Six weeks of war against Iran have exposed what Israeli strategic planners already knew. A longer war with Tehran will demand resources, supply chains, and resupply infrastructure that no single state can sustain alone. Arrow interceptor stockpiles have been drawn down to the point of rationing. The April 7 ceasefire buys time. It does not solve the problem. Whatever diplomatic framework follows, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps survives it, along with the missile production lines, the drone factories, and the proxy networks that launched the February 28 attacks.
The Gulf states are living the same arithmetic. Their stated fear is not how this war ends, but whether it ends too soon, before the sources of the threat have been addressed. I was in the Gulf when the February 28 attacks landed. Within hours of the first explosions, residents across Dubai, Riyadh, and Doha found themselves in the same position as families in Tel Aviv and Haifa: taping windows, moving children to interior rooms, listening for sirens. Six weeks later, there is a ceasefire. The sirens have stopped. The IRGC has not.
Israeli-Saudi alignment cannot wait for diplomacy to run its course. A nuclear deal may constrain enrichment. It will not constrain the Shaheds. Shared urgency is a wartime condition. It dissolves on contact with a ceasefire. Jerusalem cannot afford to let it.
The Security Framework That Already Exists
Before the February 28 strikes, the US coordinated with Riyadh. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was in direct communication with President Trump in the weeks preceding the operation. Israeli officials maintained their own channel. The two governments were not coordinating with each other publicly. But they were aligned on the same strategic assessment, at the same time.
This was not an anomaly. In April 2024, when Iran launched its first direct strike against Israel, Gulf states passed intelligence that helped intercept the vast majority of incoming projectiles. A US-built framework launched in 2022 had quietly integrated intelligence sharing between Israel and Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Five Eyes nations. That cooperation continued even after Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
This cooperation architecture is already operational. It simply lacks a name, and it runs almost entirely through American infrastructure. US Central Command provides the integration layer. American bases host the radar and communication nodes. Washington underwrites the political cover that allows Gulf states to cooperate with Israel without acknowledging it. That dependency is the vulnerability neither side is discussing.
What Iran Changed
Before February 28, Saudi Arabia and Israel shared an adversary. Now, they share a wound.
For the first time in history, Iran struck all six simultaneously: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Iranian missiles and drones hit Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refinery. The Shaybah oil field, capable of producing a million barrels per day, was targeted repeatedly. Abu Dhabi’s airport was struck. Manama’s capital sustained damage. Kuwait International Airport was attacked. Every target was chosen to inflict economic pain and break political will.
At the same time, Iran launched over 400 ballistic missiles at Israel. Strikes hit Dimona, just five kilometers from Israel’s main nuclear facility, and Arad. Iranian cluster munitions exposed a vulnerability in Israeli defenses, forcing defenders to choose between ignoring dispersing bomblets or expending expensive interceptors on each one. Israel began scaling back use of its most advanced Arrow interceptors to conserve stockpiles.
The strategic arithmetic is now identical on both sides of the border that does not exist. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia face an adversary whose primary weapon is volume: cheap drones and missiles launched in numbers designed to overwhelm expensive defense systems. Both are burning through interceptor stockpiles at unsustainable rates. Neither military had built its architecture for a sustained war of attrition against an adversary willing to absorb punishment indefinitely. Neither can solve this alone.
The Limits of Diplomatic Partnerships
Saudi Arabia did not enter this war without allies. It had two partnership frameworks designed precisely for this scenario. Neither proved sufficient under sustained military pressure.
The 2023 China-brokered rapprochement collapsed the moment Iranian missiles struck Ras Tanura. Beijing issued statements calling for restraint. It did not restrain Iran. Diplomacy without a credible military deterrent behind it cannot hold when the pressure becomes existential.
Saudi Arabia’s September 2025 Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Pakistan was bolder, with NATO Article 5-style language treating aggression against one state as aggression against both. When the test came, Pakistan chose mediation. Islamabad deployed no forces and invoked no clause. Iran calculated correctly that Pakistan would not intervene regardless of what the agreement said. Pakistan eventually showed up not as security guarantor but as mediator, brokering the 10-point ceasefire Trump accepted on April 7. Mediation is not mutual defense. The distinction is the entire point.
Diplomatic frameworks alone could not withstand sustained military attack. The only external partner that has consistently delivered operational value against the Iranian threat, through intelligence sharing, early warning, interception coordination, and proven defense technology, is the one Saudi Arabia does not yet formally recognize.
What Israel Offers Riyadh
Saudi Arabia’s posture has shifted more in the past six weeks than in the previous five years. The kingdom had invested heavily in detente with Iran and diversified defense partnerships built on economic openness. That posture is now under acute strain. Iranian missiles have struck Saudi energy infrastructure, and Riyadh has been forced to reroute oil exports through a single Red Sea pipeline.
Despite decades of security partnership with the United States, Washington has no treaty obligation to defend the kingdom. Saudi Arabia had been working toward normalization with Israel in large part because it would have secured a mutual defense treaty with the US. That treaty does not exist. The war has made clear what that absence means.
Israel offers Saudi Arabia three decades of institutional knowledge in fighting exactly this war: the doctrine, the training pipelines, the civilian resilience infrastructure, and the industrial base to sustain a prolonged aerial campaign. Beijing and Islamabad demonstrated what they could provide under pressure. Israel’s record speaks for itself.
What Riyadh Offers Jerusalem
Israel needs Saudi Arabia as much as Saudi Arabia needs Israel, and for harder reasons than Jerusalem tends to acknowledge. Reports indicate the Pentagon is already considering diverting Ukraine aid. That is the constraint Israel is operating under right now, at full mobilization, with American backing, and still running short.
Saudi Arabia offers Israel strategic depth: geographic breadth that disperses the threat, economic resources that scale production, and political legitimacy across the Muslim world that no bilateral relationship with Washington can provide. A Saudi Arabia formally aligned with Israel transforms the regional balance from a bilateral confrontation into a coalition that Iran cannot match economically, technologically, or diplomatically.
The alternative to formalization is already visible. If Trump accepts a deal that Jerusalem and Riyadh both consider inadequate, the logical endpoint is quiet coordination on unilateral options. Saudi overflight. Israeli strike package. This is not hypothetical. The intelligence sharing and radar tracking that helped defeat the April 2024 and February 28 attacks came from Gulf states that publicly refuse to acknowledge Israel’s existence. Cooperation that extensive can be extended further. Neither capital wants that scenario. A formal framework prevents it.
Saudi accession to the Abraham Accords would also pull wavering states along with it, delivering the regional integration Israel has sought since 1948.
The Clock Israel Should See
Iran remains. That is the fact every scenario shares. Whether the April 7 ceasefire holds, collapses, or gets replaced by a longer framework, the IRGC retains its missile stockpiles, its drone production, and its proxy networks. Iran’s current weakness is temporary. Its leadership will consolidate. Its arsenal will be rebuilt. No proposal under discussion, neither Washington’s 15-point plan nor Tehran’s 10-point counter, changes that reality. A ceasefire that preserves the architecture of the threat is an interval, nothing more.
Which means Israel needs a security framework with Saudi Arabia regardless of how this war ends. Jerusalem cannot sustain a prolonged fight with Iran on its own industrial base. Riyadh cannot sustain one on diplomatic partnerships that fold under pressure. Together, they can build what neither can maintain alone: a layered deterrent architecture, deep enough to absorb volume attacks, broad enough to spread the economic and political cost of defense across two economies rather than one, and durable enough to survive a change in American administrations.
I have spent the past six weeks watching both societies absorb the same blows from the same adversary. The composure I witnessed in Riyadh under fire was that of a country that has decided its future lies in building, and that Iran is the only force capable of derailing that future. Israel has reached the same conclusion from the opposite direction. The opportunity to formalize that shared conclusion into an agreement exists right now. It will not exist forever.
The Abraham Accords were built on the premise that shared interests could overcome historic enmity. Iran has proven that premise in blood. Israel and Saudi Arabia are already aligned. The only question is whether they will formalize what exists before the moment passes, or look back on this war as the opportunity that was too brief to seize.
David Zaikin is the Founder and CEO of Key Elements Group, a London-based strategic consultancy specializing in defense, international affairs, and crisis diplomacy. He has contributed to the Jerusalem Post, Stars and Stripes, Barron’s, CNBC, BBC, and Bloomberg.