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The Saudis could help end the war but will the US listen?
Riyadh now finds itself a victim, with multiple conflicting and potentially existential interests to protect.
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Even before the war, Riyadh had been looking for hedges against its over-dependence on an increasingly unreliable US guarantor.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Marc Champion
A war in the Middle East probably was not what Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney had in mind in Davos earlier in 2026, when he made a pitch for the world’s so-called middle powers to join together in a world defined by increasingly aggressive military juggernauts.
Nevertheless, his theory is being simultaneously proven and tested in the Persian Gulf. For there can be few clearer examples of the need for what Mr Carney proposed – and the obstacles to achieving it – than the predicament of the Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia in particular, as they try to navigate a conflict they did not choose and cannot control.
