In a widely circulated Friday interview with sports broadcaster Stephen A. Smith, former U.S. President Donald Trump delivered incendiary, unvarnished assessments of longstanding U.S. Gulf security allies, most notably claiming Saudi Arabia is currently “disintegrating” amid sustained drone and missile assaults by Yemen’s Houthi movement. The provocative remarks are almost guaranteed to stoke diplomatic tensions between Washington and Riyadh, a partnership that has formed a cornerstone of U.S. Middle East security policy since the end of the Second World War.
During the unscripted discussion, Trump went on to boast that a full-scale U.S. military campaign targeting Iranian civilian and critical infrastructure could topple the Tehran government in a mere 72 hours. “If I want to take them out, I hit their energy sector in one day. Their energy is gone. In one day, their bridges are gone, and in one day, their manufacturing capability is gone. It would only take me three days, one day each,” he asserted. He then claimed that Saudi Arabia and every other Gulf Cooperation Council state — including Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain — had explicitly begged him to hold off on such a strike, citing their own acute military and economic vulnerabilities amid ongoing regional conflict.
This is far from the first time Trump has publicly highlighted what he frames as his outsized leverage over Gulf ruling elites, particularly Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). In remarks dating back to March, when open hostilities between a U.S.-Israeli coalition and Iran were at their peak, Trump openly mocked the Saudi crown prince, saying, “He didn’t think this was going to happen… he didn’t think he’d be kissing my ass… he thought it’d be just another American president that was a loser… but now he has to be nice to me.”
Though Saudi Arabia escaped the worst of the direct retaliatory missile and drone barrages that targeted smaller Gulf states in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, the kingdom has since faced a cascading security crisis after a years-long UN-backed ceasefire between the Saudi-recognized Yemeni government and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement collapsed over the summer. Houthi fighters have since launched relentless strikes targeting Saudi civilian airports, key energy facilities, and populated urban centers, forcing Riyadh to cancel high-profile international conferences designed to showcase its post-oil economic diversification agenda, and creating costly disruptions to its global energy export operations.
Many independent regional security analysts corroborate Trump’s broader assessment that the ongoing spillover from the Iran conflict has left Gulf states far more vulnerable than publicly acknowledged, but his own Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on suggestions of widespread Gulf instability just days before the interview was released. Rubio insisted that the administration’s current strategy of enforcing a total blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to cripple Iran’s economy — rather than launching new full-scale ground or air combat operations — is the preferred path for U.S. regional partners. “The only oil that’s not getting out consistently through the Strait of Hormuz is Iranian oil,” Rubio stated earlier this week. “The economic pressure on Iran is so devastating… that the president’s concluded… there’s no need for major combat operations.”
Trump also emphasized the deep economic ties binding the U.S. and Gulf states, noting that regional monarchies have poured trillions of dollars in direct investment into the U.S. economy. The U.S. State Department formalized a landmark agreement in September approving the sale of up to 48 F-35 stealth fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a deal valued at up to $24 billion. “They’re tremendous investors in our country. They spend trillions of dollars in our country,” Trump noted. “The people that we’re here to protect would rather have me do it the way I’m doing it now.”