Riyadh has finally broken silence on reports that United States (US) President Donald Trump ordered sweeping attacks on Iran after weeks of lobbying by two key allies in the Middle East — Israel and Saudi Arabia.

 

On Sunday, it was reported by The Washington Post that strikes on Iran came despite US intelligence assessments maintaining Tehran was unlikely to pose a direct threat to US mainland within the next decade.

 

Citing four people familiar with the matter, the report claimed that Israeli Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu continued his longstanding push for US strikes against Iran, while Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private calls to Trump over the past month advocating military action, despite publicly supporting diplomacy.

 

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been consistent in supporting diplomatic efforts to reach a credible deal with Iran,” Fahad Nazer, the spokesperson for the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington DC, said in a statement on X.

 

The Kingdom of #Saudi Arabia has been consistent in supporting diplomatic efforts to reach a credible deal with Iran. At no point in all our communication with the Trump Administration did we lobby the President to adopt a different policy. https://t.co/JIUHp0drw2

— Fahad Nazer فهد ناظر (@KSAEmbassySpox) March 2, 2026

 

He added that at no point in all of the Kingdom’s communication with the Trump administration had they lobbied the president to adopt a different policy.

 

Saudi political researcher and foreign affairs expert Salman Al-Ansari also said that the report by The Washington Post was “categorically false”.

 

“Some Western journalists have been asking me about this as if it were factual, so here is my response: This Washington Post report is categorically false. Riyadh did not lobby Trump to declare war on Iran in any way,” he wrote on X.

 

Some Western journalists have been asking me about this as if it were factual, so here is my response:

This Washington Post report is categorically false. Riyadh did not lobby Trump to declare war on Iran in any way. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia worked to prevent escalation.… https://t.co/KdJ2aaBP0H

— Salman Al-Ansari | سلمان الأنصاري (@Salansar1) March 2, 2026

 

Ansari went on to state that Saudi Arabia, on the contrary, had been working to prevent escalation.

 

“Reporting like this appears designed to divert attention from those who actually advocated for conflict, as scrutiny of their role intensifies. The goal seems twofold: to drag Saudi Arabia into the war politically and to redistribute blame as public opinion turns against those who pushed for it,” he added.

 

Meanwhile, Trump administration officials have also acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack US forces first.

 

Reuters, quoting two people familiar with the matter, reported that Pentagon officials briefed Democratic and Republican staff of several national security committees in both the Senate and the House of Representatives for more than 90 minutes on the unfolding US attack in Iran.

 

In the briefings, administration officials emphasised that Iran's ballistic missiles and proxy forces in the region posed an imminent threat to US interests, but there was no intelligence about Tehran attacking US forces first, the two sources told Reuters.

 

Earlier, it was also reported that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessments presented to the White House in the weeks before the attack concluded that if Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed, he could be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or equally hardline clerics.