Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been advising United States (US) President Donald Trump to “keep hitting Iranians hard”, a New York Times report has quoted White House officials as saying.

 

The report, published Sunday, said that Trump has been speaking to Israeli Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu “almost every day” and is also regularly having conversations with Arab leaders, particularly Mohammed bin Salman.

 

“According to several officials, the advice Mr Trump is getting from the prince is to keep hitting the Iranians hard — essentially repeating the advice that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who died in 2015, repeatedly gave to Washington: ‘Cut off the head of the snake’,” the report read.

 

While the Kingdom has not yet reacted to the claim, it comes just days after Riyadh reacted to reports that President Trump had ordered sweeping attacks on Iran after weeks of lobbying by two key allies in the Middle East — Israel and Saudi Arabia.

 

It was reported by The Washington Post that strikes on Iran had come despite US intelligence assessments maintaining Tehran was unlikely to pose a direct threat to the US mainland within the next decade.

 

Citing four people familiar with the matter, the report claimed that Netanyahu continued his longstanding push for US strikes against Iran, while 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, had said while reacting to the claim in a statement on X.

 

He had 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 had 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 had written on X.

 

Ansari had gone 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.