyadh to use anti-Zionism and the Palestinian cause as a high-leverage instrument. Because the UAE’s power is optimized for elite connectivity and is thin in "mass-political depth," Saudi Arabia can weaken Emirati influence by shifting the contest onto the symbolic register of Arab dignity and Islam. This allows the kingdom to maintain internal social liberalization while reactivating external Islamist and anti-Zionist solidarity as a tool of regional competition.