While the tone of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may seem to be shifting toward Tehran, this should not be a cause for concern, Foreign Policy magazine, which specializes in American foreign policy affairs, said in an article on Tuesday.

On November 11, at the Islamic Summit in Riyadh, the Saudi Crown Prince called on the international community (the United States) to force Israel to “respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not violate its territory.” At the same gathering, he described what the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) did in the Gaza Strip as “genocide,” which has raised confusing speculation about the reasons for this gesture, especially since this speech may contradict the impressions of observers and politicians alike about Mohammed bin Salman, which has raised the question “What is happening with him? And in Saudi Arabia?”

“Mohammed bin Salman’s words at the summit appear to be a qualitative change,” the magazine says, “especially since he asked in 2017, a year after mobs stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, leading to the severing of relations between the two countries, how it was possible to have a dialogue with a regime built on an extremist ideology (Iran)… which [says] it must control the lands of Muslims and spread its Twelver Ja’fari doctrine throughout the Islamic world?”

The magazine notes that even after the Chinese government brokered the resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March 2023, and the thaw began, officials in Riyadh still express doubts about Tehran’s intentions and remain distrustful of the Iranian leadership.

“Regarding Israel, Saudi officials have (so far) indicated that normalization is not a matter of if but when, and they have said it so often that after a while, no one cared about it anymore, as it has become just part of Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic messaging,” the magazine claims.

“With Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, the price the Saudis were demanding from the Israelis for normalization has steadily risen,” the magazine speculates. “Yet, over the past year, officials in Riyadh have appeared committed to a settlement with Israel. Despite accusing the Israelis of genocide since the early days of the war, Mohammed bin Salman never used the term before the summit on November 11.”

The magazine speculates on the reasons behind the change in Saudi rhetoric: First, it may be an opening attempt in negotiations with President-elect Donald Trump over the long-discussed security agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia. And while Mohammed bin Salman has changed his position on Iran, he is doing so cautiously and deliberately.

Second, the magazine says, by moving closer to Iran, Mohammed bin Salman is moving away from Israel and the possibility of normalization. The brutality of the Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip has angered many in Saudi Arabia. The author of the article, Stephen Cook, cites that on his recent visit to the kingdom, he and his colleagues were subjected to a barrage of criticism of the Biden administration over the ongoing massacre in Gaza, “and this must surely be part of Mohammed bin Salman’s thinking… The crown prince is very powerful, but he is not immune from public opinion. Normalization with Israel is not worth it for him in the short term, given the depth of public anger over the destruction of Gaza.”

“The crown prince’s use of the word ‘genocide’ is also a clear warning to the incoming Trump administration, which places great importance on normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia as a follow-up to the Abraham Accords,” the author says. “There is no way that Saudi leaders would want to engage in normalization at a time when Israeli settlers have come to believe that Trump will not stand in the way of annexation, especially since his appointment of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — an advocate of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank and support for annexation — as ambassador to Israel suggests they may not be wrong. It would be extremely embarrassing for the crown prince to go down the path of normalization only to have the Israelis — with Trump’s blessing — extend formal Israeli sovereignty to all or parts of the occupied West Bank.”

The author believes that by invoking the issue (and expression) of genocide, the Crown Prince is signaling to the president-elect that under the current circumstances, the Saudis are not prepared to move forward (in a normalization process).

Third and finally, according to Stephen Cook, “there is the most compelling explanation for Mohammed bin Salman’s apparent shift: after intervening in the civil war in Yemen, imposing a blockade on Qatar, forcing the resignation of the prime minister of Lebanon, and supporting opponents of the internationally recognized government in Libya, and failing to achieve any of his goals, the crown prince has concluded that bending the region to his will is not within his power… Instead, he has now turned inward, seeking to ensure stability within the kingdom. Pivoting toward Iran is one way to keep chaos outside Saudi Arabia’s borders.”

This shift is of paramount importance to Mohammed bin Salman as he spends hundreds of billions of dollars shaping the future of Saudi Arabia. One could question the wisdom of his grandiose and ambitious projects, including the new city of Neom and the Qiddiya Coast tourism project in Jeddah. But now that so much has been invested in them, it would be unwise for the Saudi leadership not to seek basic economic and political stability to give them a chance to succeed. There is no indication that the Saudis are suddenly trusting the Iranians, but they do not want to give them any excuse to spoil what is happening in Saudi Arabia at the domestic level.

In the not-so-distant past, the Saudis played the riyal game, essentially pushing to ensure that regional troubles didn’t hurt the kingdom. What Mohammed bin Salman has done is echoed in what he has done when he called on the world to rein in Israel and made clear that he sees Iran as a member of the family. “From the crown prince’s perspective, this is not a shift toward Iran but a shift toward Saudi Arabia,” the writer writes.