قلم

Dovydas, your analysis has an interesting problem: the more closely one examines your evidence, the less convincingly it supports your conclusion. You have taken three genuine challenges confronting Saudi Arabia and transformed them into three supposedly completed failures. But there is a considerable difference between identifying vulnerabilities and demonstrating that an entire national strategy has collapsed. Let’s begin with your economics. You describe Vision 2030 as “so-called” and present foreign investment as evidence of failure. Yet Saudi Arabia attracted SAR 159.1 billion in gross foreign direct investment in 2025, an increase of 33% from 2024 and approximately 14% above its target for that year. You compare today’s performance with an ambitious target set for 2030, then write as though the deadline has already passed. An unusual treatment of time for someone presenting an economic analysis. The IMF does indeed forecast a painful 3.3% contraction in 2026. You mention that. Curiously, you omit its forecast of a 7.9% recovery in 2027. Nor do you mention that S&P maintained Saudi Arabia’s A+ sovereign rating with a stable outlook in September, explicitly acknowledging the Kingdom’s capacity to withstand regional conflict. These facts do not erase the crisis. They complicate the obituary you are attempting to write. Then comes your geopolitical argument. You portray Saudi Arabia as dangerously dependent on Donald Trump, with little meaningful strategic room to maneuver. Yet on October 26, Saudi Arabia’s defense minister sat in Tehran alongside senior Pakistani and Turkish officials, pursuing regional de-escalation under a new framework of defense cooperation. A country supposedly trapped by dependence on Washington was simultaneously expanding its security partnerships and negotiating directly with Tehran. How does that fit your narrative? And regarding Yemen, the Houthi threat is unquestionably serious. Civilian deaths, disrupted aviation and economic losses cannot be dismissed. But why does the ability of an armed movement to inflict damage automatically establish the strategic defeat of the state it attacks? By that reasoning, every successful terrorist attack would constitute proof that the targeted government’s entire security strategy had failed. There is a legitimate debate about Saudi military decisions, economic priorities and international partnerships. Indeed, the present crisis makes that debate necessary. What is intellectually indefensible is treating a temporary shock as conclusive evidence of permanent failure, while overlooking measurable reforms, institutional resilience and strategic adaptation. Saudi Arabia is navigating a dangerous regional war. Its difficulties are real. Its future is not settled. Your mistake is not that you recognize the dangers. It is that you mistake the severity of today’s circumstances for certainty about tomorrow’s outcome. You have written the final chapter while the country is still changing the plot. And that, Dovydas, is a rather strange way to claim the authority of geopolitical analysis.