Ukraine, Gaza... Why has Saudi Arabia become a crucial diplomatic hub?
The regime, tainted by the murder of a journalist and discrimination against women, is consolidating itself as a geostrategic state that can stop the two current conflicts
BarcelonaAs happened in 2018, Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, are on everyone's lips: both from leaders and from the international media. However, the reasons could not be more diametrically opposed. At that time, the Saudi leader and his kingdom were in the eye of the storm due to the brutal murder of journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi. Now, they are protagonists because they have acquired enormous weight on the geostrategic board, especially in the Middle East, but not only. The visits of presidents, foreign ministers and emissaries in Riyadh are happening these days at a frenetic pace. The icing on the cake of this status of hub The diplomatic one could be the holding of a summit on peace in Ukraine between Russian President Vladimir Putin and American President Donald Trump, himself the promoter of the idea.
The transition from pariah state to inevitable player in world diplomacy has been gradual, but it has accelerated recently and would not have been possible without the tenacity of Bin Salman, the real strongman of the regime, and the energy and financial muscle of a country that has led the list of ex-presidents for decades. For several years, Western leaders avoided any contact with Bin Salman, considered the mastermind behind the murder of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The fact that Riyadh promotes an ultra-conservative version of Islam, Wahhabism, did not help its international reputation either.
Thus, during his 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden declared that he wanted to turn the young prince into an international "pariah". Two years later, Biden himself staged a kind of symbolic pardon with a greeting to the Saudi leader typical of the Covid era, a gentle fist bump. Between the two scenes, something that shook up international relations and facilitated the rehabilitation of Saudi Arabia: the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
Riyadh's rise in global diplomacy
Two other developments have sealed Riyadh's return to the forefront of global diplomacy: Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 and the Donald Trump's victory In the US presidential election, after many years of remaining in the background, the Gaza war, defined as "genocide" by several international actors, has once again placed the conflict between Israel and Palestine at the centre of the international community's concerns. For his part, Trump has a very fluid relationship with the Saudi royal family, as he already demonstrated in his first term, thanks to his real estate business in the Persian Gulf region.
There is a third, more structural factor that has facilitated the Saudi rise: the decline of Egypt as a leader of the Arab world. "Since the fall of Mubarak, Egypt no longer has a key role in the region," comments Syrian analyst Muhsen al Mustafa, of the think tank Omran Studies. The void left by Cairo has gradually been taken over by Riyadh. That is why this It was the destination of the first international trip of the new Syrian leader, Ahmed al SharaaSaudi Arabia has become what is known in English as a "pivot state," meaning that its moves can swing an entire region as many others, of lesser importance, follow suit.
It is precisely this new pivot status that makes both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consider Saudi Arabia a key country in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. They are convinced that if Riyadh were to normalize relations with Tel Aviv, several Arab states would follow suit and the Palestinians would be left alone and isolated in their claim to a state.
Probably for more purely selfish reasons on Trump's part - he dreams of the Nobel Peace Prize - this was already an obsession during his first term, and everything seems to indicate that he will now insist on it a lot. In fact, at his request, three other Arab countries, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, already established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020, the so-called Abraham Accords.
Perhaps the idea of suggesting Saudi Arabia as the venue for Trump's meeting with Putin is part of a seduction campaign by Bin Salman with a new chapter of the Abraham Accords on the horizon. In any case, it is true that the distancing between Washington and Riyadh, which already began during the Obama presidency, has caused the Saudi regime to pursue a more independent foreign policy. That is why it has not aligned itself with the West when it comes to imposing sanctions on Russia and has not broken bridges with Putin. Both countries are the most powerful in OPEC+, the association that brings together the world's main oil producers.
