The death last week of Prince Saud al-Faisal, the respected statesman who had been foreign minister of Saudi Arabia for 40 years until this spring, prompted comment about the kingdom’s apparent transition from diplomacy behind the scenes to a policy of confrontation with Iran, the Sunni Arab realm’s Shia and Persian rival for regional hegemony.
There is some truth in this. Prince Saud was by instinct a bridge-builder. Saudi foreign policy at the moment seems to be burning a lot of bridges. King Salman, who succeeded the late King Abdullah in January and recentralised power around himself and his family, served notice in March that he would fight Shia fire with Sunni fire.
The ruling House of Saud, legitimised by the kingdom’s absolutist strain of Wahhabi Islam, had watched in appalled paralysis as Iran and its proxies exploited the mayhem unleashed across Arab lands — from the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the Arab spring after 2011 — to forge a Shia axis from Baghdad to Beirut.