Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Policy under MBS: decision unit change and its impacts towards Yemen and Syria

Abstract

If Saudi Arabia’s regional strategy involves the containment of Iran’s proxies, why, under King Salman, did Saudi Arabia attack the Houthis in Yemen, but give up its attempt to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria? I argue here that both decisions reflect Mohammed bin Salman’s willingness to seek ‘heterodox’ solutions in foreign policy, a feature that guided Saudi foreign policy in the face of a changing decision-making unit in the Saudi regime. While MBS’s influence in the case of Yemen is more easily identified, in the case of Syria this is not so straightforward. The crown prince only acquired the ability to manoeuvre Saudi policy towards Syria after consolidating his power within the regime, in 2017, and, from there, he put in place measures that, in practice, facilitated a coexistence arrangement between Saudi Arabia and Russia. In both cases, the objective was to contain the perceived Iranian advances in a scenario of reduced appetite by the United States to provide security for Saudi Arabia. This conclusion is reached through the use of a Foreign Policy Analysis approach, more specifically, the analysis of the decision-making units, to broaden and deepen the observations made from a regime security perspective.