Saudi Arabia's Trump Gamble Is Backfiring as Iran War Chokes Its Oil Lifelines

A Kingdom Under Siege

Saudi Arabia is simultaneously facing threats to every major oil export route it possesses. Iranian forces have blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, trapping Saudi tankers in the Persian Gulf. Yemen's Houthi movement — backed by Tehran — has declared a Red Sea blockade and seized the port city of Mokha along with a strategic island in the Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint. Iran-allied Iraqi militias have struck a pumping station on the East-West pipeline, Saudi Arabia's backup export corridor, knocking it offline for what could be more than a month. On September 15, Saudi Arabia suspended oil loadings at the Red Sea port of Yanbu, and Saudi Aramco reportedly notified European refineries that deliveries were being halted indefinitely. Houthi missiles have since struck Riyadh itself, including the capital's main international airport and outlying oil facilities.

The East-West pipeline — built precisely for moments like this — had been carrying 4 to 5 million barrels per day after Iran closed Hormuz, up from its pre-war capacity of roughly 1 million. Its sudden shutdown illustrates how rapidly Saudi Arabia's contingency plans are collapsing under coordinated pressure from Iranian proxy forces operating on multiple fronts.

The Collapse of the Security Bargain

For nearly eight decades, U.S. military dominance underwrote a tacit compact across the Gulf: American power would deter aggression, secure shipping lanes, contain Iran, and prop up friendly governments. In return, Saudi Arabia and its neighbors — Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE — hosted U.S. bases, cooperated on counterterrorism, and kept oil flowing. The arrangement worked most visibly in 1990-91, when a U.S.-led coalition expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait before they could threaten Saudi oil fields.

That arrangement is now broken. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly called Donald Trump twice after the pipeline strike, asking Washington to strike the Houthis directly to halt their advance. The White House refused. At a press conference, Trump claimed the Houthis had contacted the U.S. to signal they did not want a fight and were allowing most shipping through — framing the Saudi crisis as, essentially, a bilateral Saudi-Houthi problem that Washington need not solve. Whether that reflects a real back-channel or Trump wishful thinking, the effect for Riyadh is identical: the security patron is disengaged.

Billions Spent, Little Delivered

The Saudi leadership had made enormous financial bets that a Trump-aligned Washington would remain a reliable protector — or could at least be kept reliable through strategic generosity. After Trump's 2016 election, Saudi-connected money flowed into his hotel properties. His first foreign trip as president was to Riyadh, where a 2017 arms deal worth $110 billion was announced with considerable fanfare.

The financial relationship grew more personal in subsequent years. LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed tour, paid Trump-owned courses to host tournaments. Saudi state-connected companies cut real estate licensing deals with the Trump Organization worth millions, with promises of more. Most striking: the Saudi sovereign wealth fund committed $2 billion to a new investment firm run by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, despite internal fund managers objecting, a due diligence review rating the firm unsatisfactory in every category, and fee structures that guaranteed Kushner's company $25 million annually regardless of performance.

In 2018, the investments appeared to pay dividends. Kushner reportedly provided intelligence that helped Mohammed bin Salman neutralize rivals during his consolidation of power — the crown prince allegedly boasted that Kushner was in his pocket. Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal to Saudi approval and publicly rejected a CIA assessment that the crown prince had ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump's War, Saudi Arabia's Problem

From Riyadh's perspective, the current catastrophe traces directly to Trump's decision to strike Iran — a war of choice that Saudi Arabia neither launched nor wanted to be caught in. Riyadh tried to publicly remain neutral while privately urging Washington to pursue full regime change in Tehran. When that failed, the Saudis backed ceasefire efforts and negotiations. When a U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding collapsed over the summer and Trump resumed airstrikes, Iran activated militia networks in Yemen and Iraq that had apparently been held in reserve — and those forces immediately turned on Saudi infrastructure.

Trump's air campaign against the Houthis earlier, in early 2025, offers a preview of what Saudi Arabia can expect. Launched in March of that year after Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, the campaign burned through approximately $1 billion in munitions over six weeks, cost the U.S. at least two fighter jets, and failed to stop Houthi fire. It was compounded by a security breach in which war plans were accidentally shared on Signal. The U.S. then quietly ended the campaign while publicly declaring success. The Houthis continued firing.

Saudi Arabia's own military has bombed Yemen for years, backing the internationally recognized government against the Houthis in a civil war, without defeating them. Its armed forces carry large budgets but have a documented record of poor battlefield performance — a structural weakness that both reflects and deepens its dependence on American power.

The Nuclear Consolation Prize

The one tangible return on Saudi Arabia's investment in Trump-era Washington is a proposed civil nuclear agreement that would permit Saudi uranium enrichment under less stringent international inspections than any previous administration was willing to grant. No prior U.S. president offered this, given nonproliferation concerns and the contradiction it would pose to arguments against Iran's enrichment program. The Trump White House submitted the deal to a Republican-controlled Congress that has largely acted as a rubber stamp.

But even this may not materialize. Trump, apparently trying to deflect criticism of the deal, has conditioned it on Saudi recognition of Israel — something Riyadh will not do without a Palestinian state, which Israel's current government refuses to allow. And future Democratic administrations could reverse the agreement, particularly given that Trump associates appear positioned to profit from it, tainting its long-term durability.

A Lesson in the Limits of Buying Influence

The deeper failure is strategic and philosophical. Saudi leadership appeared to calculate that a transactional, corruption-friendly Washington was preferable to one constrained by law, human rights concerns, and multilateral obligations — that bribable meant controllable. That logic has proved wrong. Bribable leaders are, almost by definition, self-interested and unreliable; they tell clients what they want to hear but cannot be counted on to deliver. Historical examples of personalist, corrupt leaders — from Ferdinand Marcos to Mobutu Sese Seko to Viktor Orban — show a consistent pattern of national interest subordinated to private interest.

Applying that dynamic to the world's dominant military power has produced, for Saudi Arabia, a situation in which its shipping is blockaded, its pipelines are bombed, its capital is being rocketed, and the country that was supposed to guarantee its security is publicly siding with its attackers' talking points. A kingdom that bet its security on corruption is now discovering that corruption does not scale.