Why the Saudi Military Can’t Fight

Yes, excellent points, and excellent question, which I think a lot of people are asking right now. Uh there's a particular image uh from the shoot down of that F-15. You can look at what some of the Ansar Allah guys, the Houthi guys who shot it down, are standing on the wreckage of that same F-15. Like how could this have happened exactly? How could you lose an exquisite uh aircraft like this to a non-state non- non-state armed actor? And I think it goes back to a broader problem that Saudi Arabia has, but really all the Gulf countries have, uh which has been revealed in this war, that they're basically defenseless against Iran, but even these non-state groups like Ansar Allah, which is from, you know, one of the poorest countries in the world, it must be said, uh they can't fight them effectively. But at the same time, Saudi Arabia has spent $83 billion last year on its defense budget. It actually has the eighth highest defense budget in the world. And if you look at open-source military power rankings, uh Saudi Arabia, by many of these analyses, it comes in around 12th of 170 militaries worldwide and in 2026, according to many open-source defense analysts, that's a rough average. So, it's considered to be the 12th most powerful army in the world. It should be on paper at least, if you look at its uh you know, the actual equipment that wields and the size of its armed forces and so forth. And yet despite that, they can't even protect critical infrastructure, let alone defeat the Houthis. They fought the Houthis for many, many years in a very extremely brutal fashion. Oops, uh sorry. Uh but they couldn't couldn't defeat them, and you know, there's another image that I want to show actually very quickly. This is a very devastating image for Saudi Arabia. This is a image of Ansar Allah or Houthi missiles hitting Riyadh International Airport. I actually knew people who were in Riyadh at the time. They mentioned that they heard several explosions and they felt that the information is being suppressed. But this is a a strike against, you know, basically one of the most critical piece of infrastructure in the entire country. And you think that $83 billion defense budget would be able to do something to prevent scenes like this. But if it's not, then what's it really doing? And you know, I will say Saudi Arabia has an army which totals over a quarter million troops, has several hundred Abrams main battle tanks, over 400 or roughly 400 combat aircraft including the F-15 we saw shot down by the Houthis, also Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft. They have the Patriot air defense system. They have, you know, many many different weapon exquisite expensive US weapon systems and European weapon systems, Chinese weapon systems even. And yet they're not really able to do anything effective in that sense. So I think there's a very very important thing that people should be aware of. It's a very actually interesting image. This is a Saudi Arabia's THAAD battery which was deployed. The entire battery shown here. The different pieces of equipment encompassing it and all the Saudi forces standing in like a, you know, a shape to spell out THAAD in English and Arabic, you know, to show off the expensive missiles that they have. But these missiles are not really doing much. They're not being used very effectively. And I think that the main problem Saudi Arabia has, and again as I mentioned, it's shared by pretty much all the other Gulf Arab countries, is that their military is actually designed not to be effective. It's designed to be ineffective and to not fight well. And it's a little interesting because sometimes people will come up with explanations. They'll say maybe there's some essential reason that they can't fight, like it's ethnic or cultural reason. But that doesn't really make any sense cuz Ansar Allah, who's fighting so well, they're basically the same as Saudis in a culture many many profound similarities between Saudis and Yemenis culturally, linguistically, religiously, and so forth. That's not really a a satisfactory explanation. It's really the fact that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states specifically hobbled their militaries. They make their militaries ineffective. They don't want them to be too effective. And you wonder what would be the reason for that? Why would somebody spend so much money on a military, but also try to make sure it doesn't work? I think there's one image or one guy who kind of exemplifies that. This is a former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. And Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power in Egypt in the 50s in the free officers coup when they deposed King Farouk in the former Egyptian monarchy. The same thing happened in Egypt and the same thing was threatened in many other Arab monarchies in the 20th century. The number one goal of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchs is to prevent the emergence of another Gamal Abdel Nasser in their countries. So, they will do everything to limit the power of the Saudi military, create a divided system, make sure that military officers can't act with you know, they can't gain a public following or popularity. They can't be very renowned for their own military exploits. They can't even maybe win battles effectively and be known for that because that may boost their political standing. And we have to have on all accounts have to have a very divided military system. Where ultimately the people, the monarchy, and the extended family of the monarchs are the ones who have control of the armed forces and so forth. And you know, I mentioned earlier Saudi Arabia has you know, a quarter million people in its military, which is a lot in many ways. But it's actually very atypical the way the Saudi military is set up. What you're looking at right now is members of the Saudi National Guard. So, the way the Saudi military set up is it's it's actually two They have two militaries. This is the not even uh They have two very well-funded militaries in effect. They have the Saudi military on paper, which reports to the Ministry of Defense, and then they have these guys with the National Guard. They have their own separate budgets, own separate commanders. Uh the Saudi military, you know, has about 75,000 land forces, 15,000 navy, including about 3,000 marines, and then 35,000 personnel in the air force and air defenses. The National Guard is about 125,000 auxiliary forces, mostly land forces. And then on top of that 125, another 25,000 roughly estimated uh tribal auxiliaries. So, the point of the National Guard is to make sure that the military stays under control. And there've been actually US studies of this as well, too, showing that the National Guard and the military are not deployed in Saudi Arabia in a manner geographically which is optimal for defense of the country from external attack. They're deployed in a manner to make sure that the military cannot easily conduct a coup. Uh they cannot take over power plants or government offices. They'll always be checked by uh people from the National Guard. And the National Guard, as opposed to being necessarily professional soldiers and so forth, um maybe they are, but the main the main thing that they're chosen for are tribal loyalties and connections to the ruling family and loyal tribes and so forth. This is basically a tribal society. And And the military is spending all this money, but it's not spending the money to make sure that they can fight effectively. They're spending the money uh to maintain political control. So, you know, in that in that light, you know, they're spending the money that they use to buy western military goods, and you know, I'll just bring up again this image of uh them with the THAAD system, which has become so relevant in this current war, is that they're basically buying protection money from Western countries. So, they're making themselves integral to Western supply chains and even economic systems by buying billions and billions of dollars of arms from the US, from European countries, from Asian countries, and elsewhere such that those countries will feel incumbent upon them to take part in Saudi Arabia's defense if they come under attack. They want to send them sell them more THAAD missile batteries, they need to keep them in the loop in that sense. So, that's kind of what they're doing. They're paying protection money. But despite all that, you would think that they still would be able to maintain some level of combat effectiveness cuz in the current war, it's been a bit strange to see Saudi Arabia asking not just the US, but Pakistan, Turkey, Ukraine, European countries, France, Italy, Greece even to come all come to his defense. Why can't the Saudi military do a basic minimum defense of its own this case? And I think that this also goes back to a particular problem in the way the military is developed. But it's not unique to that to the Saudi military either. There actually is a book about this and I don't fully agree with everything in this book to be honest, but it was a study by a gentleman named Kenneth who's like some kind of think tank analyst, maybe more on the neocat neocon side you could say. Uh but he did a interesting study I would say of Arab military effectiveness and specifically Arab state militaries. And it's called Armies of Sand. And as I said, I don't know if I agree with everything in this book, but he made one point in the book which I think is extremely important and relevant. And I do think that people who spend time in Gulf states would recognize this dynamic a little bit even in the business world or politically and so forth, which is that in the Saudi military and in other Gulf Arab militaries, there's a major problem, which is that lower-level officers do not have high degree of autonomy to act in combat situations. So, there's a very hierarchical military structure where decisions have to be sent up the chain of command, basically to the top before people feel that they have the authority and latitude to act. In modern combat, especially, you know, in a highly technological age, you need to have commanders who have the ability to react on the fly and make autonomous decisions. The Iranians have actually fought in a way which is very, very much like this at the when they embraced this mosaic defense in the current war. And the mosaic defense is that the commander different commanders would be given authority of different zones. They'd have full authority over those zones to act, to hit targets, uh make defensive coordinations and so forth. And they were trusted by the supreme leader and the IRGC leadership and so forth to act in that way. If you notice, they don't really seem to be concerned about a coup. In these states, in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states, they can't let they could never even dream really of letting their commanders act like that because they I don't have full political control over them. They don't feel that they could be trusted, that if you gave a commanders or even low-level officers uh the freedom of action like that, that they might not decide to drive on Riyadh one day. So, when you have a situation where every commander needs to, you know, either go up the chain because they, you know, they have to do that or they're afraid that if they make a decision and it's the wrong decision, they'll be punished. Or even if it's the right decision, they might be punished if it feels like people make them a political threat, then obviously the entire military is not going to be effective. You're not going to be able to uh I in a way which allows you to uh capitalize on the fast-moving situations taking place in modern combat. So, you know, this is another, you know, something which stems to the political culture really that harms their ability to act in a way which is effective or in their own interest. So, you know, again, that's like I don't think that's the only issue. There's a bunch of issues. Uh but I do think that that institutional culture of the military is something very important. And I've actually experienced this in some Gulf Arab states. They're very loud, very smart people in the states. They're very capable, both the locals and expatriates. There are a lot of people who have a lot of potential, but they don't feel like they have the authority or the capacity to act and take steps and take risks and so forth, even when they have budgets to do so, people, you know, in different fields. It's a profound issue because the fact that everything has to maintain under the control of the royal family. The system is being is optimized on all accounts to maintain the control of the royal family, not to win wars or do anything else like that. So, that's another issue which I think that the book addresses. And the what the book also points out is that non-state Arab militaries are very effective. Ansar Allah is extremely effective right now as we see. Hezbollah has been very effective historically. The IRGC, which is not an Arab military, but it's it operates in some way in the cell format, also been very effective. And you know, those militaries are effective because they do actually give authority to lower-level commanders. Hezbollah operates according to a cell structure in Lebanon, and they embraced that even further in the last year. And that's what's the source of their effectiveness because the Hezbollah's leaders don't believe that some commander might not just come and try to take out the supreme leader of Hezbollah and become the supreme leader themselves. They have a strong ideological cohesion, and they're able to fight a lot better. And the same thing with Ansar Allah as well. So, when you take out that variable, when you adjust for that, then you actually do solve the problem in many cases. These groups, which don't have budgets to cut out of the, you know, entire global supply chain, which Saudi Arabia is extremely wealthy customer, they have no part in that, and yet they're able to, as we see, hit Saudi Arabia really hard, fight Israel to withdraw in many cases, and also just have operate in a high degree of effectiveness because they don't have that constraint. So, I think that these are all things which ultimately come into play and they're revealing of the shortcomings of the Saudi military. And, you know, despite that, they're still kind of doubling down on more or less the same thing as far as I can tell. You know, we see constant reports of Saudi Arabia trying to buy more and more US military equipment and European equipment and even Chinese equipment. They will have to pay for maintenance for this for many, many years as well, too. They'll need to require, you know, US trainers and so forth and embedded on ongoing basis. And this is basically the problem because the military, again, as I said, not just being used to buy protection, it's also means of distributing patronage within the Saudi society. A lot of people will go in the military, they may serve on a THAAD battery or a tank unit and so forth, but they're treated more like a government job. And I say government job in the pejorative sense. They'll think think of it as like a do-nothing job. They certainly don't want to get killed, and they certainly don't have that same willingness to sacrifice and so forth, which you may be necessary in a national army. People are thinking about their tribes and their family, and if they start taking a lot of casualties in Yemen and so forth, there may be dissatisfaction. This is another political problem that Saudi Arabia has a ruling compact with its citizens where it tells them that you can live a comfortable life, and, you know, you can have even have a welfare state, so to speak, but you can't have any political influence in society, a political say in society. And that's really not sustainable for First of all, it's not good for Well, you know, let me put this way, actually. In European societies that also used to be the case during the age of monarchies, uh what happened after the French Revolution is that there was this new phenomenon of this mass conscripted armies by Napoleon and the French revolutionaries to when they're fighting their wars across the continent. And that was different from the way wars were fought before cuz they were fought with mercenaries in small, you know, groups that people would hire and so forth by local kings. Uh but when that happened, that there was also an expectation of reciprocity among the French that if we're serving in the army and we're dying and we're taking real risks, then we want to have a say in how society is governed. That's different. If Saudi Arabia did that, if they had a real national army and they were willing to take casualties and make all the risks and sacrifices that a normal army takes, then they won't accept the old compact where they have no say in politics, but they get a payment every month. That That may become insufficient for them going forward. So, again, it's a political problem. And, you know, you see these sales, you see all this expensive quick kit that they're buying, all these calls for foreign support. This is deepening the problem in a way because, as I mentioned, the foreign training and maintenance and intelligence, but also you going to not going to get the indigenous defense industrial base and technological base and experiences necessary, the in-house commander experience that you need to be effective. And also, like, if you fall out with the Americans and all your kit is American and the relationship's not going well, they stop providing you updates to your equipment, let's say updates to your tanks, your THAAD batteries, which makes them operable, then you may They may all become mothballed over time. You're basically are locking yourself into a relationship of I don't want to say slavery, exactly, but basically you are You're being held hostage by your purchases. They're locking you deeper and deeper into this uh, into this kind of toxic relationship, you could say. But, you know, I I there's actually an interesting, uh, individual I came across recently, and it was in the context of reading a military history of American the American military as it developed over many years. Uh, his name is Nathanael Greene. And he was a he was a, uh, commander for George Washington in the in the Revolutionary War against the British Empire in the United States. And when you read the way that the US fought in that war, the Ansar Allah and the IRGC and Hezbollah, they actually fight the way that the American military fought in the Revolutionary War. Because they operated along the same lines of small units, uh, they blend into the terrain, uh, they do hit-and-run attacks. Nathanael Greene was like the Qassem Soleimani of America in a way. Because in the Revolutionary War, people don't remember in the early years it was going very poorly for the Americans. And George Washington so forth were mimicking the European style of conflict. They were fighting large mass battles, but they didn't have the, uh, they didn't have the resources, they didn't have the manpower to fight the British Empire one-on-one. Nathanael Greene kind of did what, uh, Qassem Soleimani did. He started organizing networks of militias. He fought using the territory, the forests and mountains of the United States. They didn't engage really ever in direct one-on-one combat with the British military cuz they'd be crushed, but they would wear them out, hide, hit them, run, destroy their supply nodes, uh, hit their supply chain throughout, and basically wear them out such that it's not that they defeated the British in like one decisive battle, but they made the British expeditionary effort in America basically unsustainable. And if you look at the way the IRGC and Ansar Allah and Hezbollah are fighting right now, that's what they're doing. They're not engaging in direct one-on-one conflict with the United States head-on, but they're hitting their supply nodes, they're making it more and more laborious and taxing to be there uh, and and they're wearing out the morale and they're hitting they're using the terrain they're using the mountains of Yemen and the mountains of Iran as cover for their missiles using that to their advantage. They're fighting a partisan war the exact same way Nathaniel Greene fought. And it's kind of ironic in some ways that the US is allied with the monarchies whereas these groups which are actually much more in keeping with the traditional American way of fighting are you know, their enemies. But you know, that's one of the vagaries of history. And you know, I will say one last thing that the Saudis, you know, they are trying in a way. They're trying to fix this problem. I think they're aware of it. And this current, you know, situation has put this unbelievable exclamation mark on how vulnerable they are. You know, they put out these communications trying to increase their morale of the population and so forth. That's really not what they can do. What what they really need is and what they're trying to do, to be honest, is increase the indigenization of their own defense production bringing factories in-house trying to force the population to learn how to operate these systems indigenously. It's called Saudiization and there's versions of this in all of the Gulf Arab states. So they're doing everything they can to sort of ameliorate their weaknesses which have been revealed by this war. It's just not really clear if they can do so on a time frame which will save them in the current situation because unfortunately Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arab states they effectively if they did not you know, mastermind this war, they certainly felt that they had to go along with it and they went along with it. And if they had not allowed their territory to be used as logistics points for the attack against Iran, then the war wouldn't have happened it wouldn't have been possible. And you know, you would have had a better situation for everyone and especially them. So you know, what's going to happen? I'm not really sure, but you know, they have a decision point coming up of how they're going to deal with this because I don't think the Saudi Arabia can survive more situations like we're seeing right now. The Houthis hitting their airport and so forth because if their whole goal is to be a global investment hub and tourism hub or whatever, that's seems like their intention, then the images like this are basically radioactive to that. So, I think most likely they're going to have to pay off on some Saudi alliance pay off to the Iranians, at least in the short term. And seeing some reports, some of the Gulf states are doing that. In the long term, if they can find a way of addressing the weaknesses militarily, addressing all these points that we talked about, then maybe they can turn it around, but I don't think money is enough. This is one of the things that, you know, money can't buy everything. I think that mentality has got to go. Some things have to be won by hard work and hard effort and investment and grit coming from leadership and population. And only then will they be able to rectify the problems. But, I think all that goes to the core of why they're in the position they are today and what kind of you know, predicament they have to get themselves out of now. >> Morteza, thank you. Look, um with what you said, the budget was 85 billion a year and essentially protection money to the West, to the US and you know, Pakistan, Turkey. Why, if it's protection money and Saudi's calling in protection from Donald Trump specifically, why are they not coming to Saudi's protection? >> Well, you know, if usually when you pay protection money to the mafia, at least they protect you, right? That's kind of the benefit. Like they they say that, you know, that's a nice story you got there. You should give us $200 a month to make sure nothing happens to it, but then they'll make sure nothing will happen to it. And even if someone comes, then the deal is they'll keep it going for their own interest because they want you to keep paying. In this case, they're paying protection money, they're not getting protected, and this is not the first time, by the way. They were hit several times in the last decade. Uh they were hit in 2019 but in Abqaiq, the oil facilities by the IRGC, and the US and Trump specifically did not do anything to come help them. So, you basically you have a mafia protection where they don't actually protect you. So, what is this exactly? Just extortion, period? That seems like what it is. The funny thing is that the Gulf Arab states invested so much in Trump specifically. They bought him a plane. They bribed his his son-in-law. They bribed his sons. They paid billions of dollars. This has gotten them nothing. They've you've never been hit harder than when Trump is in office. Uh when Biden was in office, they actually didn't really get hit. So, you know, this is the the the grave irony behind this. They're paying They're getting scammed by a typical New York scam artist, which unfortunately the president seems to be. He's not even fulfilling his bargain. And you could say it's in his own interest to fulfill it because uh you know, if he wants the money to keep coming, then he should obviously just give the protection, but it seems like they will pay even without the protection. And what I've actually read and heard specifically is kind of uh depressing. And it's not just the Arab countries, either. It's also Europe. They're so used to dealing with the US as their security guarantor that even if they stop guaranteeing their security, they don't know what to do other than just continuing doing the same thing again and again. They haven't ever really thought of seriously of an alternative to this or how to develop it. And you know, we've talked about before this Mecca alliance and so forth. That's an interesting idea, and they could build something on that framework, but that is very, very far from being instantiated today, and I don't even know if they really can do it in any foreseeable time frame to make it robust enough to protect them. So, yeah, they're just getting scammed. They're just paying you know, bribe money because they have to. And I guess if they stop paying it, maybe they would get hit even harder.