As dynamics in the Middle East continue to shift, Saudi Arabia has taken on a more aggressive foreign policy approach. According to Perry Cammack, Middle East Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, these changes in Saudi policy are a reaction by the Saudi royal family to Iran’s strategy of “fomenting civil war, promoting sectarianism, and undermining stability.” Furthermore, Cammack explains that despite a cooling in U.S.-Saudi relations in recent years, “Riyadh has no real alternative to Washington as its core security partner.”
The Cipher Brief: To what extent is Saudi Arabia’s increasingly assertive foreign policy – intervening in Yemen, cutting assistance to Lebanon, threatening military action in Syria – a reaction to Iranian regional behavior?
“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62
Access all of The Cipher Brief‘s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+Member.