A Saudi analyst has warned that Donald Trump is making a costly war miscalculation on Iran. His comments come as US-Iran nuclear talks remain deadlocked and Washington’s influence in the Gulf continues to erode. The warning adds to a growing chorus of regional voices questioning whether Trump’s current posture is weakness dressed up as strategy.
Donald Trump receives warning over Iran War Mubarak al-Ati
Saudi expert Mubarak al-Ati said Riyadh no longer looks to Washington for protection. He accused Trump of backing down from any real pressure on Tehran. “It seems that Trump refuses to return to war and overthrow the Ayatollah’s regime. This will cost him dearly,” al-Ati told Russia Today TV, calling the US president a “paper tiger.”
In his view, American credibility in the region did not collapse overnight. He pointed to the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as the moment the cracks became impossible to ignore. The US, he said, is still a superpower — but a diminished one. The world has moved on, and so have its alliances.
That shift, the Saudi expert argues, is why Trump’s push for Gulf states to join the Abraham Accords has fallen flat. Countries that once orbited Washington are now making their own calculations. “The balance of power has changed significantly,” he said. Further noting that rising economies like India, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil now feel confident enough to engage with multiple global powers and not just the United States.
Saudi Arabia, in particular, has been careful not to take sides. It stayed out of the recent conflict involving Israel and Iran, and al-Ati says that was a deliberate choice. “Saudi Arabia refrained from being drawn into war and did not stand alongside Israel and the United States, just as it did not stand alongside Iran,” he said.
Rather than aligning with Washington, al-Ati says Saudi Arabia is quietly assembling a broader coalition. He described an emerging “Arab-Islamic bloc” involving Pakistan, Turkey, and Qatar — a grouping he expects to be announced in the near future (Source: The Jerusalem Post).
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu on Mandatory
