Iran’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia denied Tehran is responsible for attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, saying if it was behind the strikes, it would have announced it. After the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran at the end of February, Tehran retaliated against US and Israeli military assets, including in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Iran and Saudi Arabia re-established diplomatic relations in 2023, in a deal brokered by China, that saw the two sides, which backed rival groups across the region, agree on a new chapter in bilateral relations. So far, the UAE, which normalised relations with Israel in 2020, has faced the brunt of Iran’s attacks, with US bases and oil refineries heavily targeted. Paul Musgrave, associate professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, said the administration of US President Donald Trump has lost much of its leverage in the region, and the US engaged in the wrong conflict at the wrong moment, without proper planning. Iran’s strategy, meanwhile, now seems to be “not who has a bigger bomb or bigger munitions, but who has the highest threshold for pain”, Musgrave told Al Jazeera.