Tehran welcomed Saudi Arabia’s highest-ranking military commander, Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Fayyadh bin Hamed Al-Ruwaili, for meetings on bilateral cooperation Sunday.
The pro-Iranian regime Tehran Times reported that Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, al-Ruwaili’s Iranian counterpart, invited the Saudi military to participate in joint exercises with Iran. Rumblings, fueled by Chinese state media, of a potential Iranian-Saudi joint exercise have circulated for weeks, though neither side has confirmed such cooperation. The Saudi government did participate as an observer in a naval exercise in October in which Iran joined Russia and Iran on the Indian Ocean, but conducting a joint exercise would elevate the mutual trust between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have historically endured fraught relations.
The Iranian Tasnim News Agency reported on Friday that al-Ruwaili, the Saudi general, arrived in Tehran on Sunday to discuss “the expansion of defense diplomacy and promotion of cooperation between the two Muslim countries.” The Tehran Times was more effusive, declaring the meeting a “major advancement for bilateral relations” in light of growing attempts to build trust between the two countries.
The pro-regime outlet quoted Bagheri, the Iranian general, as inviting the Saudi military to a joint war game.
“We welcome the participation of the Saudi Arabian Navy in next year’s Iranian naval exercise, whether by sending naval units or joining as observers,” Bagheri reportedly said.
The report did not offer any clarity regarding whether his Saudi counterpart accepted the invitation or not, quoting al-Ruwaili as responding, “The Beijing agreement offers a strong basis for strengthening bilateral cooperation, and we see it as a strategic opportunity for both nations.”
The “Beijing agreement” is a reference to the negotiations brokered by the Communist Party that resulted in Iran and Saudi Arabia normalizing their relationship, announced in Beijing in March 2023.
Iranian media reported in October that Saudi Arabia sought to “organize joint exercises in the Red Sea,” a claim the Saudi government denied but Chinese state media breathlessly repeated.
Prior to the Beijing deal, Iran and Saudi Arabia maintained an aggressive geopolitical rivalry for years that resulted in a proxy war erupting in 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist movement seized the capital of Yemen, Sana’a, and ousted the Saudi-backed legitimate government of the country. A decade later, the Houthis and the government of Yemen are still fighting a civil war and the government remains exiled in the southern port city of Aden. The Houthis have, for the time being, stopped attacking Saudi Arabia, having diverted their attention to attacking random civilian ships in and around the Red Sea in defense of the fellow Iran-backed terrorists of Hamas.
The Saudi government refused to keep an embassy in Tehran after a mob firebombed its embassy in 2016, two years into the Yemen civil war, with seemingly little resistance by the Iranian terror state. The negotiations that led to a normalized diplomatic situation shortly preceded the global anti-American BRICS coalition announcing that it would invite both Iran and Saudi Arabia to join. Iran rapidly moved to join and has been a full member of BRICS since the beginning of 2024. The Saudi government claimed to accept the invitation but never completed the logistics to join. It has neither formally accepted nor rejected the invite.
In addition to the military exchange, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is subservient to “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday to express support for an ongoing Arab and Muslim leader summit in Riyadh to oppose Israel’s self-defense operations against the Iran-backed terrorists of Hamas.
“I have no doubt that this summit will have effective and tangible results leading to the cessation of the Zionist regime’s crimes and the war and bloodshed in Gaza and Lebanon,” Pezeshkian said, praising the Saudi anti-Israel summit and excusing himself from attending, noting that he sent his first vice president to represent Iran.
A major point of contention between Iran and Saudi Arabia for years was Riyadh’s friendly relationship with the United States — which, towards the end of the first administration of President-elect Donald Trump, had resulted in anonymous reports that the Saudis were considering normalizing relations with Israel. That progress collapsed almost entirely under outgoing President Joe Biden, who adopted a hostile policy against Saudi Arabia, promising to turn the country into a “pariah” during the 2020 presidential election while cutting deals to fund the Iranian terror state.
Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas siege of Israel, which killed 1,200 people and involved the commission of untold numbers of human rights atrocities, the Saudi government came out in opposition to Israel’s self-defense measures in Gaza to ensure Hamas could not repeat the attack. That stance has persisted; the crown prince accused Israel of “genocide” at the summit on Monday and has walked back suggestions that Riyadh was open to diplomacy with Jerusalem.
Growing proximity to Iran has not occurred without some frustrations surfacing. In September, Saudi diplomat and former intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal grumbled publicly that Iran was doing nothing to stop Houthi attacks on global shipping.
“The Houthis now hold the world as hostage in the Bab al-Mandab entrance to the Red Sea, and yet Iran is not showing that it can do something there if it wanted to,” al-Faisal said, “and the kingdom [Saudi Arabia] would have expected Iran to be more forthcoming in showing not just to us but to others that it can be a positive factor in securing stability and removing differences not just with Saudi Arabia but the rest of us.”
An unnamed Saudi royal official told the Israeli public broadcaster Kan in April that Iran was being “irresponsible” in supporting regional terrorists.
