Saudi Arabia announced a joint strike with the United States against Iran-allied militias in Iraq, a major change in the kingdom’s stance from its previously restrained posture, which opened the country to a war on three fronts.
The early Wednesday morning strikes came after Iraqi militias launched over 30 drone attacks against the kingdom over the previous three days for the first time during the war. While reports of Saudi airstrikes against Iran had been floated earlier in the war, the strikes marked the first direct, publicized attack by the Saudis against targets outside of Yemen in the current war. The strikes and killing of a significant number of Iran-allied fighters in Iraq signal a shift toward a more aggressive stance by Saudi Arabia, after the kingdom had tried to maintain a de-escalatory posture for months.
From the start of Operation Epic Fury, a major gulf has existed between Saudi Arabia’s public statements and reports of its private activity. Even as it came under heavy Iranian drone and missile attack since the opening days, Riyadh hadn’t publicly responded with any strikes against Iran, and has repeatedly maintained its commitment to peace and de-escalation in public statements.
Meanwhile, several outlets, citing anonymous officials familiar with the matter, claimed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been lobbying President Donald Trump for months to take an aggressive stance against Iran and avoid any deal that stopped short of dismantling the regime and Iran’s nuclear program.
This abruptly changed in May, when Salman reportedly pleaded with Trump not to restart the war. Wednesday’s strikes mark another shift in Saudi Arabia’s policy.
A war on three fronts?
Saudi Arabia’s path to direct combat began earlier this month on an unexpectedly quiet front: Yemen. The Saudi Air Force bombed Sanaa Airport on July 13 after a Houthi delegation returning from former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral tried to land, violating the air blockade. The attack was a show of force and was criticized for using expensive precision ammunition to hit the airport tarmac. Nevertheless, the Houthis soon retaliated with a ballistic missile strike targeting Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport.
Though the attack was more a warning than the restarting of hostilities, it provided the immediate trigger for the Houthis’ involvement in the wider war. In retaliation for Saudi Arabia’s blockade of its territory, the terrorist group announced its own blockade of Saudi Arabia, threatening to attack any vessels that traded with the kingdom. The group began attacking shipping in the Red Sea shortly after, and launched attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure. The kingdom bombed targets in Houthi territory in response.
The situation was further complicated this week when Iraqi militias began launching drones at Saudi oil infrastructure, the first time the kingdom was attacked by Iraq. No group openly claimed responsibility for the attack, with some under the Popular Mobilization Forces explicitly denying having launched the strike.
An Iraqi pro-militia outlet said Saudi Arabia struck the headquarters of the 40th PMF Brigade, also known as Kataib al-Imam Ali. The group is known for being particularly close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, but also resented by other militias for the perception that it prioritizes commercial interests, according to the Washington Institute.
Saudi Arabia was previously embroiled in a frozen conflict with the Houthis that it was content to keep on ice, and in a state of de facto war with Iran, though publicly committed to de-escalation. The exchange of fire against Iraqi militias now explicitly pits it against the entire Iran-led Axis of Resistance, which, though severely degraded in the post-Oct. 7 wars, still possesses enough missiles and drones to stretch thin and deplete the kingdom’s struggling air defenses.
With Saudi Arabia shifting to a more aggressive stance, the next question is whether its military capabilities are enough to have an impact on the war.
Saudi military capabilities
Saudi Arabia’s catastrophic military intervention in Yemen from 2015 to 2022 ended in abject failure by all accounts, exposing the kingdom as the paper tiger of the Middle East. Despite its cutting-edge military hardware and extensive Western military and intelligence support, it was unable to shrink the Houthis’ control of the country. The Saudi Air Force’s performance was noted as particularly poor relative to its high-end technology.
“Although individual Saudi pilots had often performed well flying as part of U.S.-led coalitions, decades of U.S. training missions had not produced a Saudi military capable of independently planning and executing an effective air campaign that minimized collateral damage,” a former Obama-era Pentagon official wrote in the Atlantic in 2017. “And however much Saudi air forces struggled, Saudi ground forces labored even harder, trying and repeatedly failing to prevent or even counter Houthi ground excursions across the border.”
After the intervention exposed the full scale of Saudi military weakness, Salman initiated a sweeping overhaul of the country’s entire military structure. He handed the defense minister position over to his capable younger brother, Khalid bin Salman Al Saud, in September 2022. Unlike the crown prince, who had no military training, the new defense minister boasted extensive training in the U.S. and initiated sweeping reforms in line with the U.S. military’s structure.
In an article published in the FAO Journal of International Affairs, retired U.S. Army Colonels Robert K. Carnahan and Colonel David M. Witty outlined the nature of the reforms, saying it included the creation of a joint staff, a joint operations command, a new doctrine, a national defense strategy, and a human resource management program, all hallmarks of effective modern militaries that were entirely absent from the Saudi armed forces previously. The new defense minister also went on to “completely overhaul the general officer corps.”
Human capital, lacking during the Yemen intervention, has been one of the primary focuses. In June 2024, Khalid bin Salman inaugurated the Saudi Arabian National Defense University, which aims to become a modern military educational institution. The Saudi Defense Ministry partnered with the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia Center for Strategic Studies to improve education and training for Saudi military personnel.
These reforms have been accompanied by a massive increase in military funding and the building up of local defense industrial infrastructure, aiming to wean Saudi Arabia off its reliance on arms imports. While the Vision 2030 goal of a 50% defense localization by 2030 doesn’t look likely to be reached, the country saw an impressive growth from just 2% in 2016 to nearly 15% by mid-2023.
Its state-owned defense company, Saudi Arabian Military Industries, has gone from a non-entity to the 75th-biggest defense company by 2024.
The biggest change has been the kingdom’s increase in military funding, becoming the fifth-biggest defense spender in 2025, and the third-largest arms importer. In terms of GDP percentage spent on the military, it’s surpassed only by Ukraine. Its defense budget went from $64 billion in 2016 to $80 billion in 2024.
Saudi Arabia’s biggest military asset is its air force, one of the largest and most capable in the Middle East. It has the largest F-15 fleet outside of the U.S., consisting of 211 planes of various types, and 72 Eurofighter Typhoons, according to FlightGlobal/Cirium’s 2026 World Air Forces Directory.
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It’s also one of the few countries to possess conventional ballistic missiles, the capability Iran has relied on.
Preliminary tests of the kingdom’s new combat potential have largely been positive — its one confirmed military operation since the Yemen ceasefire in 2022, the brief operation against the Southern Transition Council in support of its Yemeni allies, was a smashing success. However, this operation was carried out against a relatively small entity that had just been abandoned by its foremost ally. Its first major task of countering sustained attacks against three formidable foes from three fronts will surely be far more daunting.
