A Study of the Context and Dimensions of New Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy in the Middle East

The Mideast developments that began in 2011 when public uprising of Tunisia erupted and spread across other nations in the region triggered remarkable changes to emerge in socio-political structures in some Middle Eastern nations. In the meantime, Saudi Arabia, having traditional royal regime found itself seriously exposed to damage caused by a surge of seeking changes in two areas of indoors and outdoors Saudi Arabia considering the mission it had defined as leader of Muslim World for itself as well as for perpetuating and expanding its influence in the region showed new and different reaction to the Mideast developments. This country that known after adopting conservative foreign policy tried, by taking invasive approach, to maintain its benefits, expand its influence in the region and preserve its position as leader of Muslim World. Although this invasive policy has similar nature in different nations including Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Egypt, it pursues various behavioral methods and models. The main question this article raises is “what are the most important effective variables effective on change of conservative approach into invasive one in Saudi’s foreign policy?” The findings of this research conducted analytically and descriptively showed generation change of ruling elites, Saudi-U.S decline during Obama administration, weakening of U.S hegemony and balance of power change after Arabia spring and strengthened Iran’s power and resistance forces in the region have led Saudi’s foreign policy towards complicated approach of interaction and confrontation in line with strengthened role and expanded influence of Saudi Arabia and confrontation with expanding influence of Iran in the region.